Scott's
Recommended Reading List:

Cryptography Computer Systems Shakespeare Beckett Mac Wellman Len Jenkin Other Playwrights Literary Fiction Science Fiction Capitalism Communism Cooking Reading List

(Looking to buy me a gift? The empty circles are books I don't yet own!)

UPDATE: Boycott amazon.com! (Details from Salon, Wired, and Richard Stallman.) Despite my getting a kickback every time someone goes through these links and buys a book, I have to agree with the boycott. Don't replace amazon.com with some evil corporate monolith like barnes & noble --- support your local *non-mega-chain* book-seller, instead. If you absolutely must have non-amazon internet convenience, try fatbrain.com or buybooks.com or another of the smaller online booksellers.

Cryptography:

Crypto will save the world. Really. [Use PGP or just read about it!]

Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography
David Kahn's The Codebreakers; The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet

Computer Systems:

Some important reference books for that shelf by your machine...

Alessandro Rubini's Linux Device Drivers
Andrew Appel's Modern Compiler Implementation in Java (also C and ML ).
Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms in C
Richard P. Paul's SPARC Architecture, Assembly Language, Programming, and C
Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach
Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon: Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet.

One-dollar Shakespeare!

Such a deal! These Dover Thrift Editions are all priced between $0.80 and $1.50!

Works of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett's command of image and his ability to leap to the transcendant will forever enthrall me.

Plays and Novels by Mac Wellman

What can I say? The man's a genius! Let's go with the Los Angeles Times and say he's "one of the contemporary stage's premier masters of syntactical scat."
(He also taught my playwriting class. <grin>)

The Bad Infinity: Eight Plays by Mac Wellman
Annie Salem : An American Tale
To quote the Kirkus Review: "A wacky blend of fantasy, whimsy, and satire from an author who clearly knows what he's doing, even if almost no one else will."
A Murder of Crows and the Hyacinth Macaw
Second Hand Smoke and the Lesser Magoo

Plays by Len Jenkin

If you ever get the chance to see a Jenkin play in NY, do it!

Other Plays

This is the catch-all for plays you simply must read...

Clifford Odet's The Flowering Peach.
Actually, I couldn't find a copy of this still in print.
The closest I found was Waiting for Lefty and Other Plays , which contains Waiting for Lefty, Awake and sing!, Till the day I die, Paradise lost, Golden boy, and Rocket to the moon.
Still fine reading, and recommended.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest
Vaclav Havel's The Garden Party and Other Plays
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's Madman and the Nun & the Crazy Locomotive : Three Plays (Including the Water Hen)
Sam Shepard : Seven Plays and Fool for Love and Other Plays .
Tennessee Williams's Camino Real and Orpheus Descending (in Four Plays)
Athol Fugard's Valley Song , Master Harold , and Blood Knot and Other Plays .

Literary Fiction

Books for well-rounded people, written by starving artists.

Mason & Dixon ; Thomas Pynchon.
Pale Fire ; Vladimir Nabokov.
The Handmaid's Tale ; Margaret Atwood.
The Sparrow ; Mary Doria Russell.
Lives of the Monster Dogs ; Kirsten Bakis.
Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy ; Matt Ruff.
Fool on the Hill ; Matt Ruff.

Science Fiction

I'll assume you've already read Farenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and The Diamond Age, as well as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. The books listed here are slightly more obscure.

Richard Powers: Galatea 2.2
Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree: Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry.
Guy Gavriel Kay's The Wandering Fire: Book Two of the Fionavar Tapestry.
Guy Gavriel Kay's The Darkest Road: Book Three of the Fionavar Tapestry.

Capitalism

As noted elsewhere (by jc@chiasmus.reno.nv.us), history has basically taught us that neither pure capitalism nor pure communism is viable as an economic system. The workable solution that has emerged is wholesale redistribution of somewhere between 25% and 75% of every person's income. In the US, the figure quoted is about 45%.

This section contains books addressing some of the lessons we still haven't learned from the Dickens and the Industrial Revolution.

Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! : Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry ; John C. Stauber, Sheldon Rampton.
One World, Ready or Not : The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism ; William Greidner.

Communism

The other hand: books on communism, with a Trotskyite lean.

The Stalin School of Falsification ; Leon Trotsky.
The Revolution Betrayed ; Leon Trotsky.
Lessons of October (1924) ; Leon Trotsky.
Essential Works of Lenin: `What Is To Be Done?' and Other Writings ; Vladimir Lenin, Henry M. Christman.
Marxism and Terrorism ; Leon Trotsky.

Cookbooks and Culinary Guides

Three cookbooks I wouldn't be without...

The Basic Gourmet : 100 Foolproof Recipes and Essential Techniques for the Beginning Cook
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook
Potatoes: A Country Garden Cookbook (good luck finding a copy)

Unsorted

These are books I've bought & read, but haven't gotten a chance to sort, review, or comment intelligently on yet. Oh, to be a literature major...

Bad Penny at Bow Bridge ; Mac Wellman.
Children of God ; Maria Doria Russell.
In the Country of Last Things ; Paul Auster.
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss .
Seuss didn't just illustrate children's books. He also created art for his own personal enjoyment --- and it's fascinating.
Dubliners ; James Joyce.
I like Joyce's post-nervous-breakdown work better, but not everyone agrees with me. Read this if you like structure and polish.
Fool's War ; Sarah Zettel.
A Guide to Latex : Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users ; Helmut Kopka, Patrick W. Daly.
Arm Architecture Reference Manual ; Dave Jagger.
Cryptonomicon ; Neal Stephenson.
Too long, needs an editor, and Stephenson can't write an ending to save his life - but still a crucial book for anyone contemplating the revolutionary role of technology in the present and future. A post-cypherpunk history book. I can't explain it any better. Just read it.
Haunted Traveller ; Barry Yourgrau.
This Side of Paradise ; F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Thirst ; Ken Kalfus.
Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies ; Ken Kalfus.
See also the terribly amusing Salon books article by Kalfus, "To my executors".
A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present ; Howard Zinn.
This is a must-read for anyone who's been force-fed white-bread histories of America in school. Like any True Believer, Zinn sometimes stretches to make his points, but even if you scale the whole thing back a couple points, his facts are still compelling and eye-opening.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ; Robert Pirsig.
Eye-opening. I need to re-read this guy a couple times to internalize everything Pirsig discourses on. Made me re-think what it means to be a student.

Reading List

These are the books on my personal reading list: either not yet purchased, or purchased but not yet read. They've been recommended to me, and so I recommend them to you.