books worth reading
Non-required reading
Here are some books that I've read and now recommend, or de-recommend. Your tastes may differ. If no author is listed, either the book itself does not list an author, or the authorship is more complicated that I feel like reproducing, or I forget the author :)
[A note: I believe nothing ruins a good book like being forced to read it. That's why I'm calling this list non-required reading.]
Recommended
- "Dan'l Boone On the Caroliny Trail" -- this was the first book I read, so it sticks in my memory.
- "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," "Life on the Missippi" (and probably everything) by Mark Twain
- "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
- Anything by Philip K Dick
- "Atlas Shrugged," "The Fountainhead," "Anthem," "We the Living," and anything else by Ayn Rand. Sure, some of it may wear on you after a while, but the sense of life is right.
- "Venus on the Half Shell" by Kilgore Trout
- Any of the Dave Brandstetter mysteries by Joseph Hansen.
- likewise any of the Miss Pollifax mysteries by Dorothy Gilman
- likewise still any of the Rabbi Small mysteries by Harry Kemelmann*
- "The Lord of the Rings" (and "The Hobbit") by J.R.R. Tolkien
- "The Richest Man In Babylon"
- "Zodiac," "Snow Crash," "The Diamond Age" and "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. I think Stephenson is the greatest living English-language writer.
- Anything by JRR Tolkein
- The autobiographies of Ben Franklin, Abbie Hoffman, Yukichi Fukuzawa
De-recommended
- Anything by Michael Creighton
- Anything by Robin Cook
- Anything by Scott Turow
*If you get the feeling I like somewhat-cheesy serial mysteries, you're right. Tony Hillerman, Michael Nava, and various other authors get me hooked fast;)
