I enjoy reading, but I have only recently begun to keep track of exactly what I read on a yearly basis. Shameless plug: if you have no idea what to get me for a gift, one of the books on the list at the end of this file is a great choice!
   -Michael

Recommendations: I highly recommend the following books from this list:

• Bleak House --- A masterwork by Dickens. The biting, scathing humor is relentlessly funny, ironic, and sad. But there is a happy ending of sorts; it wouldn't be Dickens otherwise.
• Alexander Hamilton --- I have never enjoyed a biography more than this. The story of the US's best immigrant and a man who *should* have been president. Washington's right-hand-man and the architect of the US Financial System.
• Team of Rivals --- Another great biography: an illustration of Lincoln's rise to power and simultaneous biography of his greatest rivals for power, almost all of which came to respect and work closely with him.
• A Short History of Nearly Everything --- this book is a self-guided tour of the basics of science: who are we, where are we, why are we here? The most compelling feature is that the author captures the sense of childlike curiosity that I wish were injected into every basic science class.

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2009 Reading List

1. Crime and Punishment
   -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
   -- Alan Alda
3. Andrew Carnegie
   -- David Nasaw
4. Crib Notes: A Random Reference for the Modern Parent
   -- Amy Maniatis and Elizabeth Weil
5. An Introduction to Bluetooth Programming
   -- Albert Huang
6. How to be a Canadian
   -- Will Ferguson & Ian Ferguson
7. The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy
   -- Vicki Iovine
8. The Constant Gardener
   -- John Le Carre
9. The Final Battle
   -- William C. Dietz
10. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
    -- Niall Ferguson
11. Ender's Shadow
    -- Orson Scott Card
12. Ender's Game
    -- Orson Scott Card
13. Oxford Gargoyles, Grotesques, and Architectural Detail
    -- Chris Andrews
14. Speaker for the Dead
    -- Orson Scott Card
15. What to Expect: The First Year
    -- Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi E. Murkoff, and Sandee E. Hathaway
16. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
    -- Marc Weissbluth, M.D.
17. Bleak House
    -- Dickens
18. Economics in One Lesson
    -- Henry Hazlitt

2008 Reading List

1. The Magician's Nephew
   -- C. S. Lewis
2. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
   -- C. S. Lewis
3. The Horse and His Boy
   -- C. S. Lewis
4. Prince Caspian
   -- C. S. Lewis
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
   -- C. S. Lewis
6. The Silver Chair
   -- C. S. Lewis
7. The Last Battle
   -- C. S. Lewis
8. A Salty Piece of Land
   -- Jimmy Buffett
9. Cell
   -- Stephen King
10. Children of Hurin
    -- JRR Tolkein
11. Visual Explanations
    -- Edward R. Tufte
12. The Craft of System Security (in progress)
    -- Sean Smith and John Marchesini
13. The Omnivore's Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals
    -- Michael Pollan
14. * A Short History of Nearly Everything
    -- Bill Bryson
15. Alexander Hamilton
    -- Ron Chernow
16. Catch-22
    -- Joseph Heller
17. The World Without Us
    -- Alan Weisman
18. A Briefer History of Time
    -- Stephen Hawking, with Leonard Mlodinow

2007 Reading List

1. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
   -- Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. Microserfs
   -- Douglas Coupland
3. The Wind In the Willows (in progress)
   -- Kenneth Grahame
4. Academic Careers for Experimental Computer Scientists and Engineers
   -- CACECS, CSTB, CPSMA, National Research Council
5. Writing for Computer Science, 2^nd ed.
   -- Justin Zobel
6. Next
   -- Michael Crichton
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
   -- J. K. Rowling
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
   -- J. K. Rowling
9. JPod
   -- Douglas Coupland
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    -- J. K. Rowling
11. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
    -- J. K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    -- J. K. Rowling
13. Dracula
    -- Bram Stoker
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
    -- J. K. Rowling
15. The Best American Short Stories, 2007
    -- Stephen King & Heidi Pitlor, editors

2006 Reading List

1. The Awakening
   -- Kate Chopin
2. JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook
   -- Danny Goodman
3. Learning the bash Shell, 3rd ed.
   -- Cameron Newham & Bill Rosenblatt
4. Understanding the Linux Kernel, 3rd ed.
   -- Bovet & Cesati
5. Great Expectations
   -- Charles Dickens
6. Race Matters
   -- Cornel West
7. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
   -- Malcolm Gladwell
8. Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time, Book 11)
   -- Robert Jordan
9. The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, Book 1)
   -- Robert Jordan
10. Dali: The Salvador Dali Museum Collection
    -- Robert S. Lubar
11. The Sound and the Fury
    -- William Faulkner
12. The Mythical Man Month (20 Ann. Ed.)
    -- Fred Brooks
13. Bleak House
    -- Charles Dickens
14. The Alchemist
    -- Paulo Coelho
15. The Art of Civilized Conversation
    -- Margaret Shepherd
16. Knot Guide for the Groom
    -- Carley Roney
17. Fatherhood
    -- Bill Cosby
18. City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver
    -- Douglas Coupland
19. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    -- J.K. Rowling

2005 Reading List

1. The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower
   -- Stephen King
2. The Complete Tales of Washington Irving
   -- edited by Charles Neider
3. The Fellowship of the Ring
   -- JRR Tolkein
4. The Two Towers
   -- JRR Tolkein
5. The Cask of Amontillado
   -- Edgar Allan Poe
6. The Return of the King
   -- JRR Tolkein
7. Exploiting Software: How to Break Code
   -- Greg Hoglund & Gary McGraw
8. The Hobbit
   -- JRR Tolkein
9. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
   -- Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides
10. Jurassic Park
    -- Michael Crichton
11. Fyoder's Chapter in Stealing the Continent
    -- Fyoder
12. The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple
    -- unknown, 1682
13. The Shoes of the Fisherman
    -- Morris West
14. The Clowns of God
    -- Morris West
15. Lazarus
    -- Morris West
16. Morte Arthur
    -- Sir Thomas Malory
17. The Ghost of Flight 401
    -- John G. Fuller
18. The Art of Unix Programming (in progress)
    -- Eric Raymond
19. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (Vol. 1):  The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
    -- Philip K. Dick
20. The C Programming Language
    -- Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie
21. Mastering Algorithms with C
    -- Kyle Loudon
22. Practical C Programming
    -- Steve Oualline
23. C How To Program, Fourth Edition
    -- Deitel and Deitel
24. Majipoor Chronicles
    -- Robert Silverberg

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To Read:

• Hot, Flat, and Crowded (Thomas L. Friedman), suggested by K. Milne
• The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch, suggested by N. Simpson)
• Till We Have Faces (Clives Staples, suggested by S. Boyd)
• Lost for Words (John Humphrys)
• Writings by James Madison ISBN 1883011663
• God's Politics
• The Art of Gamesmanship
• Writing Solid Code (Steve Maguire)
• Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Jimmy Carter)
• The Year of Magical Thinking (by Joan Didion)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)