Self indulgent look at books I've liked

Books that made me what I am today (or at least I really liked). Someone asked for a list of book recommendations. So I’m sort of answering that request but also just
self indulgently spending time remembering some of my favorite reads. Not necessarily books I would
recommend to others but books that are meaningful to me for various reasons. The rules:

• List books in approximately the order I read them
• The book is important to me because (one or more of)
• It literally shaped how I think in an important way
• I recommended it like crazy
• I read it or thought about it obsessively
• Chronicles of Narnia I don’t think much of this book now but it was the first series I read compulsively. Basically I got the set and then spent every moment reading it until done. At the time I thought this would give me important (spiritual) information about the world.
• Foundation series This was one of the first big scifi series that I devoured. Great ideas.
• Childhood’s End I read this the first time as an assignment in HS. I couldn’t believe how clever and interesting this world was.
• ALL of Vonnegut Don’t know which book I started with but once I read one I couldn’t stop. I just kept reading them.
• Watchmen / Dark Knight Returns / Ronin I discovered these comics one summer and got really excited about comics. Then I realized these are very much the exception. Only in the last 5-10 years have I really gotten into comics again and found enough worth reading.
• Godel Escher Bach I think now some people ridicule this book as being too full of itself or just a jumbled mess but I loved it. I spent the summer after college reading this and discussing it with a friend. A smorgasbord of amazing ideas. And the “dialogue” chapters are crazy clever and fun.
• The Selfish Gene and Blind Watchmaker I had been raised on a strict diet of Creationism growing up. I had already escaped this nonsense by the time I read these but these were a great way to get a coherent picture of evolution in my head
• Chaos: Making a New Science I was getting a degree in physics and I read this my senior year. I ended up doing my senior project/thesis on chaos theory. I spent so much time rereading this and writing programs/visualizations on everything I could.
• The Name of the Rose Eco’s scholarship and writing are just amazing. I wish there was more stuff like this in the world
• Brave New World I was trying to read “important” books and was really delighted to learn that this was just a really well written scifi book.
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy What can I say? Who doesn’t love this?
• Short stories by Borges I’ve read through this collection many times (contains Garden of Forking Paths, LIbrary of Babel, etc). Reminds me of Ted Chiang who I also love.
• Hyperion Canto A fun scifi universe with lots of interesting ideas and characters.
• Confederacy of Dunces One of the best absurd novels I’ve ever read. I basically just forced everyone I knew to read it. Laugh out loud funny.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude I barely remember what this is about but I do strongly remember not being able to put it down.
• Catch 22 Another one of those books you hear referenced all the time that ends up being very entertaining.
• Guns Germs and Steel I think most of this book holds up OK fact-wise but what I really like about it is that I felt like major parts of my intellectual universe were fitting together puzzle piece style.
• How The Mind Works I have read pretty much all of Pinker but this was one of those books that felt like the secrets of the universe were being delivered directly into my brain.
• Consciousness Explained Or Consciousness Explained Away (as people like to joke). Part of what was great about this book is that it covers almost every cogsci experiment that had ever been done and every import philosophical thought experiment. It was nice to have a familiarity with all these for future reference.
• Princess Bride I had seen the movie first and a friend encouraged me to read the book, claiming it was much better. Well they were right. It’s different in some important ways that I wouldn’t want to spoil
• Snow Crash Just so much fun.
• The Moral Animal I recommend this one like crazy. All Robert Wright is worth reading but this one is good even by his standards.
• Worm / parahumans This really disrupted my life for a few months. Best superhero story I’ve ever read. I’ve spent so much time talking about this and thinking about it.
• HPMOR I don’t really have any special love for Harry Potter but I really liked this book.
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World I think this is the most interesting biography I’ve read. I had no idea I would love medieval horse-based warfare strategy so much. :)
• Elephant in the Brain Best summary of all my crazy beliefs that I know of
• Scale A physicist comes along and explains biology to biologists. I’m a sucker for this stuff.
• Unsong I really like scifi/religion blends and this is one of the best. Pretty idiosyncratic pick but I genuinely loved it.
• The Martian I love competency porn, what can I say.
• Friendship Is Optimal OK, so this is My LIttle Pony fanfiction and yes it is amazing. This is one of the most clever singularity books I’ve read. Maybe I need to read more singularity books but this will always have a special place in my heart.
• BOBiverse Really just a guilty please but i did recommend it to many people. I’ve been haunted by the idea of being in the same situation as the main character and not doing as good of a job. I think about this all the time. I don’t know why.
• Blindsight I’m reading this now as a way to get back into scifi. I love everything about it. Even the thing that some people seem to find sort of cringey about it. Well that’s it. Feed these books into a deep learning algorithm and you can recreate my brain.