My top 5 science books:

Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. Whether fundy, atheist or disintrested party, read this book. You’ll then at least know (a) what the argument is about, and (b) not make the same few stupid mistakes when talking about the subject.

The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen J. Gould. Learn how easily science can be, and has been, abused.

Gaia, by James Lovelock. Not hard science, but a genuinely intriguing book. One that’ll make you think.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner. Learn why pseudoscience is bad, but occasionally very, very funny!

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, (or anything else) by Richard P. Feynman. The guy’s a genius, period.

Old: Your Erroneous Zones, Pulling your own strings, & The sky’s the limit (in moderation)  by Dr. Wayne Dyer have been helpful for me

older: LotR by Tolkien

newest: Alex’s stuff…  of course.

I have always found the dictionary to be thrilling and word packed.

Damn it, i wrote a whole post like 2 days ago and just realized it never showed up.  I wish i could remember what I wrote.

David B. - 25 May 2006 02:21 PM

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, (or anything else) by Richard P. Feynman. The guy’s a genius, period.

“Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman” is an excellent autobiography.  Definately a man I would have liked to have met.  Need to start a tread on that topic…..

My top 5 classics:

The Heart of Darkness, Nostromo or The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. Sometimes dark, sometimes darker; find out what lurks in the hearts of men.

Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra. Both funny and tragic, but get a good translation.

Far from the Madding Crowd or The Trumpet Major, by Thomas Hardy. The spotters guide to love and passion, and the consequences of each, in handy book form.

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins. Start at the beginning with the first great detective novel.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. A brilliant man, and undeserving of his modern reputation. Read this book, and watch out for little snippets of ‘princely’ behaviour from the World’s political leaders.

pretty much anything by

Twain (AKA Samuel Clemens), (recommend “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court” and “Letters From The Earth”)

Kafka (recommend “The Metamorphosis”, “The Trial” and “America”)

Doestoevsky (recommend “The Idiot”, “Crime & Punishment” or “The Brothers Karamazov”)

And for those of you intimidated by large books, an excellent intro would be a book I mentioned above,  “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka, it is a very short book but an excellent introduction to Kafka’s writings. Also, I cannot say enough good things about Twain’s ‘Letters From The Earth”. Everyone should have a copy

Some books that I’ve read recently and enjoyed:

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccoccio

The Ferguson Rifle by Louis L’amour

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

The Breeds of Man by F. M. Busby

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

The Reluctant King trilogy by L. Sprague de Camp

The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle

The General Danced At Dawn trilogy by George MacDonald Fraser

The Travels by Marco Polo

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

The Escape Orbit by James White

Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell

The Song of Roland

Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb

Shadow Hawk by Andre Norton

The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters

Various works of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, H. Beam Piper, James H. Schmitz, Alistair MacLean

* * * * * *

Some books that I read recently and didn’t enjoy:

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

Cryptozoic! by Brian Aldiss

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Shining by Stephen King

I like kitty-cats… lol… this book is a fantasy about them… Its probably the only book Ive read more than once.

Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams

His other books are good too.. Im working my way through the “Otherland” series.

Umm… anything by Neil Gaiman, prettymuch

The “Book of the New Sun” series by Gene Wolfe

Absolutely nothing by Ayn Rand (.. I cant wrap my head around her.. ) though she’s supposedly a good author… ?

Neuromancer - William Gibson (gotta love the Cyberpunk).  Most of this is good too..

Shadowrun Series (Most of its out of print.. multiple authors.. more Cyberpunk but blended with magic,  its a what if magic came back to the world type series…)

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sorry none of those are intelectually stimulating for the most part…  I read to enjoy and I rarely enjoy classic literature…

My top 5 history books:

A History of the Crusades: Volumes 1-3, by Steven Runciman. It’s why they hate us you know, the definitive guide.

Testament or Ancient Lives, by John Romer. Two (of several) very accessible history books by the same man.

Medieval Lives, by Terry Jones. Merry men in tights and damsels in distress? Not quite.

The Histories, by Herodotus. Start at the beginning.

The Gathering Storm, Their Finest Hour, The Grand Alliance, The Hinge of Fate, Closing the Ring, Triumph and Tragedy, by Winston Churchill. Through his war diaries, Churchill relives the highs and lows of the modern era’s first ‘total war’.

Emidawg - 27 May 2006 03:39 AM

Absolutely nothing by Ayn Rand (.. I cant wrap my head around her.. ) though she’s supposedly a good author… ?

Which is quite ironic when you consider that one of the major characters in Atlas Shrugged is Balph Eubank, the self-styled “literary leader of the age” who cannot write anything people will actually buy. He’s one of the villains of the novel.

Sorry none of those are intelectually stimulating for the most part…  I read to enjoy and I rarely enjoy classic literature…

As Balph puts it, what you enjoy is unimportant, you should be compelled to read unsaleable books so that artists such as himself (and Rand) don’t have to lower their standards so far as to be popular.

(In case anyone was wondering, no I can’t remember every damn character in Atlas Shrugged, and no I didn’t go find a copy and re-read it to find the name of the asshat author (a prospect slightly less appealing than a fireant suppository). Wikipedia to the rescue!)