Bob's book list
Some years ago it occurred to me that no matter how much time I spent reading, it remained impossible to read all the great books in one's lifetime. By "great," I do not mean only the acknowledged classics reliably assigned in English literature and western civilization courses. I mean, more broadly, the universe of books which might be judged "worthwhile." Accordingly, it made sense to resolve only to read great books. (Of course, an occasional Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum or equivalent might be allowed, but more as an alternative to TV or a movie, than as an alternative to quality books.)
But mechanically reading through some received list of great books seemed coldly unimaginative. How would I allow for some serendipity, some exploration, some risk taking? Over time, it became clear that my real aim was to simply avoid marginal books; that in a sea of possibilities, I merely wanted to avoid time spent on the bottom 80%. So I came up with a selection algorithm that works for me. I typically read books which fall into one of three categories:
December 2005 update: Ten years after I wrote the comments above, I've added a fourth source of books to read: my kids. Their voracious appetite for books provides a large universe from which to pick, each offering the double pleasure of the book itself, and then the opportunity to discuss together. :)
| book | author | date |
|---|---|---|
| The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Edmund Morris | 11/08 |
| Lessons Learned in Aircraft Design | Jan Roskam | 9/08 |
| Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love | Marty Cagan | 9/08 |
| Theodore Rex | Edmund Morris | 9/08 |
| Islam: A Short History | Karen Armstrong | 8/08 |
| God Emperor of Dune | Frank Herbert | 8/08 |
| A Thousand Barrels a Second | Peter Tertzakian | 7/08 |
| Audacity of Hope | Barack Obama | 6/08 |
| Children of Dune | Frank Herbert | 6/08 |
| Speaking of Flying | Diane Titterington | 5/08 |
| Gleim's Flight/Ground Instructor | Irvin Gleim | 5/08 |
| Gleim's Fundamentals Of Instruction | Irvin Gleim | 5/08 |
| Aviation Instructor's Handbook | Federal Aviation Administration | 5/08 |
| Last Dance | John Feinstein | 3/08 |
| Sportplane Builder | Tony Bingelis | 2/08 |
| A Short History of the Argentinians | Felix Luna | 1/08 |
| Trophy for Eagles | Walter J. Boyne | 12/07 |
| Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics Powerplant Handbook | Federal Aviation Administration | 11/07 |
| Final Flight | Stephen Coonts | 10/07 |
| The Spirit of St. Louis | Charles Lindbergh | 10/07 |
| The Greatest Flying Stories Ever Told | Lamar Underwood | 9/07 |
| In The Company of Eagles | Ernest Gann | 9/07 |
| Firewall Forward | Tony Bingelis | 8/07 |
| Stranger to the Ground | Richard Bach | 8/07 |
| Band of Brothers | Ernest Gann | 8/07 |
| The Aviator | Ernest Gann | 7/07 |
| Airframe | Michael Crichton | 7/07 |
| Flying Wisdom: The Proficient Pilot Vol. 3 | Barry Schiff | 7/07 |
| Crises in the Cockpit | ed by Norbert Slepyan | 6/07 |
| Shadow of the Hegemon | Orson Scott Card | 6/07 |
| Ruby on Rails Web Applications | Patrick Lenz | 5/07 |
| From Silk to Cyanide | Leo Marks | 5/07 |
| Flying South | Barbara Cushman Rowell | 4/07 |
| I, Robot | Isaac Asimov | 4/07 |
| Dune Messiah | Frank Herbert | 4/07 |
| Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert Heinlein | 3/07 |
| Beyond the Deep | Bill Stone and Barbara am Ende | 3/07 |
| iWoz | Steve Wozniak | 3/07 |
| Dune | Frank Herbert | 3/07 |
| No Highway | Nevil Shute | 2/07 |
| Speaker for the Dead | Orson Scott Card | 2/07 |
| Forever Flying | Bob Hoover | 2/07 |
| Winged Victory | V. M. Yeates | 2/07 |
| Skunk Works | Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos | 1/07 |
| Tales of the South Pacific | James Michener | 11/06 |
| Ruby Cookbook | Lucas Carlson and Leonard Richardson | 9/06 |
| Hackers and Painters | Paul Graham | 8/06 |
| Agile Web Development with Rails | Thomas and Heinemeier Hansson | 8/06 |
| Between a Rock and a Hard Place | Aron Ralston | 7/06 |
| The Minotaur | Stephen Coonts | 7/06 |
| On Glorious Wings | Stephen Coonts | 7/06 |
| Wing Leader | Johnnie Johnson | 7/06 |
| Blackout | John Nance | 6/06 |
| Flight to Arras | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | 6/06 |
| The Last Amateurs | John Feinstein | 6/06 |
| I Could Never Be So Lucky Again | James Doolittle | 5/06 |
| Weather Flying | Robert Buck | 4/06 |
| More With Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight | Paul Ciotti | 2/06 |
| Free Culture | Lawrence Lessig | 2/06 |
| Out of Gas | David Goodstein | 2/06 |
| Rootkits | Hoglum, Butler | 2/06 |
| Programming Ruby | Thomas, Fowler, Hunt | 2/06 |
| Skeleton Key | Anthony Horowitz | 1/06 |
| Point Blank | Anthony Horowitz | 1/06 |
| Stormbreaker | Anthony Horowitz | 1/06 |
| Fighter Boys | Patrick Bishop | 1/06 |
| Flying the Weather Map | Richard Collins | 12/05 |
| Bax Seat | Gordon Baxter | 12/05 |
| Pandora's Clock | John Nance | 12/05 |
| Downriver | Will Hobbs | 12/05 |
| Failure Is Not An Option | Gene Kranz | 12/05 |
| Fly Low Fly Fast | Robert Gandt | 11/05 |
| Blaze of Noon | Ernest Gann | 11/05 |
| The High and the Mighty | Ernest Gann | 11/05 |
| The Proficient Pilot, Vol 2 | Barry Schiff | 11/05 |
| America | Stephen Coonts | 11/05 |
| Wind, Sand, and Stars | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | 10/05 |
| Ghost Canoe | Will Hobbs | 10/05 |
| Ghost Pilot | Gene Geyman | 10/05 |
| Flight of the Gin Fizz | Henry Kisor | 10/05 |
| Hatchet | Gary Paulsen | 10/05 |
| Far North | Will Hobbs | 9/05 |
| In the Shadow of Eagles | Rudy Billberg | 9/05 |
| Flight of the Old Dog | Dale Brown | 9/05 |
| Skyhook | John Nance | 9/05 |
| Fire Flight | John Nance | 8/05 |
| The World is Flat | Thomas Friedman | 8/05 |
| Geology of the Sierra Nevada | Mary Hill | 7/05 |
| Flight as a Lifetime Passion | John Geyman | 7/05 |
| Inside the Sky | William Langewische | 6/05 |
| Into the Blue | Susan Edsall | 6/05 |
| North Star Over My Shoulder | Bob Buck | 5/05 |
| Flyboys | James Bradley | 4/05 |
| Flight of the Intruder | Stephen Coonts | 4/05 |
| Instrument Pilot | Irvin Gleim | 3/05 |
| Instrument Commercial Manual | Jeppesen Sanderson | 2/05 |
| Half a Wing, Three Engines, and a Prayer | Brian O'Neill | 12/04 |
| The Simple Science of Flight | Henk Tennekes | 12/04 |
| The Proficient Pilot, Vol 1 | Barry Schiff | 11/04 |
| Wager with the Wind | James Greiner | 10/04 |
| They Call Me Mr. Bonanza | Larry Ball | 9/04 |
| IFR: A Structured Approach | John Eckalbar | 9/04 |
| Deception Point | Dan Brown | 8/04 |
| Ender's Shadow | Orson Scott Card | 8/04 |
| Cannibal Queen | Stephen Coonts | 8/04 |
| Fighting The Flying Circus | Eddie Rickenbacker | 8/04 |
| Yeager | Chuck Yeager | 7/04 |
| Plan of Attack | Bob Woodward | 7/04 |
| Moneyball | Michael Lewis | 6/04 |
| Digital Fortress | Dan Brown | 6/04 |
| The Last Kabbalist in Lisbon | Richard Zimler | 5/04 |
| Climb for the Evening Star | Tom Mayer | 5/04 |
| The Business of Software | Michael Cusumano | 4/04 |
| Pattern Recognition | William Gibson | 4/04 |
| Flight Discipline | Tony Kern | 4/04 |
| Voyager | Jeana Yeager & Dick Rutan | 4/04 |
| Zero 3 Bravo | Mariana Gosnell | 2/04 |
| Night Flight | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | 1/04 |
| Hornet Flight | Ken Follett | 12/03 |
| Band of Brothers | Stephen Ambrose | 12/03 |
| Free Flight | James Fallows | 12/03 |
| Those Incomparable Bonanzas | Larry Ball | 12/03 |
| Longitudes and Attitudes | Thomas Friedman | 12/03 |
| Flight of Passage | Rinker Buck | 12/03 |
| Flying the Beech Bonanza | John Eckalbar | 10/03 |
| The Wild Blue | Stephen Ambrose | 9/03 |
| Mountain Flying Bible | Sparky Imeson | 8/03 |
| Fate Is The Hunter | Ernest Gann | 8/03 |
| The Compleat Taildragger | Harvey Plourde | 7/03 |
| Nothing by Chance | Richard Bach | 6/03 |
| Bush and Arctic Pilot | A.R. (Al) Williams | 4/03 |
| Wheels, Skis and Floats | E.C. (Ted) Burton and Robert S. Grant | 3/03 |
| The Killing Zone | Pail Craig | 1/03 |
| Stick and Rudder | Wolfgang Langewiesche | 12/02 |
| Flow | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | 10/02 |
| By The Skin of My Teeth | Bill Robinet | 9/02 |
| Genome | Matt Ridley | 8/02 |
| The Blue Nowhere | Jeffery Deaver | 7/02 |
| Low Power Communication | Richard Arland | 6/02 |
| ARRL Extra Class License Manual | ed. Larry Wolfgang | 6/02 |
| Modern Electronics Soldering Techniques | Andrew Singmin | 5/02 |
| The Physics of Star Trek | Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking | 5/02 |
| The Hobbit | JRR Tolkien | 4/02 |
| K2 the Savage Mountain | Charles Houston and Robert Bates | 3/02 |
| The Return of the King | JRR Tolkien | 2/02 |
| The Two Towers | JRR Tolkien | 1/02 |
| The Fellowship of the Ring | JRR Tolkien | 12/01 |
| ARRL General Class License Manual | ed. Larry Wolfgang | 12/01 |
| Klondike Tales | Jack London | 11/01 |
| Maximum Linux Security | Anonymous | 10/01 |
| Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada | Clarence King | 9/01 |
| Now You're Talking | Wolfgang, Kleinman, and Pingree | 8/01 |
| Ringworld | Larry Niven | 7/01 |
| Idoru | William Gibson | 7/01 |
| The Visual Display of Quantitative Information | Edward Tufte | 6/01 |
| In the Heart of the Sea : The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex | Nathaniel Philbrick | 6/01 |
| Secrets and Lies : Digital Security in a Networked World | Bruce Schneier | 6/01 |
| Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition | John Roskelley | 6/01 |
| Staying Tuned | Daniel Schorr | 6/01 |
| Crypto | Steven Levy | 6/01 |
| The Lance Armstrong Performance Program | Lance Armstrong and Chris Carmichael | 5/01 |
| Fire Upon the Deep | Vernor Vinge | 5/01 |
| The Price of Admiralty : The Evolution of Naval Warfare | John Keegan | 5/01 |
| The Chosen | Chiam Potok | 4/01 |
| My Name is Asher Lev | Chiam Potok | 4/01 |
| It's Not About the Bike | Lance Armstrong | 4/01 |
| The Wonder of Boys | Michael Gurian | 3/01 |
| Beyond Calculation | Peter Denning & Robert Metcalfe | 2/01 |
| Two for the Summit | Geoffrey Norman | 2/01 |
| History of the Donner Party | C. F. McGlashan | 2/01 |
| The Age of Spiritual Machines | Ray Kurzweil | 1/01 |
| Ice! | Tristan Jones | 12/00 |
| Extreme Programming | Kent Beck | 12/00 |
| Cryptonomicon | Neal Stephenson | 12/00 |
| View from the Summit | Sir Edmund Hillary | 9/00 |
| I and Thou | Martin Buber | 8/00 |
| eBoys | Randall Stross | 8/00 |
| Death in the Afternoon | Ernest Hemmingway | 6/00 |
| Nudist on the Late Shift | Po Bronson | 5/00 |
| A March to Madness | John Feinstein | 3/00 |
| Blown to Bits | Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster | 3/00 |
| Virus of the Mind | Richard Brodie | 3/00 |
| B2B Exchanges | A. Sculley and W. Woods | 2/00 |
| The Meme Machine | Susan Blackmore | 2/00 |
| Avalanche Aware | John Moynier | 12/99 |
| Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture | Rachel Carley | 12/99 |
| Faster | James Gleick | 11/99 |
| Blind Man's Bluff | S. Sontag and C. Drew | 10/99 |
| A Walk in the Woods | Bill Bryson | 10/99 |
| The Mountains of California | John Muir | 10/99 |
| GTK+/Gnome Application Development | Havoc Pennington | 10/99 |
| Genetic Programming | Banzhaf, Nordin, Keller, Francone | 9/99 |
| XML | Elliotte Harold | 8/99 |
| Developing Linux Applications Using GTK+ and GDK | Eric Harlow | 7/99 |
| The Pattern on the Stone | W. Daniel Hillis | 7/99 |
| High Exposure | David Breashears | 6/99 |
| Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage | Alfred Lansing | 6/99 |
| The White Spider | Heinrich Harrer | 5/99 |
| The Lives of a Cell | Lewis Thomas | 5/99 |
| Programming Web Graphics | O'Reilly & Associates | 3/99 |
| Perl/Tk | O'Reilly & Associates | 3/99 |
| Perl Cookbook | O'Reilly & Associates | 2/99 |
| Warren Buffett: Portrait of an American Capitalist | Roger Lowenstein | 2/99 |
| The Best of Outside | editors of Outside magazine | 1/99 |
| Programming Perl | O'Reilly & Associates | 12/98 |
| The Invisible Computer | Donald Norman | 12/98 |
| Masters of Deception | Slatalla & Quittner | 11/98 |
| The Beak of the Finch | Jonathan Weiner | 11/98 |
| TCP/IP Network Administration | O'Reilly & Associates | 10/98 |
| Competing on Internet Time | Cusumano & Yoffie | 10/98 |
| Learning Perl | O'Reilly & Associates | 10/98 |
| Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | 9/98 |
| aol.com | Kara Swisher | 9/98 |
| The Double Helix | James Watson | 9/98 |
| Touching the Void | Joe Simpson | 9/98 |
| Under the Tuscan Sun | Frances Mayes | 8/98 |
| Practical C Programming | O'Reilly & Associates | 8/98 |
| This is Biology | Ernst Mayr | 8/98 |
| Out of Control | Kevin Kelly | 8/98 |
| Let the Trumpet Sound: Life Of Martin Luther King Jr. | Stephen Oates | 8/98 |
| Speeding the Net | Quittner & Slatalla | 8/98 |
| The Extended Phenotype | Richard Dawkins | 8/98 |
| Biophilia | Edward O. Wilson | 8/98 |
| Freedom of the Hills | The Mountaineers | 7/98 |
| Memoirs of a Mountain Guide | Lou Whittaker | 7/98 |
| Annapurna | Maurice Herzog | 6/98 |
| The Challenge of Ranier | Dee Molenaar | 6/98 |
| Eiger Dreams | Jon Krakaur | 5/98 |
| Startup | Jerry Kaplan | 5/98 |
| Apple | Jim Carlton | 5/98 |
| Learning the Bash Shell | O'Reilly & Associates | 4/98 |
| Learning GNU Emacs | O'Reilly & Associates | 4/98 |
| Red Hat Linux Unleashed | Husain, Parker | 3/98 |
| Linux in a Nutshell | O'Reilly & Associates | 3/98 |
| The Wild Muir | John Muir | 3/98 |
| A Journal of Ramblings Through the Sierras of California | Joseph LeConte | 3/98 |
| Net Gain | Hagel & Armstrong | 12/97 |
| River Out of Eden | Richard Dawkins | 12/97 |
| The Cosmos and the Creator | Hugh Ross | 12/97 |
| The Innovator's Dilemma | Clayton Christensen | 12/97 |
| A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time | John Brinckerhoff Jackson | 11/97 |
| The Sabbath | Abraham Joshua Heschel | 11/97 |
| Climbing Mt. Improbable | Richard Dawkins | 10/97 |
| Java (1.1) in a Nutshell | David Flanagan | 10/97 |
| The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism | Prager & Telushkin | 10/97 |
| The Mythical Man Month | Fred Brooks | 10/97 |
| Linux User's Guide | Larry Greenfield | 9/97 |
| Linux Network Administrator's Guide | Olaf Kirch | 9/97 |
| Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy | Brian Arthur | 8/97 |
| Linux Installation & Getting Started | Matt Welsh | 8/97 |
| Microsoft Secrets | Cusumano & Selby | 8/97 |
| Into The Wild | Jon Krakauer | 7/97 |
| Dinosaur in A Haystack | Stephen Gould | 7/97 |
| Into Thin Air | Jon Krakauer | 6/97 |
| The Bell Curve | Herrnstein and Murray | 6/97 |
| Dynamics of Software Development | Jim McCarthy | 6/97 |
| Hidden Order | John Holland | 5/97 |
| The Blind Watchmaker | Richard Dawkins | 4/97 |
| Java (1.0) in a Nutshell | David Flanagan | 4/97 |
| The Selfish Gene | Richard Dawkins | 3/97 |
| At Home in the Universe | Stuart Kauffman | 3/97 |
| Complexity | M. Mitchell Waldrop | 3/97 |
| The High Sierras | R.J. Seccor | 2/97 |
| Field Guide to Geology | David Lambert | 2/97 |
| The Origin of Species | Charles Darwin | 2/97 |
| Conquest of the Incas | John Henning | 1/97 |
| American Nature Writing 1996 | ed. Sierra Club Books | 1/97 |
| Designing Professional Java Applets | Hopson and Ingram | 12/96 |
| Undaunted Courage | Stephen Ambrose | 12/96 |
| In Dubious Battle | John Steinbeck | 11/96 |
| Home | Witold Rybczynski | 11/96 |
| Sphere | Michael Crighton | 11/96 |
| War and Anti-War | Alvin & Heidi Toffler | 10/96 |
| Seven Summits | Dick Bass, Frank Wells | 10/96 |
| Only the Paranoid Survive | Andrew Grove | 9/96 |
| The Dilbert Principle | Scott Adams | 9/96 |
| Chaos | James Gleick | 8/96 |
| Java in 21 Days | Lemay & Perkins | 7/96 |
| Programming JavaScript | Tim Ritchey | 7/96 |
| Web Page Design Cookbook | Horton, Taylor, Ignacio, Hoft | 7/96 |
| About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design | Alan Cooper | 6/96 |
| Fatherhood | Bill Cosby | 6/96 |
| What to Expect When You're Expecting | Arlene Eisenberg | 5/96 |
| Engines of Creation | K. Eric Drexler | 5/96 |
| Ansel Adams: An Autobiography | Ansel Adams | 4/96 |
| White Fang | Jack London | 3/96 |
| Journey to the Center of the Earth | Jules Verne | 3/96 |
| Call of the Wild | Jack London | 2/96 |
| The Essential Distributed Objects Guide | Orfali, Harkey, Edwards | 1/96 |
| Firewalls and Internet Security | Cheswick & Bellovin | 1/96 |
| Inside the Tornado | Geoffrey Moore | 12/95 |
| An American Journey | Colin Powell | 10/95 |
| Hyperspace | Michio Kaku | 9/95 |
| The Death of Ivan Ilyich | Leo Tolstoy | 6/95 |