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Books you reccomend?

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 4:45 pm
by JackScott
Hi everybody. I thought it might be interesting to discuss what we're reading at the moment, and what books we really like. We have a thread for OSDev books, so why not one for all the other sorts of books that there are? Here, follow my lead. At the moment I'm reading a C in a Nutshell (cover to cover :P) and The Republic.

I suggest:
  • Plato's The Republic - It's philosophy, and he's completely wrong, but it does underpin the rest of western philosophy for the last 2500 years.
  • Enigma - An awesome novel about World War II encryption. It's fictional, but all the interesting snippets about ciphers & the enigma machine are all accurate.
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything - Makes boring science much more interesting.
I want to read but haven't got around to yet:
  • The Lord of the Rings
  • Homer's The Iliad & The Odyssey - Because some guy on TV said I should.
  • Tolstoy's War and Peace - The same reason.

Re: Books you reccomend?

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 5:21 pm
by Alboin
These are some books I'm reading. I'm not a very diligent reader. I'll read some part of a book, set it down, and finish it 6 months later. 8)
  • Modern Algebra by Seth Warner. (I really can't recommend this one, but it's cheap. ;) )
  • Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Sipser. Very good, albeit expensive.
  • The Code Book by Singh. Interesting and cheap. (It's a historical look at cryptography.)
  • Basic Concepts in Information Theory and Coding by GPS. A very strange book. It's written as a fictional tale of a spy. I believe it's out of print...
@Yayyak: The Odyssey is awesome. IMO, the end is one of the most classic in literary history.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 5:45 pm
by Zacariaz
Well i dont really read much anymore (books are expensive), but there are a few books i really have enjoyed reading.

Charles Petzold: CODE
Jeff Hawkins: On Intelligense
Paul Hoffman: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
and then alot lot of those we all know: tolkien,king, koontz, etc.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:06 pm
by AndrewAPrice
  • Flatland - A romance of many dimensions (it's avaliable online, there are 2 movie adaptions of this book too)
and it's spin off books; Sphereland, The Planiverse, Flatterland, Spaceland, VAS: An Opera in Flatland.

Re: Books you reccomend?

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:22 pm
by JackScott
Alboin wrote:@Yayyak: The Odyssey is awesome. IMO, the end is one of the most classic in literary history.
Damn. Now I'm going to have to get around to reading it sooner! :P

Thanks for the suggestions guys. This is really interesting. Keep the books coming!