Based on popular blog movement, one of my new year resolutions is to read 52 non-technology related books in 52 weeks. I realize that being techies, we naturally tend to focus on technology books leaving other genres unattended. To accommodate for this deficiency in literary well-roundness, the books I've selected for this task are on wide variety of diverse topics. The list can be found on my urdu blog.
Hearing this, Stephen Soong, a friend and avid sci-fi reader made his own list and promised to let me borrow from his sci-fi collection. Here is Stephen's list.
Sports
- The Game, Ken Dryden
- Moneyball, Michael Lewis
- The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons
- Breaks of the Game, David Halberstam
- Once a Runner, John L. Parker
Adventure
- Annapurna, Maurice Herzog
Science
- Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens, Patricia Duffy
- The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
- The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
- Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan
Religion
- The Old Testament
- The New Testament
Chinese Classics
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義), Luo Guanzhong
- The Water Margin (水滸傳), Shi Nai'an
- Journey to the West (西遊記), Wu Cheng’en
- The Deer and the Cauldron (鹿鼎記), Louis Cha
English Classics
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
- Call of the Wild, Jack London
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- Watership Down, Richard Adams
Sci-Fi
- I Robot, Isaac Asimov
Fantasy
- A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
- Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
- Mistborn Trilogy, Brandon Sanderson
- Legend of Drizzt, R.A. Salvatore
Graphic Novels
- Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
History
- Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
- A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
Other Non-Fiction
- Freakanomics, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
- The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Other Fiction
- Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
- The Stand, Stephen King
