My Top Books

1. Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien--Nuanced setting, an incredibly beautiful cosmology, characters that run the gamut of tropes--some created by Tolkien himself--from aloof elves to proud warrior-race.

2. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville--An exemplar of the emerging "strange fiction" genre, Mieville flipped every expectation I had for fantasy novels on its head.  A fantastic deconstruction of gender, the Other, Marxism, and interpersonal relationships.

3. History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell--The book that opened my eyes to the entire realm of thought that is philosophy and analytic reasoning.  From Aristotle to Nietzsche to Kant, a fascinating exploration of human thought.

4. Postmodern Theory, Best and Kellner--Dovetailing nicely with Russell's seminal work, postmodern theory took what I knew about traditional philosophy and let me apply it to a plurality--fittingly--of topics in new and varied ways.  Foucault changed the way I looked at the world.

5. The Uplift War, Dan Brin--A book in which humanity has lifted chimps and dolphins to sentience and had them join society as equals.  A fascinating look at the potential social implications of the emergence of sentient life other than humans.

6. Storm Front, Jim Butcher--A modern fantasy novel also about a Harry that is much much better than the alternative.  A blend of detective noir, wizardry, and wisecracking protagonist.  The rest of the series is equally good.

7. Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula LeGuin--My first introduction to fantasy as a genre, and it did interesting things with its magic system.

8. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace--A book about tennis, drug addiction, everything, and nothing. A thousand pages with seventy-five of endnotes.  Mind-blowing.