If on a winter’s night a traveler

see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer. - A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast. - The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays his way. - the Discworld series: Sir Terry knew our hearts better than most, and sin, young feller, is treatin’ people as things. - If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveler: a perfect joke that you can tell once, plus a love story. - Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love? - Moby Dick: And so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. - Lucky Jim: grad school, a survival guide. Come in on the fa la la las, there’s a good chap. This doesn’t include poetry, which is also in my head constantly.

If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler -- Italo Calvino

Gravity's Rainbow - took 4 months out of my year, but and it's still mostly a whoosh, but every time I started reading another book after that, it was just amazing how much better Pyncheon writes. Will revisit it for sure, though not very soon. Anna Karenina - just a whole different level, Tolstoy's writing in a way I don't feel many contemporary writes could. Feels creepy how similar the people's lives in the 19th Century was to ours. Creepy but fun too. If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino will just punch you in the face, this is a book for people who love reading books. The Magicians - adult magic fiction, and somehow it feels that if magic was indeed real, it would be like it is depicted here, not like anything in Harry Potter's (no matter how much I loved the storytelling, the magic theory was just so full of plotholes). The Casual Vacancy - JKRowling's not-Harry-Potter-book. It's very gritty, and feels very real. Still having my cold shivers thinking of small-town living after this. (Except for the last one the others are older releases, don't usually jump into the newest ones, I just take it casual)

(I'm going to ignore the prohibition on "programming/technical books".) - GEB - SICP - anything by Paul Auster or Hermann Hesse - most Haruki Murakami, especially "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" - Joan Didion, "Where I Was From" - Richard P. Gabriel, "Patterns of Software" - Durbin, Eddy, Krogh, and Mitchison, "Biological Sequence Analysis" - Italo Calvino, "if on a winter's night a traveller"