The Red Queen

Fiction War and Peace Crime and Punishment Count of Monte Christo 1984 God of Small Things Paradise lost Divine comedy Non fiction Selfish gene Meditations Madness explained (the best book I've encountered for explaining how the mind works) The Red Queen Tao te Ching

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins, The Red Queen - Ridley I've read these books midway through high school, already interested in biology and medicine. The depth and complexity of how life forms handle evolutionary pressure is mind blowing. Why you favor relatives over strangers, the competition between mother and child, progress through collaboration of genes etc. You see the world completely differently (after reading many more books on geology, genetics, anthropology, anatomy, cellular biology etc) afterwards. For a novel: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Truely changed how I look at computers and encryption as a not mathematically inclined reader. Building a computer out of church pipe organ components etc.