I read a lot (when I have time).
I'm an enthusiastic reader of science fiction and fantasy novels. I pick up non-fiction for fun (or for class), and I periodically read other stuff, too.
For example, just this week, on Monday and Tuesday, I consumed Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. Yesterday, I started K. J. Parker's Devices and Desires. Tomorrow... well, I keep this lengthy list of books I want to read. I also keep a list of books I've already read (it comes in handy when people ask me for recommendations, or, as was the case nearly four years ago, when a college application asks me to provide a list of all the books I've read in the past year). Add these lists together: The result is a long list of great books.
Next time you're perusing the shelves, stumped on which pages to turn next, perhaps you could pick one of my favorites! (List last updated Oct. 25, 2015.)
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COGNITIVE SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY
consciousness
- Susan Blackmore - Consciousness: An Introduction
- Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop; Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Julian Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
embodied cognition & related
- Mark Johnson - The Meaning of the Body
- Matthew Ratcliffe - Rethinking Commonsense Psychology, Feelings of Being
- Shigehisa Kuriyama - The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
- Richard Nisbett - The Geography of Thought
- Jeff Hawkins & Sandra Blakeslee - On Intelligence
- Henry Plotkin - Darwin Machines
- Alva Noë - Action in Perception
- Edward Reed - Encountering the World
- Lawrence Shapiro - The Mind Incarnate
atheism, religion, metaphysics
- Gordon Stein (Ed.) - An Anthology of Atheism & Rationalism
- S.T. Joshi (Ed.) - Atheism: A Reader
- Dale McGovern - In Faith and In Doubt
- Quentin Smith & Nathan Oaklander -Time, Change, & Freedom: An Introduction to Metaphysics
- Rita Gross - Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues
robot ethics
- David Gunkel - The Machine Question
misc
- Valentino Braitenberg - Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
- Stanislas Dehaene - The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics
- John Long - Darwin's Devices
- Eric R. Kandel - In Search of Memory
- Martin Seligman - Flourish
- Susan Engel - The Stories Children Tell
OTHER NON-FICTION
women's health
- Tony Weschler: Taking Charge of Your Fertility
- Marilyn M Shannon: Fertility, Nutrition, and cycles
misc
- Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics
- Mario Livio - The Golden Ratio
- Jeff Potter - Cooking For Geeks
- Sun Tzu - The Art of War
- Vera John-Steiner - Notebooks of the Mind
FANTASY
- Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path, The King's Blood, The Tyrant's War, The Widow's House
- Carol Berg - Rai-Kirah saga (Transformation, Restoration, Revelation)
- Jacqueline Carey - the Kushiel books (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar, Kushiel's Scion, Kushiel's Justice, Kushiel's Mercy)
- Neil Gaiman - Coraline, Stardust, Neverwhere, and everything else
- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter
- Robin Hobb - Farseer trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest), Liveship Traders trilogy (Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny), Tawny Man trilogy (Fool’s Errand, Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate), The Rain Wild Chronicles (Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons, Blood of Dragons), Soldier Son trilogy (Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade's Magic), The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy (Fool's Assassin, Fool's Quest)
- Gregory Maguire - Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
- N.K. Jemisin - Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, Kingdom of the Gods), The Killing Moon, The Shadowed Sun, The Fifth Season
- Scott Lynch - The Gentleman Bastard Sequence (The Lies of Locke Lamora)
- Juliet Marillier - Sevenwaters Trilogy (Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, Child of Prophecy)
- George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows)
- Tamora Pierce - The Song of the Lioness quartet, The Immortals quartet, The Protector of the Small quartet
- Terry Pratchett - Discworld (The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, and many, many more)
- Jennifer Roberson - Tiger & Del novels (Sword Dancer, Sword Singer, Sword Maker, and so on)
- Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear
- Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn trilogy (Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages), The Alloy of Law, The Way of Kings
SCIENCE-FICTION
- Isaac Asimov - I, Robot
- Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
- Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl
- Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
- Lois McMaster Bujold - Cordelia's Honor, the Vorkosigan Saga
- Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant
- Peter Dickinson - Eva
- Nicola Griffith - Slow River, Ammonite
- Kameron Hurley - God's War, Infidel, Rapture
- Lois Lowry - The Giver, Star Split
- China Miéville - Perdido Street Station, The Scar, The City & The City
- Richard Powers - Galatea 2.2
- Ramez Naam - Nexus, Crux, Apex
- John Scalzi - Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, Zoe's Tale, Redshirts
- Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars
- Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Diamond Age
- Vernor Vinge - Fast Times at Fairmont High
- Scott Westerfeld - The Risen Empire, The Killing of Worlds
- Robert Charles Wilson - Spin, Axis
GENERAL FICTION
- Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice
- Lewis Caroll - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
- James Clavell - Shogun
- Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha
- Nicole Krauss - The History of Love, Man Walks Into a Room, Great House
- Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day
- Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Haunted
- Mary Renault - The Persian Boy, The Mask of Apollo
- Gail Tsukiyama - The Samurai's Garden
- Anthony Swofford - Jarhead
- Thorton Wilder - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse, The Waves