TITLE: preliminary reading recommendation before embarking on Connes non commutative geometry book?
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: I want to try to understand non commutative geometry by reading Connes's book
..and I am discovering it is a hard book to read :-) as I miss a lot of background specially in operator algebra and homology theory ( my field is nonlinear PDE so I know a bit of functional analysis already- at least the one used in my field).
So my question:  what reading could be recommended in order to prepare a non expert mathematician to read Connes's book?
For example, there are so many book on operator algebra or homology theory ...and my personal pick will be random, so I am seeking for expert recommendations:
Thanks in advance
JF

REPLY [8 votes]: To understand everything in Connes' book you would need expertise in many different fields. My advice would be to browse it and see if anything attracts your interest. Then you can read up on the relevant background for that topic.