kabdib

Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach

It's a fun read. 30+ years since I last read it, I'll have to bump it up on The Pile :-)

"Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hopfstadter. I was in high school when it came out, and it really opened my eyes up to the field of computability.

"The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie. Probably the single most influential book on programming that I've read.

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. This one works on me at several levels: The physics (which are explained well), the sheer titanic scope of the Manhattan project, and the meta-knowledge that someone was able to write a book this good.

_The Art of Electronics_. As a software guy who sometimes is involved in embedded systems, having a good understanding of what's going on at the resistor/capacitor/transistor level would have helped a lot.

AoE is a great practical introduction to how a lot of modern electronics stuff works.

Armstrong's book on Erlang (2007) is a great read, so you're missing that.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Vernor Vinge's The Peace War.

Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design (2001) is a real eye-opener (though I wouldn't use most of the stuff from the latter half of book in real production).

Holy the Firm

"Holy the Firm" by Annie Dillard. Not really about religion, more about our relationship to the world. A beautifully written little book.