The Third Bit

Recommended

These are my favorite books and music, organized into Computing, General Non-Fiction, Fiction, For Younger Readers, and, well, Music. The titles link to Amazon; if you have comments of your own you’d like me to add, please send me mail.

Computing

Mike Clark: Pragmatic Project Automation. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2004, 0974514039.

This entry in the Pragmatic Bookshelf series focuses on getting your project to build itself, and (more importantly) tell you how the build went, automatically. Clark doesn’t confine himself to running Make at 3:00 a.m.; he also covers ways of automatically re-running tests, building and testing installers, monitoring applications, and more.

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister: Peopleware. Dorset House, 1999, 0932633439.

This was the first book I ever read that said that the leading cause of software project failure was people, rather than technology. Using anecdotes, humor, and common sense, DeMarco and Lister explain how important good physical space, aligning authority with responsibility, and clear direction are.

Matthew B. Doar: Practical Development Environments. O’Reilly, 2005, 0596007965.

Matt Doar has produced a practical guide to what should be in every team’s toolbox, how competing entries stack up, and how they ought to be used. This book covers everything from configuration management tools like CVS and Subversion, to build tools (make, GNU’s Autotools, Ant, Jam, and SCons), various testing aids, bug tracking systems, documentation generators, and we’re still only at the halfway mark. He names names, provides links, and treats free and commercial offerings on equal terms. My copy currently has 28 folded-down corners, which is 28 more than most books get; recommended.

Carlton Egremont III: Mr. Bunny’s Guide to ActiveX. Addison-Wesley, 1998, 0201485362.

What can you say about a book that includes lines like:

“The familiar dot ‘.’ symbol from Internet addresses is used in this book to terminate sentences.”

along with a side view of a dialog, and (my favorite) the Visual Basic 5.0 splash screen on page 40, which looks suspiciously like a memory access violation message box. Yes, the book eventually runs out of steam, but it’s still very funny, and where else are you going to read something like:

“…you form windows using forms. A form is a window that you form. At first forms are unformed. You must form your forms using the form designer (formerly the former). In the form former, an unformed form forms a uniform formation of dots…”

Chris Fehily: SQL. Peachpit Press, 2003, 0321118030.

This very readable book describes the 5% of SQL that covers 95% of real-world needs. While the book moves a little slowly in some places, the examples are exceptionally clear.

Michael C. Feathers: Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Prentice-Hall PTR, 2005, 0131177052.

Most programmers spend most of their time fixing bugs, porting to new platforms, adding new features—in short, changing existing code. If that code is exercised by unit tests, then changes can be made quickly and safely; if it isn’t, they can’t, so your first job when you inherit legacy code should be to write some. That’s where this book comes in. Want to know three different ways to inject a test into a C++ class without changing the code? They’re here. Want to know which classes or methods to focus testing on? Read his discussion of pinch points. Need to break inter-class dependencies in Java so that you can test one module without having to configure the entire application? That’s in here too, along with dozens of other useful bits of information. Everything is illustrated with small examples, all of them clearly explained and to the point. There are lots of simple diagrams, and a short glossary; all that’s missing is hype.

Karl Fogel: Producing Open Source Software. O’Reilly, 2005, 0596007590.

A community is more than just a bunch of people. It’s a shared set of values, and rules for how to behave. By this standard, the open source community isn’t just what some programmers choose to do with their time, and why; it’s also how they do it. This book is an excellent guide to that “how”. Every page offers practical advice; every point is made clearly and concisely, and clearly draws upon the author’s extensive personal experience. Want to know how to earn commit privileges on a project? It’s here. Do you and other project members have irreconcilable differences? Fogel explains when and how to fork, and what the pros and cons are. Want to get your project more attention? Want to take something closed, and open it up? It’s all here, and much more.

Martin Fowler: Refactoring. Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999, 0201485672.

Like architects, most programmers spend most of their time renovating, rather than creating something completely new on a blank sheet of paper. This book presents and analyzes patterns that come up again and again when programs are being reorganized. Some of these are well-known, such as placing common code in a utility method. Others, such as replacing temporary objects with queries, or replacing constructors with factory methods, are subtler, but no less important. Each entry includes a section on motivation, the mechanics of actually carrying out the transformation, and an example in Java.

Robert L. Glass: Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2002, 0321117425.

I really wish someone had given me something like Facts and Fallacies when I took my first programming job. If nothing else, it would have been a better way to start thinking about the profession I had stumbled into than the “everybody knows” factoids that I soaked up at coffee time. Some of what he says is well-known: good programmers are up to N times better than bad ones (his value for N is 28), reusable components are three times harder to build than non-reusable ones, and so on. Other facts aren’t part of the zeitgeist, though they should be. For example, most of us know that maintenance consumes 40-80% of software costs, but did you know that roughly 60% of that is enhancements, rather than bug fixes? Or that if more than 20-25% of a component has to be modified, it is more efficient to re-write it from scratch? Best of all, Glass backs up every statement he makes with copious references to the primary literature; if you still disagree with him, you’d better be sure you have as much evidence for your point of view as he has for his.

Andrew Hunt and David Thomas: The Pragmatic Programmer. Addison-Wesley, 2000, 020161622X.

The Pragmatic Programmer is about those things that make up the difference between typing in code that compiles, and writing software that reliably does what it’s supposed to. Topics range from gathering requirements through design, to the mechanics of coding, testing, and delivering a finished product. The second section, for example, covers “The Evils of Duplication”, “Orthogonality”, “Reversibility”, “Tracer Bullets”, “Prototypes and Post-It Notes”, and “Domain Languages”, and illuminates each with plenty of examples and short exercises.

Jeff Johnson: GUI Bloopers. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000, 1558605827.

Most books on GUI design are long on well-meaning aesthetic principles, but short on examples of what it means to put those principles into practice. In contrast, GUI Bloopers presents case study after case study: what’s wrong with this dialog? What should its creators have done instead. And, most importantly, why? The net effect is to teach all of the same principles that other books try to, but in a grounded, understandable way.

Richard Jones and Rafael Lins: Garbage Collection. Wiley, 1996, 0471941484.

Garbage collection itself is almost as old as high-level programming languages—the first papers on it were published in 1960—but it took Java to bring it into the average programmer’s life. Those who really care about the subject will find this book invaluable. After some introductory material, Jones and Lins present the three classical algorithms: reference counting, mark-sweep, and copying. Chapters three to twelve then present successively more intricate extensions to these algorithms, from pointer reversal to generational garbage collection. Each chapter ends with a section titled “Issues to consider”, which sums up and analyzes the points made in the preceding pages. Together, these sections transform the book from “just” a thorough survey into the sort of engineering manual that computing so rarely produces.

Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike: The Practice of Programming. Addison-Wesley Longman, 1999, 020161586X.

This manual of good programming covers much of the same ground as the authors’ earlier books, in much the same style—readable, informative, and intensely practical.

Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike: The Unix Programming Environment. Prentice Hall, 1984, 013937681X.

I have long believed that this book is the real secret to Unix’s success. It doesn’t just show readers how to use Unix—it explains why the operating system is built that way, and how its “lots of little tools” philosophy keeps simple tasks simple, while making hard ones doable.

Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger: The Elements of Programming Style. McGraw-Hill, 1978, 0070342075.

It may be a little dated, but this book is still a useful guide to making programs readable and maintainable.

Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger: Software Tools in Pascal. Addison-Wesley, 1981, 0201103427.

I read this book the year after it came out, as did everyone I was working with that summer. Page by patient page, it explained the workings of the world’s first component object model: pipes, redirection, text streams, and all the rest. It’s still one of the best descriptions anywhere of a complete programming toolkit.

Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie: The C Programming Language. Prentice Hall PTR, 1998, 0131103628.

The classic description of the one programming language every serious programmer absolutely, positively has to learn.

Hans Langtangen: Python Scripting for Computational Science. Springer-Verlag, 2004, 3540435085.

The book’s aim is to show scientists and engineers with little formal training in programming how Python can make their lives better. Regular expressions, numerical arrays, persistence, the basics of GUI and web programming, interfacing to C, C++, and Fortran: it’s all here, along with hundreds of short example programs. Some readers may be intimidated by the book’s weight, and the dense page layout, but what really made me blink was that I didn’t find a single typo or error. It’s a great achievement, and a great resource for anyone doing scientific programming.

David Levine: Linkers and Loaders. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000, 1558604960.

Parsers and code generators are a standard part of the undergraduate computer science curriculum, but for some reason, the other half of producing a working program—linking compiled modules together, and then loading those modules to create a runnable program—is not. Linkers and Loaders fills that gap superbly. In it, the author looks at fundamental problems of combining pieces of compiled code, and loading the result into memory. He describes the solutions used on the IBM 370, Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and several other platforms, and examines the pros and cons of different object file formats, relocation tricks, and the way names are mangled in C++. It may all seem fairly arcane, but if you really want to understand how the machine you’re sitting in front of works, it’s well worth the effort.

Thomas A. Limoncelli: Time Management for System Administrators. O’Reilly, 2005, 0596007833.

Anyone who’s ever had to keep a couple of hundred machines running, and a couple of hundred users from melting down, knows just how hard it is to avoid thrashing. Tom Limoncelli’s book is a hard-knocks guide to avoiding or ignoring interruptions, building good habits (so that the right thing will happen even when you’re frazzled), prioritization, and managing user expectations.

Mark Lutz and David Ascher: Learning Python. O’Reilly, 2003, 0596002815.

This is not only the best introduction to Python on the market, it is one of the best introductions to any programming language that I have ever read. Lutz and Ascher cover the entire core of the language, and enough of its advanced features and libraries to give readers a feeling for just how powerful Python is. In keeping with the spirit of the language itself, their writing is clear, their explanations lucid, and their examples well chosen.

Ronald Mak: The Martian Principles. Wiley, 2006, 0471789658.

Ronald Mak was in charge of building the Collaborative Information Portal used to manage the data coming back from NASA’s Mars Rovers. In this slim and very personal volume, he presents twenty principles for building systems of that kind successfully. Most are common sense, like “don’t reinvent the wheel” and “don’t ignore people issues”, but Mak brings them to life by referring back to his experiences with CIP, and its successes and failures. He also treats architecture, process, and management as three aspects of a single core problem, which I think is particularly valuable.

Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. MIT Press, 2002, 0262133989.

In many ways, this is the most important book in this list. It describes a project at Carnegie-Mellon University that tried to figure out why so few women become programmers, and what can be done to correct the imbalance. Its first six chapters describe the many small ways in which we are all, male and female, are conditioned to believe that computers are “boy’s things”. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting the computer in the boy’s room, because “he’s the one who uses it most”. Later on, the “who needs a social life?” atmosphere of undergraduate computer labs drives many women away (and many men, too). The last two chapters describe what the authors have done to remedy the situation at high schools and university. This work proves that by being conscious of the many things that turn women off computing, and by viewing computer science from different angles, we can attract a broader cross-section of society, which can only make our discipline a better place to be. The results are impressive: female undegraduate enrolment at CMU rose by more than a factor of four during their work, while the proportion of women dropping out decreased significantly.

Mike Mason: Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005, 0974514063.

Yet another book from the folks at Pragmatic, this one is everything you’ll ever need to know about Subversion, which is on its way to becoming the version control system of choice for open source development.

Steve McConnell: Code Complete. Microsoft Press, 2004, 0735619670.

This classic is a handbook of do’s and don’ts for working programmers. It covers everything from how to avoid common mistakes in C to how to set up a testing framework, how to organize multi-platform builds, and how to coordinate the members of a team. In short, it is everything I wished someone had told me before I started my first full-time programming job, and much more specific about details than Hunt and Thomas’s Pragmatic Programmer.

Michael Nygard: Release It!. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2007, 0978739213.

As the blurb on the back cover says, Release It! is about designing applications to deal with the things that don’t happen in the classroom or the lab, like load fluctuations, power outages, upgrades, and tangled configurations. Nygard assumes his readers are familiar with something like J2EE, and with server farms, web caches, and industrial-strength databases; what he explains is how to use them more effectively. As an example, the chapter on capacity patterns talks about connection pooling, the importance of building a flush mechanism into every cache, when precomputing content will pay off, why you should tune garbage collection, and why object pooling no longer makes sense (if in fact it ever did). The rest of the book is equally practical, and just as well written. It would make a great text for a second course in web programming, and ought to be read by everyone tasked with building an e-commerce site capable of handling a customer’s rush season.

Andy Oakley: Monad. O’Reilly, 2005, 0596100094.

This book describes the eponymous tool from Microsoft (also known as MSH). At first glance, it looks like just another command-line shell, but where classic Unix utilities communicate via streams of strings, their Monad equivalents pass objects back and forth. Those objects can be as simple as lists, or as complex as trees and tables. Whatever they are, Monad offers simple, uniform ways to dissect, transform, and reassemble them. The result is something that’s as convenient as Awk, but as powerful as a full-blown programming language.

Andy Oram and Greg Wilson (eds): Beautiful Code. O’Reilly, 2007, 0596510047.

Over the course of 450 pages, more than thirty of today’s best programmers think aloud about beautiful pieces of code. Want to know why Brian Kernighan thinks Rob Pike’s original regular expression matcher is elegant? Interested in the worst bug Bryan Cantrill ever found in the Solaris kernel, and how he fixed it? They’re here, with many more.

Derek Powazek: Design for Community. New Riders, 2001, 0735710759.

This book isn’t about web logging, streaming video, or managing mailing lists. Instead, it’s about how to structure web sites so that they will foster on-line communities. The writing is personal without being sappy or overbearing, and the author draws upon a wealth of personal experience to explain why you sometimes don’t want to make it easy for people to post comments, or how best to deal with abusive posters. There’s a lot of no-nonsense analysis of the cost of interactivity, and interviews with the creators of some of the web’s most successful community sites.

Deborah S. Ray and Eric J. Ray: Unix. Peachpit Press, 2003, 0321170105.

A gentle introduction to Unix, with many examples.

Gary Rivlin: The Plot to Get Bill Gates. Three Rivers Press, 2000, 0812990730.

Rivlin’s book is a history of the great white whale that is Microsoft, and the various people who have tried to harpoon it over the years. It begins with the observation that we admire the kind-hearted, but reward the ruthless. He then chronicles the way in which the greatest corporate power struggle of our time has become a name-calling match between third-graders. Unlike many books about Microsoft and its competitors, The Plot is very even-handed—it speaks unkind truths about almost everyone. Rivlin tells his share of Bill Gates stories, but points out that NOISE (Netscape, Oracle, IBM, Sun, and Everyone else) have been just as brutal as Microsoft when they thought they could get away with it.

Lawrence Rosen: Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law. Prentice Hall PTR, 2005, 0131487876.

If you’re involved in open source software in any way, shape, or form, then this book is a useful read. Its author is intimately familiar with the field; here, he lays out a general background for discussion of intellectual property, and the history of free/open source software, then discusses what various popular licenses actually mean. The book closes with chapters on topics such as how to choose a license, litigation, and standards. The writing is clear—exceptionally so by legal standards—and he takes time to explain terms and assumptions that most software developers won’t have encountered before. What’s more, he doesn’t seem to have any particular axes to grind: the book is US-centric, but his treatment of the various options open to today’s developers is very even-handed.

Bruce Schneier: Secrets and Lies. Wiley, 2004, 0471453803.

Having written the standard book on cryptography, Schneier now argues that technology alone can’t solve most real security problems. The book covers systems and threats, the technologies used to protect and intercept data, and strategies for proper implementation of security systems. Rather than blind faith in prevention, Schneier advocates swift detection and response to an attack, while maintaining firewalls and other gateways to keep out the amateurs.

Robert Sedgewick: Algorithms in C, Parts 1-5. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2001, 0201756080.

Far too many programmers still think and code as if resizeable vectors and string-to-pointer hash tables were the only data structures ever invented. These books are a guide to all the other conceptual tools that working programmers ought to have at their fingertips, from sorting and searching algorithms to different kinds of trees and graphs. The analysis isn’t as deep as that in Knuth’s monumental Art of Programming, but that makes the book far more accessible. And while the author’s use of C may seem old-fashioned in an age of Java and C#, it does ensure that nothing magical is hidden inside an overloaded operator or virtual method call.

Toby Segaran: Programming Collective Intelligence. O’Reilly Media, 2007, 0596529325.

The book is an introduction to the machine learning techniques that have helped make Google and Amazon household names. In Chapter 2, for example, Segaran explains how recommendation engines work by building a simple one in Python. In Chapter 3, he implements some simple clustering algorithms; in Chapter 4, he covers page ranking, and so on. Later topics include optimization, spam filtering, decision trees, and many other goodies. Segaran’s examples are all interesting, and both his explanations and his code are exceptionally clear. Some readers will find there’s more math in the book than they’d like, but given the subject matter, that can’t be helped.

Ed Skoudis: Malware: Fighting Malicious Code. Prentice-Hall, 2004, 0131014056.

This 647-page tome is a survey of harmful software, from viruses and worms through Trojan horses, root kits, and even malicious microcode. Each threat is described and analyzed in detail, and the author gives plenty of examples to show exactly how the attack works, and how to block (or at least detect) it. The writing is straightforward, and the case studies in Chapter 10 are funny without being too cute.

Diomidis Spinellis: Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective. Addison-Wesley, 2003, 0201799405.

The book’s preface says it best: “The reading of code is likely to be one of the most common activities of a computing professional, yet it is seldom taught as a subject or formally used as a method for learning how to design and program.” Spinellis isn’t the first person to make this point, but he is the first person I know of to do something about it. In this book, he walks through hundreds of examples of C, C++, Java, and Perl, drawn from dozens of Open Source projects such as Apache, NetBSD, and Cocoon. Each example illustrates a point about how programs are actually built. How do people represent multi-dimensional tables in C? How do people avoid nonreentrant code in signal handlers? How do they create packages in Java? How can you recognize that a data structure is a graph? A hashtable? That it might contain a race condition? And on, and on, real-world issue after real-world issue, each one analyzed and cross-referenced. There’s also a section on additional documentation sources, and a chapter on tools that can help you make sense of whatever you’ve just inherited.

Diomidis Spinellis: Code Quality: The Open Source Perspective. Addison-Wesley, 2006, 0321166078.

Code Quality picks up where Code Reading left off. Instead of explaining how to find your way around in large projects, it tells you how to judge the quality of what you’re looking at. Spinellis breaks this down into seven categories: reliability, security, time performance, space performance, portability, maintainability, and floating-point arithmetic. Each gets a chapter of its own; each chapter draws dozens of examples from well-known open source projects, such as NetBSD, Perl, ACE, and Apache; and each example makes its point clearly and irrefutably. Flip it open at random. Page 414 dissects the sin of code duplication; the accompanying diagram shows how many hundreds of lines of code have been copied and pasted in the Catalina class loader. Page 279 compares the number of instructions required to call a virtual method with the number required to inline the same operation, then goes on to explain why such simple comparisons can be misleading. Flip back, and page 432 is the start of a 19-page discussion of testability.

Joel Spolsky: Joel on Software. APress, 2004, 1590593898.

Joel on Software collects some of the witty, insightful articles Spolsky has blogged over the past few years. His observations on hiring programmers, measuring how well a dev team is doing its job, the API wars, and other topics are always entertaining and informative. Over the course of forty-five short chapters, he ranges from the specific to the general and back again, tossing out pithy observations on the commoditization of the operating system, why you need to hire more testers, and why NIH (the not-invented-here syndrome) isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene: Applied Software Project Management. O’Reilly, 2005, 0596009488.

Stellman and Greene’s aim is to put everything you need to know to run a small- to medium-sized software project between two covers. After a short introduction, which lays out the principles they believe successful managers should follow, the book is divided into two parts. The first, “Tools and Techniques”, includes all the usual suspects: planning, estimation, schedules, reviews, requirements, design and programming, and testing. Their language is sometimes a little highfalutin’ (”Wideband Delphi estimates”, anyone?), the the advice is all solidly grounded and eminently practical.
The book’s second half is about the act of management. Its chapter titles tell the story: “Understanding Change”, “Management and Leadership”, “Managing an Outsourced Project”, and “Process Improvement”. In my experience, these topics are nearly impossible to teach in book form: the only way to learn them is to have someone coach you while you’re doing them. That said, Stellman and Greene do as good a job as anyone, while thankfully avoiding anything that smells of Tony Robbins.

Herbert H. Thompson and Scott G. Chase: The Software Vulnerability Guide. Charles River Media, 2005, 1584503580.

My current favorite guide to computer security for programmers, this books walks through each major family of security holes in turn: faulty permission models, bad passwords, macros, dynamic linking and loading, buffer overflow, format strings and various injection attacks, temporary files, spoofing, and more.

Greg Wilson: Data Crunching. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005, 0974514071.

Every day, all around the world, programmers have to recycle legacy data, translate from one vendor’s proprietary format into another’s, check that configuration files are internally consistent, and search through web logs to see how many people have downloaded the latest release of their product. It may not be glamorous, but knowing how to do it efficiently is essential to being a good programmer. This book describes the most useful data crunching techniques, explains when you should use them, and shows how they will make your life easier.

Andreas Zeller: Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging. Morgan Kaufmann, 2006, 1558608664.

Zeller is the creator of DDD, a graphical front end for the GNU debugger that uses box-and-arrow displays and charts (among other things) to show what programs are doing. Now a professor at Saarland University in Germany, Zeller is still building and studying new tools to help developers figure out what’s going wrong in their programs, where, and why. This well-written, copiously-illustrated book is his report from the front lines on current and next-generation debugging tools. Some are old friends, like bug trackers and symbolic debuggers. Others are new: there’s a detailed look at the pro’s and con’s of replay debugging, an automatic divide-and-conquer tool that can strip test cases down to their essentials, and a whole chapter on how dependency analysis and program slicing can be used to isolate faults. If, ten years from now, debuggers have taken a much-needed leap forward, much of the credit will go to this book.

General Non-Fiction

Karen Armstrong: The History of God.

It’s longer than it seems, and there are times when its author’s love of theological minutiae overwhelms the reader, but it’s still the most accessible account of how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have co-evolved over the past three thousand years. Over and over again, ideas have arisen in one, been adopted in another, and then been re-adopted by their originators, centuries after having been abandoned. The same author’s The Battle for God is a worthy companion: more topical, as it focuses on the rise of so-called fundamentalism in the same three faiths during the past two hundred years.

John Baxter: A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict. Thomas Dunne Books, 2003, 0312317255

Baxter is a book collector. Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? But as he says, “acquiring [books] meant midnight assignations in seedy corners of London, white-knuckle bidding at auctions, speculative drives across England to cities you’d never seen, and nervous knocking on the doors of strangers that, in all probability, would leave you, a minute later, humiliated and empty-handed on the doorstep a hundred miles from home.” This, the story of how he went from small-town Australia to Paris via Hollywood and London, is a very funny, and occasionally inspired, look at people who aren’t quite normal.

Stewart Brand: How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. Penguin USA, 1995, 0140139966.

This beautiful, thought-provoking book starts with the observation that most architects spend their time re-working or extending existing buildings, rather than creating new ones from scratch. Of course, if Brand had written “program” instead of “building”, and “programmer” where he’d written “architect”, everything he said would have been true of computing as well. A lot of software engineering books try to convey the same message about allowing for change, but few do it so successfully. By presenting examples ranging from the MIT Media Lab to a one-room extension to a house, Brand encourages us to see patterns in the way buildings change (or, to adopt Brand’s metaphor, the way buildings learn from their environment and from use). Concurrently, he uses those insights to argue that since buildings are always going to be modified, they should be designed to accommodate unanticipated change.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything. Broadway, 2004, 076790818X.

As the introduction says, Bryson wrote this book primarily to force himself to learn all the science he’d managed to avoid in a long and eventful life. The Big Bang, the origin of life on Earth and its subsequent evolution… It’s all hear, whizzing by at a breathless “Ten Countries in Ten Days” pace.

Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams (eds): Why Arenít More Women in Science? American Psychological Association, 2006, 159147485X.

This book, a collection of 15 articles by leading researchers, was put together in the wake of Lawrence Summersí controversial musings in 2005 about why there are so many fewer women in high-profile positions in science than in law, medicine, and other professions. It is emphatically not a one-sided rant; instead, it gives experts on all sides of the debate an opportunity to present their evidence and make their case. In doing so, it provides fascinating insight into how difficult the “slippery sciences” are, and how easy it is to let your beliefs shape your understanding of facts. Some studies are quoted and explained (or explained away) three different ways in as many chapters; refreshingly, there are very few rhetorical questions and no obvious sign of political dogmatism. These are scientists, wrestling with an emotive issue as objectively as they can. For that alone, itís worth reading.

Phillip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh: The Mathematical Experience. Mariner Books, 1999, 0395929687.

History, biography, contemplation, humor—this book has all of those, but twenty years after I first read it, what I remember is finally discovering the human side of math.

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton, 1999, 0393317552.

In this book, Diamond (an ecologist) tries to explain the rise of the West in terms of environmental factors. Eurasia had more domesticable large animals than the Americas, Africa, or Australia; its east-west axis also allowed wider diffusion of diseases, so that its peoples built up stronger immune systems prior to global contact. It’s a refreshingly original way of looking at human history, and deserves to have a wide readership.

Dougal Dixon: After Man: A Zoology of the Future. St. Martin’s, 1998, 0312194331.

I picked up my first copy of this book in a second-hand bin on Queen Street in 1989. I’ve owned three others since then, and have given away all but the most recent. Imagine every animal larger than a raccoon becoming extinct, and then look ahead 70 million years. What new creatures might evolve? Dolphin-like creatures descended from penguins, cats swinging through trees like monkeys, blind flightless bats… Dixon’s ostensible purpose in writing this book was to explain patterns in evolution, but I think he did it because it was too much fun not to.

Anthony Everitt: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. Random House, 2003, 037575895X.

Cicero was the last great defender of the Roman Republic. This biography conveys a feeling not only for the man, but for his times and ideals.

Fergus Fleming: Cassell’s Tales of Endurance. Orion, 2004, 0304357472.

Forty-five chapters, in three sections, detailing all the horrible things that can go wrong when men set out to explore the unknown. Shipwreck, cannibalism, and frostbite are just the start of your woes… It’s too bad, though, that the author almost completely overlooks non-European explorers (Ibn Battuta and the Indian Pundits get a few pages each), and leaves women out entirely.

Marzieh Gail: The Three Popes: An account of the great schism when rival Popes in Rome, Avignon, and Pisa vied for the rule of Christendom. Simon and Schuster, 1969, 0671201743.

You’ll need to rummage around in second-hand bookstores for this one, or buy it from ABE Books, but it’s worth it. For decades, rival popes hurled abuse and anathema at each other from courts in Italy and Avignon. I want someone to film this, with Sean Connery as the elderly Pedro de Luna, also known as the Antipope Benedict XIII.

Ted Gioia: The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture. Oxford University Press, 1990, 0195063287.

Much less pretentious than its subtitle would lead you to believe, this is the most readable explanation of what jazz is, and what it says about Twentieth Century life, that I’ve ever found.

Ann Hagedorn: Beyond the River : The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad. Simon & Schuster, 2004, 0684870665.

I picked this book up on a whim, then couldn’t put it down. Halfway through, I started to believe that the same thing had happened to its author: she had set out to write a conventional piece of popular history, but found herself caught up in one of the greatest stories in American history. Between the 1820s until the Civil War, the Underground Railroad helped thousands of escaped slaves make their way from the American South to Canada. In that time, abolitionism went from being seditious radicalism to the greatest—indeed, the only—issue in the politics of its day. This book tells that story through the life of John Rankin, a Presbyterian minister in Ohio whose entire family became caught up in the struggle.

Neil Hanson: The Confident Hope of a Miracle. Knopf, 2005, 1400042941.

A critical account of the events surrounding the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Few of the major players come out well: Philip III was obsessive, Elizabeth I pinched every penny she could, both before and after, and most of the English sea captains were more interested in booty than in saving their country. Sensibly, Hanson eschews deep analysis, and lets the voices of the time speak for themselves.

Brian Hayes: Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape. W. W. Norton, 2005, 0393059979.

I read Brian Hayes’ semi-regular column on computing in American Scientist religiously. Despite that, I didn’t know that he is a gifted photographer, and has a keen eye for the world around us. This book combines his skills and passions to create the equivalent of a Sierra Guide for the machinery that makes our world what it is. Dams and mine stacks, microwave relays and railways—they’re all here, beautifully pictured and lovingly explained. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to persuade people to take nature walks around old New Mexico mining sites, but if you’ve ever wondered what those conveyor belts near highway intersections are for, the answer’s in here.

Jennifer Michael Hecht: Doubt, a History. Harper, 2003, 0060097957.

There are literally thousands of histories of religion and philosophy in print, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the only history of disbelief ever written in English. Hecht traces the rise of scepticism—most particularly, agnosticism and atheism—from Socrates, Job, and Buddha through to modern times. For me, the most enjoyable part of the story was the way each generation of doubters learned to interpret the code phrases that previous generations had used to protect themselves from persecution.

Adam Hochschild: Bury the Chains. Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 0618104690.

For most of human history, half or more of our species lived in serfdom or outright slavery. This book tells the story of how that began to change. Twelve men met at a London printer’s shop in 1787, intent on abolishing the Atlantic trade in African slaves (though not slavery itself). Half a century later, they had not just ended the practice within the British Empire—they had also invented most of the tools of modern social movements, including petitions, boycotts, and the art of the cold, hard fact. The hero of the tale—one of the heroes, anyway—was a practical firebrand named Thomas Clarkson. I’d never heard of him before, but having read Hochschild’s engaging narrative of the man’s life and times, I’d have counted myself lucky to know him.

Roger R. Hock: Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. Prentice Hall, 2004, 0131147293.

In forty short chapters, Hock describes the turning points in our understanding of how our minds work. You’ll learn a lot about psychology from this book; you’ll also learn a lot about how science gets done, and about the scientists who do it.

Thomas Keneally: Schindler’s List. Touchstone, 1993, 0671880314.

Thanks to Spielberg’s movie, everyone knows the story of how a pleasure-loving, self-absorbed German businessman named Oskar Schindler saved more than a thousand Polish Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War. What really makes the story fascinating is all the details Spielberg left out: Schindler’s sincere friendship with Nazi officers, the Jews who turned on their fellows in order to (temporarily) save their own skins, how happy Polish villagers were to collaborate… Stripped of Hollywood melodrama, this is really a story about how good and evil lie side by side in each of us.

Stephen King: On Writing. Pocket Books, 2002, 0743455967.

To borrow a phrase from Orwell, King is the best bad writer in English today. This book—part memoir, part lesson—is his attempt to explain what he does, how he does it, and why. It is also some of his own best writing.

Imre Lakatos: Proofs and Refutations. Cambridge University Press, 1976, 0521290384.

This slim volume is written as a dialog between a patient teacher (perhaps the ghost of Socrates), and a class of bright, mathematically-inclined students. The philosophical questions they raise, answer, and re-raise lead the reader to see that mathematics is as much a human construct as poetry, and as experimental as physics or any other science.

William Least Heat Moon: Prairyerth. Mariner, 1999, 039592569X.

The subtitle of this book is “A Deep Map”. In it, Least Heat Moon digs into the soil, and the past, of Chase County, Kansas. A description of the ecology of wild grasslands leads to discussion of the religious beliefs of the Kansa, which in turn leads to a description of how they were displaced by white settlers, how some of those settlers decided they wanted their slaves free but not equal, and so on through tornado-resistant architecture and the death of Knute Rockne. For this author, the land is more than just something to walk on—much, much more.

Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved. Vintage, 1989, 067972186X.

This book was first published a few months after Levi, a chemist and Auschwitz survivor turned author, finally gave into his demons and committed suicide. In it, Levi talks almost dispassionately about the horrors that he and others suffered, and about the Germans who have written to him since then about their part in the Holocaust. Again and again, you can almost hear him catching himself just before he asks, “But why, oh Lord, why?” As he and others have said, the hardest thing to accept was that there was no reason.

Alberto Manguel: The Library at Night. Knopf Canada, 2006, 0676975887.

A beautifully written book by a writer who clearly loves the beauty of books, and the libraries that are their harbors. Manguel’s gentle, humorous, and occasionally profound ruminations on our attempts to force order on the universe through its proxy, the written word, are organized under such headings as “The Library as Space”, “The Library as Chance”, “The Library as Survival”, and, “The Library as Oblivion”. He quotes his predecessors liberally, and adds much that is itself worth quotation.

Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics. Perennial Currents, 1994, 006097625X.

No, I’m not including this just because “graphic novels” are suddenly trendy—that would be, like, so nineties. I’m including this book because of the way McCloud uses comics to explain how comics work, how they’ve evolved, and what different artists have achieved (or at least, been trying to). It’s an eye-opener in all senses of the term.

John McPhee: Coming Into the Country. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991, 0374522871.

This is just one of McPhee’s many great books; once you’ve read it, I defy you not to read some more. McPhee is an essayist, but that’s like saying that Picasso painted. McPhee’s topics have ranged from professional basketballers to attempts to revive lighter-than-air travel, but have centered around the land and how people respond to it. Clearly fascinated by the things he writes about, he is nevertheless objective and incisive. And his style—oh, his style. Each new sentence is potentially another sharp right turn, yet the whole hangs together as cleanly as a stained glass window, or one of Thelonius Monk’s piano solos.

John McWhorter: Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care. Gotham, 2003, 1592400167.

Not just another diatribe about the decline of spoken and written English in the last half century, this book (which admittedly would have been stronger if its middle third had been much shorter) looks at why well-crafted speech has fallen out of fashion, and what effects that has had.

John Julius Norwich: A History of Venice. Vintage, 1989, 0679721975.

The Most Serene Republic saw civilizations rise and fall around her, yet through all of it remained a remarkably enlightened place (and not only by the standards of her times). Norwich clearly loves both the Venice that was and the art and architecture that remain; doges and popes, kings and pirates all rub shoulders here, melancholic and yet always willing to don a mask and join the carnival.

Joan O’Grady: Early Christian Heresies. Barnes & Noble, 1995, 1566195608.

A surprisingly readable account of the political struggles that led to the definition of a “standard Christianity” in the first three centuries A.D.

George Orwell: Essays. Everyman’s Library, 2002, 0375415033.

At 1400+ pages, this book is twice the size of any other in this list, but then, Orwell’s writing was twice as influential. He gave pragmatic, democratic socialism a voice, and what a voice: his prose style has often been imitated, but never surpassed.

David Quammen: Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. Scribner, 1997, 0684827123.

I discovered naturalist David Quammen’s writing by accident while trying to find something to read on a twice-delayed flight out of Atlanta. Since then, I’ve gone through pretty much everything he’s ever published. This book, which I think is his best yet, summarizes what we now know about the effects of habitat loss on extinction. The point he hammers home is that total area isn’t the only thing that matters; if you break a species’ range into small patches, you greatly increase the odds of it disappearing patch by patch. The science is now unassailable, and the writing is passionate without hectoring.

Max Rodenbeck: Cairo: The City Victorious. Vintage, 2000, 0679767274.

Rodenbeck’s eleven more-or-less chronologically-arranged chapters introduce readers to the history, people, and quirks of one of the world’s greatest cities.

Tom Standage: The Victorian Internet. Berkley, 1999, 0425171698.

In this slim book, Standage (who is computer correspondent for The Economist) provides an engaging pocket history of the early days of the telegraph. Wacky technologists becoming wealthy overnight, a cycle of hype and bust, breathless predictions of political and economic change—as Standage points out, the 1990s weren’t the first time we’d been there.

Bruce Sterling: Shaping Things. MIT Press, 2005, 0262693267.

I’m generally suspicious of authors who coin new words, but I’ll forgive Sterling for “spime”. We have already gone from handmade artifacts, through mass production, to an age of “gizmos”; according to Sterling, the next step is smart objects that have enough intelligence (via embedded microcircuitry) to keep track of their own history, location, and so on. It isn’t an entirely new idea, but Sterling has thought through both possible implementation strategies, and the likely consequences.

Jeff Taylor: Tools of the Trade: The Art and Craft of Carpentry. Chronicle, 1996, 0811812731.

Tools of the Trade is ostensibly about carpenter’s tools, but is really about how the tools and materials we use to build things can teach us how to build things better. Anyone who’s thinking about writing a book about programming in the first person should read Tools of the Trade first, in order to see how such writing ought to be done.

Gary Taylor: Reinventing Shakespeare. Grove, 1989, 1555840787.

The greatest writer in human history? Or just another hack decked in unearned laurels to satisfy an expanding empire’s need for a glorious past? Or maybe he was a socialist, a feminist, or a Freemason, whose real message can only be read by those with the eyes to see it. In this book, Taylor traces how successive generations have created a new bard for their own time. While the last chapter (on Shakespeare in our own era) was a bit of a let-down, it’s still a fascinating exploration of the interplay between popular culture, political need, and academic criticism.

Alexander Tsiaris: The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman : The Marvel of the Human Body, Revealed. Doubleday, 2004, 0385509294.

This is the most beautiful book I’ve held in my hands since Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn. Picture by picture, it reveals the inner workings of the human body: heart and gut and muscle and bone, and all the squishy bits that we’d all rather not think about. Tsiaris’s background in medical imaging is very much in evidence here, but so is his appreciation for the art of Da Vinci and his Renaissance peers.

Ellen Ullman: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. City Lights, 1997, 0872863328.

It’s 1997. A woman in her 40s who was once a cadre for an underground political party now works as a software engineer amid the growing frenzy of Web 1.0. Her personal life is as complex as her past, but both are overshadowed by her fear that she no longer has what it takes to keep herself on the leading edge of technology — that she no longer even wants to. Somehow, Ullman makes this mini-biography funny, touching, and profound.

Jonathan Weiner: Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. Vintage, 2000, 0679763902.

Seymour Benzer isn’t a household name, and probably never will be, but in his fifty-year career, he has helped uncover the genetic basis for our bodies’ internal clocks, for our attraction to one another, and for memory itself. As with Weiner’s Pulitzer-winning The Beak of the Finch, this book conveys the sense of awe that scientists sometimes feel in the face of the everyday marvels around us.

Susan Whitfield: Life Along the Silk Road. University of California Press, 2001, 0520232143.

A merchant journeys east from Samarkand in the year 751; a Chinese princess rides west a century later to wed an Uighur khan; a Tibetan widow prays for the dead in the shadows of the Himalayas another century on. Through these mini-biographies (each rooted in historical documents), Whitfield brings alive the golden age of the Central Asian steppe.

John E. Wills Jr.: 1688: A Global History. W.W. Norton, 2002, 0393322785.

Globalization isn’t as new as some of its opponents would like to believe. In this book, American historian Wills takes a look at what was happening in the world in one particular year, and (just as importantly) at the ties between those seemingly scattered events.

Daniel Yergin: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. Free Press, 1993, 0671799320.

Now more than ten years old, this book is as topical today as it was when it won the Pulitzer. For over a century, industrialized countries’ need for cheap oil has shaped domestic politics and international relations alike. Much of the history of the post-colonial world can only be understood in terms of that addiction, which Yergin brings to life with incisive analysis and vivid anecdotes.

Adam Zamoyski: Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries 1776-1871. Penguin Books, 2001, 0141002239.

And I thought I was cynical… This book is a history of revolutions and revolutionaries in the Romantic era, from America in 1776 to the Paris Commune of 1871. Its overt thesis is that the “Century of Revolution” was an attempt to make a new god out of the twin ideas of liberty and nationality, to replace the one overthrown by the Enlightenment. Its subtext is that the idealism that led young men to fight in France, Poland, Italy, South America, and elsewhere doomed them to fail, and to thereby bring about the colder, bloodier fight that consumed Europe between 1914 and 1989.

Fiction

Murray Bail: Eucalyptus. Harvest, 1999, 0156007819.

Once upon a time in Australia, a man plants hundreds of different kinds of euclyptus trees, then promises his daughter to the first man who can name them all successfully. It sounds like the stuff of fairytale, but what Bail delivers is instead the stuff of our dreams.

Andrea Barrett: Voyage of the Narwhal. W.W. Norton, 1999, 0393319504.

In 1855, the Narwhal set sail for the far north. Its official mission was to find the survivors of an earlier expedition (or at least to return their remains), but each member of the crew had his own motives for signing on. As their disasters unfold in slow motion, the women they have left behind are caught up in explorations of their own. Quiet, assured, and insightful, Barrett’s writing paints the good and evil in all of us with equal compassion.

K. J. Bishop: The Etched City. Spectra, 2004, 0553382918.

Nothin’ but mood in this languid, engrossing tale of—well, of what, exactly? Of a doctor trying to behave ethically, even though her conscience has been eroded away, and a murderous dandy whose world is slowly turning magical around him. Bishop’s writing is perfect, and her world as fascinating as her characters.

Peter S. Beagle: The Innkeeper’s Song. Roc, 1994, 0451454146.

While it is not as famous as The Last Unicorn, this story is Beagle at his best. A village boy tries to win his dead love back, a magician and his one-time apprentice fight a duel to the death (and beyond), and a couple of down-at-heels heroes turn the inn of the title upside down. No, it’s not great literature, but Beagle stirs the protagonists voices together to create a fine Sunday stew of a book.

Malcolm Bradbury: The History Man. Penguin, 1993, 0140175083.

Somewhere in the 1970s, at a second-rate university somewhere in England… The plot is simple, but the characterization is brilliant: the central figure is the most believable villain I’ve ever encountered in fiction, and the scene in which the faculty of the English department try to decide the rules they will use to vote on the procedure to be used to select the rules for carrying out departmental votes ranks right up there with Heller’s explanation of how to make a profit selling eggs to yourself in Catch-22.

Kevin Brockmeier: The Brief History of the Dead. Pantheon, 2006, 0375423699.

A brilliant, sad book. Somewhere, in a city not quite of this world, the dead wait to move on until everyone who remembers them has also died. Meanwhile, an engineered plague sweeps across the planet, leaving only one survivor: a naturalist named Laura Byrd, who is stranded in Antarctica. Nothing “happens”—there is no swashbuckling, no punchline, no tidy conclusion—but the whole is as rich and as satisfying as listening to one of Beethoven’s more meditative pieces on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Max Brooks: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Crown, 2006, 0307346609.

A must, and not just for George Romero fans, this book is a collection of first-hand accounts of mankind’s close-run war against the undead. Written as a collection of oral histories, it follows events from the first cases in China to the disaster at Yonkers and Russia’s slide back into totalitarianism to the long, slow battle to reclaim the planet. Well written, well researched, and genuinely touching more often than you’d expect.

Steven Brust: To Reign in Hell. Orb, 2000, 0312870493.

A Trotskyite retelling of the angels’ rebellion (no, really). This was Brust’s first published novel, and while it’s a bit stilted in places, the story it tells has all the inevitability of Greek tragedy.

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Curse of Chalion. HarperTorch, 2002, 0380818604.

A perfect swashbuckler, with an instantly-likeable protagonist, evil but believable villains, a world you can believe in, and the occasional flash of profundity. No, it’s not great literature, but it’s a lot of fun.

Anthony Burgess: A Dead Man in Deptford. Carroll & Graf, 2003, 0786711523.

Most people know Burgess for A Clockwork Orange, but that was just one in a long series of brilliant novels. As a writer, he took no prisoners—he tosses erudite allusions over his shoulder with the gusto of a feasting Viking flinging bones to the hounds—but every page gleams like the walls of a gold mine. This particular book is about the death of Christopher Marlowe; The Kingdom of the Wicked is an old man recounting the story of Peter and Paul in Rome, Nothing Like the Sun tells the story of Shakespeare’s obsession with an African woman, and that just scratches the surface.

Peter Carey: The True History of the Kelly Gang. Vintage, 2001, 0375724672.

A fictionalized first-person account by Ned Kelly, the most famous outlaw in Australian history, of the injustices that led him to steal, then kill, then rebel. Its portrait of a fundamentally upright man driven to extremes probably bears little relationship to the real Kelly, but it’s impossible to doubt the authenticity of Carey’s colonial Australia.

Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely. Vintage, 1988, 0394758277.

While not as famous as The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye, this is Chandler at his best. Yes, you could drive a tanker truck through the holes in the plot, but this is the guy who invented hard-boiled dialogue (well, OK, Hammett deserves a nod too), and his PI, Marlowe, is as iconic a figure as Sherlock Holmes.

Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Penguin, 1995, 0140233903.

The first review of this book I read said that it proved Doyle was more than just another professional Irishman. Yes, there’s poverty, the church, football, history, and everything else every post-war Irish novel is required to serve up, but Doyle keeps all of that to one side, and focuses his narrative spotlight on a young boy whose parents’ marriage is slowly crumbling. As conscienceless and unsentimental as any other child, the narrator describes the arbitrary rituals and rules that govern his life with the detachment of a Vulcan anthropologist, and makes them all more human by doing so.

Mark Costello: Big If. Harvest, 2003, 0156027798.

Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Combine that with six degrees of separation, and you have this book. An FBI agent responsible for guarding the vice president is slowly having a nervous breakdown; her brother, a designer of massive multi-player on-line games, is finding it hard to tell fantasy from reality; his wife, a real estate agent, is dealing with the world’s most neurotic trophy wife; and on, and on, and on, one chapter per character, through what passes for a normal day in the early 21st Century.

John Crowley: Engine Summer. Bantam, 1980, 0553131990.

Laurie Anderson once said, “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.” Far too much science fiction is like that: the toys, the world, and sometimes the whole universe have changed, but the people (and aliens) still think the way we do, and care about the things we care about. This novel is different; in this novel, the people are still very human, but their mores and concerns are as different from ours as ours are from a Medieval peasant’s. There are no fireworks—Crowley never uses a shout when a whisper will do—but that just makes the twist at the end even more powerful.

E.L. Doctorow: Billy Bathgate. Plume, 1998, 0452280028.

In a younger, brasher America. 15-year-old Billy Bathgate is drawn into Dutch Schultz’s gang, falls in love with Dutch’s girl, and discovers that he has a conscience. Like Ragtimeand World’s Fair, this book is Doctorow at the top of his game.

Patricia Finney: Firedrake’s Eye. Picador, 1998, 0312180942.

At the height of the Elizabethan Cold War between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, a Morisco codebreaker and a down-at-heels soldier try to prevent an assassination. The story, whose period detail brings it to life without making it stuffy, is narrated by a madman—the sequels, Unicorn’s Blood and Gloriana’s Torch, are narrated by the ghost of the Virgin Mary, and an African tribal magician respectively.

Stephen Fry: The Liar. Soho, 1994, 156947012X.

“I’m not funny,” Fry said to the perky interviewer on BBC 4, “I’m droll.” I can’t think of a better adjective to describe this tale of a young man’s boarding-school misadventures (some comic, some tragic, all entertaining), and his subsequent recruitment (if that’s what it is) by a semi-legitimate branch of somebody or other’s secret service.

Alan Furst: The Polish Officer. Random House, 2004, 0375758275.

I discovered Furst in 2003, and in less than a year had read everything he’d written. It reminds me of Le Carré’s early work, as darkness falls on Europe in the 1930s, and ordinary people must choose whether to bow their heads or do extraordinary things. This particular book is about a Polish military intelligence officer, who must salvage what he can as his country is squeezed between the twin tyrannies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

Amitav Ghosh: The Circle of Reason. Mariner Books, 2005, 0618329625.

This South Asian rewrite of Les Miserables follows a young weaver named Alu who is wrongly suspected of terrorism. As he is chased across India to Arabia and North Africa by a bird-watching policeman, he discovers just how much of human existence lies beyond the bounds of reason.

Arthur Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha. Vintage, 1999, 0679781587.

When I first read this book, I was convinced it was an “as told to” biography. The fact that it isn’t makes the protagonist’s journey from a fishing village in pre-war Japan to the heights of fashionable society, the poverty of the early occupation, and finally the New Japan of the 1960s even more compelling.

William Goldman: The Princess Bride. Del Rey, 1987, 0345348036.

You knew this was going to be here, didn’t you? The movie just scratched the surface (and then filled in that scratch with sugar paste—bleah); the novel is like a strong cup of coffee first thing in the morning, and has some pretty deep things to say about the meaning of love in amongst the jokes.

Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker. Indiana University Press, 1998, 0253212340.

“On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.” Like Crowley’s Engine Summer, this book is about a future that’s actually different from our time, without being any less human. Hoban’s language is just this book’s most obvious pleasure; its slowly-unfolding recapitulation of the fall is its deepest.

Nick Hornby: High Fidelity. Riverhead, 1996, 1573225517.

The first Horny I read, and still my favorite. After his girlfriend walks out on him, a record store owner decides to try to sort out his life as if it were a collection of vintage vinyl. Funny, touching, and now, ten years on, more than a little nostalgic.

Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was. Del Rey, 1985, 0345321383.

This fairy tale is set in an ancient China that never was, and tells the story of a sage with a slight flaw in his character, and his sidekick, Number Ten Ox. Together, they must find out why the children in Number Ten Ox’s village have all fallen into a deep sleep; along the way, they visit ancient ruins, defeat monsters, lay some ghosts to rest, and—oh, just go and read it.

William J. Kennedy: Ironweed. Penguin, 1984, 0140070206.

Albany, New York, 1938: Francis Phelan has hit bottom, and is back in town to try to sort out what’s left of his life. Reading this book is like eating a slice of pie that has sand stuck to the crust.

Rudyard Kipling: Kim. Penguin, 1992, 0140183523.

Kipling was the poet laureate of the Great Game, and this ripping yarn is the best thing he ever wrote. Having grown up on the streets of Lahore, young Kimball O’Hara is recruited by the British Secret Service to aid in the defense of the empire. Like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, Kim is a Victorian for all ages.

Milan Kundera: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Perennial Classics, 1999, 0060932147.

First published in the late 1970s, just a few years after Kundera fled his native Czechoslovakia for France, this novel is part autobiography, part philosophy, partly a melancholy story about a Czech exile trying not to forget her homeland, and all enjoyable. If you’re looking for plot and pace, look elsewhere, but if “rumination” is one of your favorite words, this is the book for you.

John Lanchester: The Debt to Pleasure. Picador, 2001, 0312420366.

On the surface, this book’s narrator, Tarquin Winot, is as eccentric as his name. Underneath, he is the moral equivalent of what goes into sausages. As he rambles on about cooking, his family history, and particularly his brother Bartholomew (whose success as a sculptor he adamantly does not envy), you slowly realize just how much evil lurks in the hearts of chefs. And then there’s the last paragraph…

A. J. Langguth: Jesus Christs. Figueroa Press, 2003, 0972762507.

It took me eight years to track down a second-hand copy of this book that I could afford. The spine was falling apart, and the last few pages were foxed, but it was worth the wait. It has now (finally) been re-issued. Written in the 1960s, Jesus Christs is a collection of short (sometimes very short) stories about saviors who never were:
Jesus was walking down the road one day when he met an old man. “I have come to die for your sins,” Jesus said.
“Thank you,” the old man said politely. “But then what am I to die for?”
Jesus thought for a moment, then took a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket. “If you can give me your name and address,” he said, “I will see that an answer is sent to you.”

Le CarrÈ: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Scribner, 2001, 0743442539.

Le CarrÈ did for spies what Chandler did for hard-boiled American detectives: give them depth. In this perfectly-cut gem of a book, a washed-up British spy is ordered to play a double—or is it triple?—game. It’s a world in which all the colors are washed out, all the marriages are unhappy, all the food is overcooked, and we fight on because what the hell else is there to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. Eos, 1994, 0061054887.

This book’s subtitle is a perfect summary of what it’s about. Shevek, a physicist, has grown up on the anarchist colony of Anarres. 175 years after his planet severed ties with the motherworld Uras, he is the first of his people to travel back to see what the “old world” has become. Clearly modeled on the Russian physicist and dissident Sakharov, Shevek’s story explores how ideals rust and weather over time, and how much difference individual people can make if only they’re willing to see, speak, and act clearly.

Elmore Leonard: Out of Sight. HarperTorch, 2002, 0060084103.

It was a toss-up between this and Get Shorty. Or Pagan Babies, or Jackie Brown, or… A former crime reporter, Leonard captures the voices and thoughts of his hustlers, thugs, and not-very-bright con artists like no one else.

Penelope Lively: City of the Mind. Grove, 2003, 0802140203.

I didn’t expect to like this book, but after reading it, I went on something of a Lively binge. An architect is trying to put his life back together after a mostly-amicable divorce. In the background, the city of London is also reinventing itself, as it has done for centuries. If the story touches you, try the same author’s Cleopatra’s Sister (about the role chance plays in our lives) and Moon Tiger (which delivers everything The English Patient promised to, but didn’t).

Gregory Maguire: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Regan, 1996, 0060987103.

All right: the musical of the book of the movie of the book gave the story behind the story a happier ending than the book of the movie of the book did (are you still with me?), but that’s Broadway for you. The actual book of the movie of the book is dark, political, and very grown up. Maguire’s starting point is the idea that the vilification heaped on the Wicked Witch’s head was so outrageous that it must have been political. The Wizard as Stalin? He makes it work…

Armistead Maupin: Maybe the Moon. Perennial, 1993, 0060924349.

Cady Roth is an actress, and a dwarf. Those two facts got her a job in “Mr. Woods”, an ET-like film that made its director (a thinly-disguised Steven Spielberg) famous. Cady’s own life hasn’t gone so well—the real world never learned of her role in the film, so she has had to earn what she can at children’s birthday parties. This book is the story of her last shot at fame and happiness; it is also the story of how those of us who think of ourselves as normal are the biggest problem faced by those we think are not.

Cormac McCarthy: The Crossing. Knopf, 1994, 0394574753.

All right, there’s a little too much Hemingway in places for my liking, but McCarthy does spare and lean so well that I just have to forgive him. A teenage boy has trapped a wolf; rather than shooting the animal, he takes it south into Mexico to set it free. That decision, and his younger brother’s decision to accompany him, shapes the rest of their lives, but that’s just plot. What you read this book for is the aftertaste of hard-baked Western air each page leaves in your mouth.

Ian McDonald: The Broken Land. Spectra, 1993, 0553563246.

How is it that I did not know this book? The language, characters, and world are as rich as the forest around the village of Chepsenyt, and Mathembe Fileli is one of the most engaging protagonists I’ve encountered in a long time. My first thought was that McDonald had been inspired by the horrific events in Rwanda (just as Ryman’s Unconquered Country was inspired by the killing fields of Cambodia), but this book actually predates that tragedy. The same author’s more recent book, River of Gods, is also a masterpiece. Set in India in the year 2047, it proves that the best writers can find and create wonderful worlds just around the corner.

Maureen F. McHugh: China Mountain Zhang. Orb, 1997, 0312860986.

Set in a Twenty-Second Century dominated by Communist China, this quietly engrossing novel’s protagonist is a gay architect trying to find his own way of doing things. Star Trek it ain’t, but it’s a genuinely human portrayal of a genuinely different future.

Frank Miller: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. DC Comics, 1997, 1563893428.

Not yet old, but no longer even middle-aged, he sits in Wayne Manor, brooding, bitter at a world that didn’t want to be saved. One night, during a thunderstorm, he decides to hell with it: he’ll save the world anyway. As vibrant, original, and unapologetically accessible as 1920s jazz, the art in this book is what finally convinced me to take comics seriously.

David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas. Random House, 2004, 0375507256.

This isn’t a novel: it’s six novellas, each of which is interrupted, then resumed in reverse order. Sound coy? It isn’t—as Mitchell unwinds his tragedies, noir thrillers, and dystopian future visions, he paints a picture of a species full of possibilities whose baser side will probably destroy it.

Farley Mowat: Never Cry Wolf. Back Bay Books, 2001, 0316881791.

As Canadian as it gets—at least, as big-empty-backyard Canadian as it gets. I first read this more-or-less biographical tale of a young man’s first journey into the north to study wolves when I was, oh, nine? Ten? I’ve re-read it two or three times since, and seen the movie twice. The author clearly loves the land and its wildlife, but hasn’t yet succumbed to the frustrated fury that sooner or later seems to afflict everyone who cares about our planet.

Kim Newman: Anno Dracula. Avon, 1994, 038072345X.

What if Dracula won? What if he saw off his attackers, built an army of followers, married Queen Victoria, and became the de facto ruler of the largest empire in the world? And what if a lunatic named Jack was stalking the streets of London with a silver scalpel and a grudge? Newman’s not just having fun with alternate history here; out of the corner of your eye, you can see England sliding toward dictatorship. It’s a pity neither of the sequels was anywhere near as good…

John Nichols: The Milagro Beanfield War. Henry Holt & Company, 2000, 0805063749.

A very seventies book about Chicano dirt farmers fighting back when business and water interests in suits try to take their land. Sounds very worthy, but there’s a lot of humor in here; the author clearly loves the people he’s writing about, warts and all (maybe even warts especially).

Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club. Owl Books, 2004, 0805076476.

Down and dirty, gritty, warped, brutally honest about young men’s inner feelings (or lack thereof)—yeah, it’s all that, but it’s also beautifully written, fast-paced, and has a knockout punch at the end. Not for the faint of heart.

Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost. Berkley, 1999, 0425167720.

Fingerpost is one of my favorite books: I’ve given six copies away to date (um, make that seven—I can’t find the one I thought I owned), and almost everyone who’s read it has raved about it. In turn, its four narrators recount their versions of a murder in Restoration Oxford, and what happened afterward. Each peels back the errors of his predecessor, while laying down untruths and misconceptions of his own. The world is richly drawn, the voices are unique, and the ending left me feeling that something important had just happened that I couldn’t sum up in words. If you like it, try the same author’s Dream of Scipio, in which three men living in the south of France in different eras (the end of the Roman Empire, the height of the Age of Faith, and the dark years in the middle of the 20th Century) are all faced with the same moral choice.

Tim Powers: The Drawing of the Dark. Del Rey, 1999, 0345430816.

Powers’ first and best novel is the story of a worn-out Irish mercenary, who may or may not be the reincarnation of King Arthur, fighting a secret war in Vienna in the 1520s. They should have made a movie of it in about 1985, with Sean Connery in the lead; I’d settle for today, and Liam Neeson.

Terry Pratchett: Mort. HarperTorch, 2001, 0061020680.

This, the fourth book in the Diskworld series, is the one where Pratchett first hit his stride. A young man, well-meaning but all elbows, is recruited as Death’s assistant. (Yes, the Death, the one with the polished skull and the sickle and all.) It’s funny, but it will also surprise you in places by being much more than that.

Terry Pratchett: Night Watch. HarperTorch, 2003, 0060013125.

And here, almost twenty years later, is the same author, writing fantasies set in the same world. You have to read a lot of the ones in between (Guards! Guards! and Small Gods in particular) in order to understand what’s going on in this one, but you should do that anyway. Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also a gripping study of how the idea of revolution becomes political realitiy on the street. Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably-priced love! And a hard-boiled egg!

Geoff Ryman: The Unconquered Country. HarperCollins, 1986, 0048233579.

Another that you’ll have to find second-hand (or in his recent collection, Unconquered Countries), this is a fairy tale about the Year Zero in Cambodia.

Jose Saramago: The History of the Siege of Lisbon. Harvest Books, 1998, 0156006243.

What if proofreaders could do more than just correct speling and punctuation? What if they could correct history (or at least, our accounts of it)? Would having the courage to do that give them the courage to correct their own lives too?

Josef Skvorecky: Dvorak in Love. W. W. Norton, 1988, 0393305481.

Antonin Dvorak’s trips to the United States in the late 1800s are the sun around which this book’s many smaller stories revolve. Skvorecky’s love for his fellow Czechs’ melancholic quirks and humor shines on every page, as does his love for the freedom embodied in the idea of a new world.

John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin, 2004, 0141185066.

The bible of populist progressivism is as powerful today as it was when it first appeared in the closing years of the Great Depression. Starving families too proud and bewildered to ask for help; the never-ending struggle between the greed of the few and the dignity of the many; and through it all, the belief that we’re supposed to be better than this. Steinbeck’s more overtly political In Dubious Battle makes a good counterpoint to Tom Joad’s instinctive belief that living on the land for generations ought to count for more than a piece of paper with writin’ on it.

William Styron: The Confessions of Nat Turner. Vintage, 1992, 0679736638.

I first read this book in Grade 10, I thought it was awful. How could Nat lose? How could he die? That wasn’t right! Coming back to it in my thirties, it was still a body blow, but I knew enough to be impressed by how Styron left both the “simple folk, but happy” and the “noble struggle against oppression” stereotypes behind, and gave us the story of a complex man in an impossible situation.

David Thomson: Suspects. Vintage, 1986, 0394744683.

These vignettes stitch together the lives of major and minor characters from the great films noirs. Want to know what happened to Mr. Cairo after the credits rolled for The Maltese Falcon? Or how Noah Cross died? The writing has the feel of a humid Thursday night, somewhere in Los Angeles in the 1950s; everyone has a past, and everyone has a game.

Rose Tremain: Music & Silence. Washington Square Press, 2001, 0743418263.

A talented young English lute player travels to Denmark in 1629 to enter the service of the not-entirely-stable King Christian IV. He arrives to discover that the orchestra plays in the basement, so that the king can enjoy their music without having to see them. That metaphor is the starting point for the tangle of romance, tragedy, and self-discovery that follows.

Barry Unsworth: Morality Play. W.W. Norton, 1996, 0393315606.

When we think of inventions, we usually think of physical things, like pens and steam engines. Some of our greatest inventions, however, have been new ways of doing things: the idea of free speech, for example, or of the limited-liability joint stock corporation. While this novel is superficially a medieval murder mystery, underneath it is about people inventing rational inquiry and secular theatre—about them doing something, then realizing that what they have done is new.

Thomas Wharton: The Logogryph: A Bibliography of Imaginary Books. Gaspereau Press, 2004, 1894031911.

I honestly don’t think I can sum this book up. Is it fantasy? Is it autobiography? Is it a melancholy shaggy dog story? Whatever it is, it was an engrossing read.

Colson Whitehead: The Intuitionist. Anchor, 2000, 0385493002.

Set in a city just a hair’s breadth away from the New York or Chicago of the 1950s, this is the story of Lila Mae Watson, the city’s first black female elevator inspector. Lila Mae is an intuitionist: rather than using empirical methods in her inspections, she relies on holistic intelligence. When Number Eleven crashes, it falls on her to determine whether it was an accident, or a setup. Bewildering and delightful in its first half, this book (like its protagonist) grows angrier as it progresses.

Connie Willis: Bellwether. Spectra, 1997, 0553562967.

A hilarious chronicle of life in a dysfunctional research institute, as seen by a woman whose particular specialty is fads.

Roger Zelazny: Jack of Shadows. New American Library, 1989, 0451159764.

This novelette about an immortal thief living in a world perpetually divided between sunlit science and midnight magic packs all the punch of his prize-winning Lord of Light in a much smaller package.

For Younger Readers

L. J. Adlington: The Diary of Pelly D. Greenwillow, 2005, 0060766158.

A disturbing book for teens about the way in which neighbor can turn on neighbor, and a group of people can become first a class, then a persecuted minority.

Ann Halam: Siberia. Wendy Lamb Books, 2005, 0385746504.

In a not-too-distant future, the world’s wildlife is gone, and Rosita and her mother are exiled to a gulag for an unspecified crime. Slowly, we learn why they’re there, and why it’s so important for Rosita to keep secrets. Halam’s empty world echoes her protagonist’s loneliness, but there are (literally) seeds of hope, too. It would make a wonderful movie, but I doubt the marketeers at Disney and Pixar would ever have the courage…

David Lubar: Hidden Talents. Starscape, 2003, 0765342650.

For readers in their early teens (but a lot of fun whatever your age). 13-year-old Martin has been sent to Edgeview, a last-chance school for troublesome kids. As the days grind by, he slowly realizes that some of his classmates have strange powers—powers that they themselves aren’t aware of. There are plenty of twists and turns in the story, but the best line belongs to the bully nicknamed Bloodbath: “The thing I like best about being me is that if I wasn’t me, whoever was me would be beating me up.”

Garth Nix: Sabriel. Eos, 1997, 0064471837.

The first entry in the Abhorsen trilogy is another kids’ book that grown-ups can enjoy as well. Having just turned 18, Sabriel must either rescue her father (whose job it is to lay the undead to rest), or avenge him. Oh, and save the kingdom. Mustn’t forget saving the kingdom…

Susan Palwick: Flying in Place. Tor, 1992, 0312851839.

Every night, when Emma goes to bed, she prays that her father won’t come to her room, but night after night, he does. Then, one night, she has another visitor: the ghost of her dead sister, Ginny. Calm and chilling, this book is neither fantasy nor horror, and too proud for the pat endings of most of the “problem” novels that well-meaning teachers inflict on teens these days.

Philip Reeve: Mortal Engines. Eos, 2004, 0060082097.

It opens with the City of London chasing a smaller town across the dry bed of what was once the North Sea. By the time it ends, every swash in sight has been fully buckled. It’s a very violent book, but it’ll set your heart racing. (And so far, the sequels have lived up to the original.)

Roderick Townely: The Great Good Thing. Aladdin, 2002, 0689853289.

Characters in a children’s story who know they’re characters? And who escape from their book into its reader’s mind when her younger brother sets it alight? That’s just the start of the fun…

Music

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin’. Blue Note, 1958.

One of the great albums from the great age of jazz — you can hear Blakey pounding the excitement out of his drums.

Cyrus Chestnut: Blessed Quietness. Atlantic, 1996.

The first time I heard this collection of hymn tunes, played solo in jazz style on the piano, I thought Oscar Peterson had released a new album. Quiet, beautiful, and thoughtful.

The Clash: London Calling. Sony, 1979.

The album that signalled the end of the 1970s, and the start of a brash new era. I still don’t know what the lyrics mean, but that does’t mean they aren’t great.

Bruce Cockburn: Christmas. Sony, 1993.

The quintessential Canadian folk/indie hero does a mix of carols from all over. Understated, with more nutmeg than honey, his voice can be listened to over and over again.

Ry Cooder: Buena Vista Social Club. Nonesuch, 1997.

Music from people who don’t have to shout in order to be heard, and who have more talent in their fingernails than most pop bands have in a lifetime.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. Sony, 1959.

It’s filed under “Davis”, but includes some lifetime bests from Coltrane, Evans, Chambers, and others. Easily the most popular jazz album of all time, and for good reason.

Cesaria Evora: Cabo Verde. RCA Victor, 2002.

Earthy, yearning, and knowing, Evora’s voice is a match for any I know; the subdued, confident instrumentation is a perfect balance.

K.D. Lang: Hymns of the 49th Parallel. Nonesuch, 2004.

Eleven songs written by Canadians and performed by K.D. Lang; Neil Young’s music has never sounded this good.

Thelonius Monk: Monk’s Dream. Columbia, 1963.

If not for mental illness, Monk might be regarded as one of the great composers of the Twentieth Century. As it was, his piano style has been compared to a stained glass window with random pieces removed. I still don’t know why it works as well as it does…

Mary Margaret O’Hara: Miss America. Koch Records, 1988.

Gods, how can you be so cruel? How could she release only one album? That soaring voice, plaintive and yearning yet somehow unattached… Dozens of other artists have it on their top-10 lists, and just one listen will show you why.

Kelly Joe Phelps: Lead Me On. Burnside, 1994.

That low, gravelly voice has no right coming out of someone so young, and the guitar work has no right existing at all—not in our imperfect universe. Calling it “blues” is like looking calling a Picasso “paint”.

The Police: Outlandos d’Amour. A&M, 1978.

Punk, but not punk: even at this early stage, they couldn’t escape their own musicality. Roooooxaaaannne….

Ike Quebec: Blue and Sentimental. Blue Note, 1961.

I first heard this album about a year after I started playing the sax. Two tracks in, I knew who I wanted to sound like.

Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska. Sony, 1982.

No, you can’t dance to them, but I defy you to not be moved by these rough-edged ballads of the working class in hard times.

Talking Heads: Remain in Light. Warner Bros, 1980.

Paranoid suburban funk from David Byrne and friends just as they were re-entering Earth’s orbit.

The The: Soul Mining. Sony, 1983.

An early project from Matt Johnson that just won’t let go; yes, it’s self-conscious whiny angst, but it’s such good self-conscious whiny angst.

Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder: Talking Timbuktu. Hannibal, 1994.

Listening to Toure’s Malian hypnotic guitar and vocals, you can almost hear the blues being born. Cooder is the perfect session man on this album, providing a solid base for his partner to build on.

Tuatara: Trading With the Enemy. Sony, 1998.

Plays the sound track from the greatest Bond movie never made as it moves smoothly from funk to koto to Arab-influenced rock and the kind of jazz first played for the lost souls of Paris in the 1950s.