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Reading List

My very favourite books which I recommend at every opportunity (in no particular order because it's too hard):

  • Accelerando by Charles Stross
  • Involution Ocean, Schismatrix, Islands in the Net & Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig
  • The Earthsea Trilogy and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
  • Little Brother and Makers by Cory Doctorow
  • Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

Next time I'm bored, here's a recommended reading list from an email thread at Weta Digital:

  • (!) - Means at the top of the list
  • (./) - Means already read
  • {OK} - Means already read, and highly recommended

Non-Fiction

  • The little red school book

Philosophy / Psychology / Science

  • Heinrich Zimmer "Myths and Symbols of indian Art and Civilization"
  • Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung
  • The Hero of a Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
  • The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
  • The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
  • (!) Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • Tao of Physics by Fritzof Capra
  • {OK} A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  • The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
  • "S, M, L, XL" by rem koolhaas
  • The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
  • Be Here Now by Ram Dass
  • A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari
  • The Perfect Crime by Jean Baudrillaird
  • Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
  • {OK} The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  • On Human Nature by Edward O Wilson

Literary Fiction / Fiction

  • Invisible Cities, Cosmicomics and (./) If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
  • The Book Of Imaginary Beings, A Universal History of Infamy and Labyrinths by J L Borges
  • Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
  • The Western Lands, (./) Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
  • (./) 1984, (./) Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • Joy of Man's Desiring by Jean Giono
  • Perfume by Patrick Suskind
  • The Alchemist by Paolo Cuehlo
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavan
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Norwegian Wood, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, The End of the World, The Elephant Vanishes, {OK} Wild Sheep Chase and Dance dance dance by Haruki Murakami
  • Walden by HD Thoreau
  • Don't Read This Book if You're Stupid, The Thought Gang, by Tibor Fischer
  • Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
  • My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, Et Tu Babe by Mark Leyner
  • To the Elephant Graveyard by tarquin hall
  • {OK} White Noise by Don Delillo
  • Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
  • To the Wedding by John Berger
  • A Confederate General from Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon and The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan

Science Fiction / Cyberpunk

  • {OK} Dune, Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
  • (./) Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • (./) Cryptonomicon, {OK} Zodiac, (./) The Big U, {OK} Snowcrash and (./) Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
  • Ubik, Radio Free Albemuth and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick
  • (./) Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan
  • (./) Vurt by Jeff Noon
  • {OK} Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling
  • {OK} Antarctica by Kim Stanely Robinson
  • Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem
  • The Player Of Games by Iain M Banks
  • The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
  • (./) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
  • The Centauri Device by M John Harrison
  • {OK} The Forever War, Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman
  • The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
  • {OK} Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  • The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
  • House of Leaves, The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
  • {OK} Down and out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
  • Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
  • Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

From an old random text I found (dated Feb 14, 1998)

  • The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
  • The Way of Zen by Alan W Watts (1957)
  • The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Casteneda
  • The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (1950's)
  • The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas (1990's)
  • The Wasteland by TS Eliot
  • Advertisements for Myself by Norman Mailer
  • Apocalypse Now & Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
  • Dumbing Us Down by John Gatto Taylor
  • The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul
  • Sophies World by Jostein Gaarder
  • (./) A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking (and the other)
  • Future Magic, Dragon's Egg and Starquake by Robert Forward