e12e

a pretty terrible book to learn modern C with?

especially "The Stars my Destination", proto cyberpunk

you'll either love "the Code Book" by Simon Singh more than I did, or hate it

I've also enjoyed all of Willam Gibsons books, including the latest trilogy "Pattern Recognition"

"Spook Country"

might be a good one to try on for size

"Zero History"

the only other semi-recent book I could recommend would be "Broken Angels"

the book demonstrates how much improvement it is possible to get in a server-side template language

Also worth mentioning in the "might be overlooked" section is Jerry Pournelle's "Falkenberg's Legion"

and "Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling

I'd recommend "Islands in the Net"