Book for Algebraic Topology- Spanier vs Tom Dieck

In one place, the theory of fibrations, I feel tom Dieck's book is superior. Thus in the first edition of Spanier, in the proof of Lemma 11, of Chapter 2, Section 7, Spanier writes down an extended lifting function $\Lambda$, but he does not prove it is continuous. I did not manage to prove it was continuous, and in fact found the function was not well defined. I sent a correction of the definition to Spanier, and this appeared in the second edition, but I still do not know how to prove $\Lambda$ is continuous. Have I missed something?

On the other hand Spanier's ideas on the construction of covering spaces are still referred today by experts, with the notion of what they call the Spanier group.

I find Section 3 of Chapter 7 of Spanier on "Change of base point" rather hard work, and I feel it can all be much easier done, and more generally, by using fibrations of groupoids. But tom Dieck's book does not use this method either.

Spanier gives van Kampen's theorem for the fundamental group of a simplicial complex as an exercise, while tom Dieck's book does give the statement of the theorem for a union of two spaces. Hatcher gives a more general theorem, for a union of many spaces, but none of these mention the fundamental groupoid on a set of base points.

I tend to agree with 313's answer that readers should look around, and find what is easier for them, in different aspects.

My copy of Spanier, dated 1966, had a price of \$15, but when I checked for inflation that was equivalent to \$111 today.

March 13: I add that neither book develops the algebraic theory of groupoids. For a relevant discussion on this, see https://mathoverflow.net/questions/40945/compelling-evidence-that-two-basepoints-are-better-than-one/46808#46808

Spanier is not outdated. I read about half of it, and it never felt like an old book. Actually I think that in spirit it is more "modern" than many of the so-called modern books. Apart from that when Spanier's book was written, the foundations of algebraic topology were already laid down. Of course it does not include some of the new developments, but these are anyway too advanced to be included in an introduction to the subject. [But if you really want to read about them, see Switzer's book.] That being said, Spanier's book is more sophisticated than e.g. Hatcher, because Spanier includes e.g. spectral sequences.

I do not consider myself very bright, but I must say I feel that Tom Dieck is easier to read than Hatcher, because it is written more clearly and more carefully. Also Tom Dieck is very systematic and does include e.g. the method of acyclic models, the Eilenberg-Zilber theorem (as does Spanier), which Hatcher doesn't. I don't think that Tom Dieck is much more modern than Spanier, also TD does not include spectral sequences. I think reading both Spanier and Tom Dieck is a good idea, because their approaches are often similar. I once read that Spanier "was written for a computer, not for a human", but for me it is very readable. I recommend to supplement your books by a book on classical homological algebra, say the book by Weibel. (You say that you had graduate level courses in algebra including CT and HA, but from this it is not clear whether you really know some deep stuff, or merely diagram chasing and a bit of talking.) A nice book which is somewhat similar to Spanier and TD is Dold's Lectures on algebraic topology