Favorite Books and Authors

Fiction

• Isaac Asimov, especially
  • The initial Foundation trilogy;
  • I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots;
  • The Gods Themselves
  • Various short stories
• Ray Bradbury, especially
  • Dandelion Wine
  • The Martian Chronicles
  • Various short stories, including "The Pedestrian" and "Uncle Einar"
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., especially
  • Player Piano
  • The Sirens of Titan
  • Cat's Cradle
  • Mother Night
  • Various short stories
• Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories
• Robert Heinlein
• The Time Masters, by Wilson Tucker
• Robin Cook
• J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series
• Mirabile, by Janet Kagan
• Frank Herbert's Dune series, especially God Emperor of Dune
• Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories
• A.E. van Vogt
• Both the short story "Flowers for Algernon" and the novel Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
• Larry Niven's Svetz stories
• Clifford Simak
• Hermann Hesse, especially The Glass Bead Game (a.k.a. Magister Ludi)
• J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games
• Douglas Adams (yeah, I suppose he makes the list)
• John Steinbeck, especially
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • In Dubious Battle
  • Burning Bright
  • Of Mice and Men
• George Orwell's 1984
• Aldous Huxley, especially Island
• Tom Robbins, especially Another Roadside Attraction
• Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Theodore Sturgeon, especially More Than Human
• Arthur C. Clarke
• James Hilton's Lost Horizon
• John Knowles's A Separate Peace

Nonfiction

• Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance, by Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler
• In Search of Reality, by Bernard d'Espagnat
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter
• Metamagical Themas, by Douglas Hofstadter (essays)
• The Mind's I, ed. by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett (essays)
• Windows on the Mind: Reflections on the Physical Basis of Consciousness, by Erich Harth
• The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, by Tor Nřrretranders
• An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks
• Ethics, by William K. Frankena
• Utilitarianism and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
• Relativity, by Albert Einstein
• The Theory of Evolution, by John Maynard Smith
• The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins
• The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, by Robert L. Heilbroner
• That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships, by Deborah Tannen
• You Just Don't Understand!: Women and Men in Conversation, by Deborah Tannen
• The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, by John Shelby Spong (a retired Episcopal bishop)
• The Book of the Fallacy: A Training Manual for Intellectual Subversives, by Madsen Pirie

Chess

• The Encyclopedia of Chess Middlegames: Combinations, ed. by GM Nikolai Krogius et al.
• Essential Chess Endings Explained Move by Move, Vol. I, by IM Jeremy Silman
• Practical Rook Endings, by GM Edmar Mednis
• The Art of Chess Combination, by the master Eugčne Znosko-Borovsky
• My System, by GM Aron Nimzovich