My Favorite Books

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice ... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and reading it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.
Gilbert Highet

These are some of the books that have helped shape my thinking over the years. This list is by no means complete, but does represent some of my favorites in each genre.

Science

Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan
A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking
Black Holes, Baby Universes and Other Essays, by Stephen Hawking
Bully for Brontosaurus, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins
Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene

Philosophy, Mythology and Religion

On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig
The Bhagavad Gita
Who Needs God, by Harold Kushner
Why Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner
Bible, various versions
Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
The Myth of Sisyphus, essay by Albert Camus

Speculative Fiction (SF)

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Lovelock, by Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
Dune (and the series), by Frank Herbert
Foundation (and the series), by Isaac Asimov
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, by Larry Niven
Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven with Jerry Pournelle
The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven with Jerry Pournelle
1984, by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Fiction

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemmingway
A Horse's Tale, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
The Long Walk, by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

Humor

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, by Douglas Adams
Literary Lapses, by Stephen Leacock
Tales of Pilot Pirx, by Stanislaw Lem
The Star Diaries, by Stanislaw Lem