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A Good Summer Read?
binaryhead asks: "Well, the semester has just ended, and I have graduated from school! :-) I start my full-time job in a month and want to read a good book in the mean time. Having read Snowcrash, Neuromancer, and most of the hacker biographies, I am trying to find a scifi-geek-hacker book that people like. I might try the new Kevin Mitnick book, but I wanted to see what Slashdot preferred. Thanks."
I just picked up 'Pattern Recognition' & it is definitely a decent read (so far)
"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
Free on PG and it's about time we, as a collective, got a little more broad in our selections.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming, by Sussman and Ableson, a book from MIT using scheme as a teaching language but for than language it teaches invaluable concepts.
Apart from that I like crime fiction by Michael Connelly, not exactly typical slashdot fodder, but hey you asked.....
Agreed. Incredible Story. One of my all time favorites.
I recommend The Hobbit or anything else by J.R.R. Tolkien
... it was a great series.
Or if you have already read those too many times, try out The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft (Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!)
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Stories and Novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems (the tales, mostly; I'm not big on poetry)
Not exactly sci-fi geek hacker stuff, of course, but I've read through most of Stephenson and Gibson's stuff and found that I like classic mystery/suspense as well. If it's hard sci-fi you're looking for, check out a book called The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, if you haven't already. It's old (circa 1950s or 1960s IIRC) but a great read. And then there's the classics like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or 2001 series.We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If you want a good perspective bender, check out Wicked: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. It totally re-draws the whole Oz story from a different direction, makes you think about how good and evil depend on the perspective you take, and who you believe. One of the best books I've read in a while
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
The Foundation Trilogy (Asimov) won the Hugo award for best sci-fi/fantasy trilogy ever (this award has only been given out once, obviously). Definitely worth reading.
All of these SF books are pretty good. He writes pretty good fiction as well.
Reading "Consider Phlebas" (title is a nod to T S Eliot's "The Waste Land") right now.
Every geek reads Gibson and Stephenson (and rightly so) but you ought to have a look at some stuff by Greg Egan, Michael Marshall Smith, Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan. Their names crop up less often, but their writings are excellent. I'm re-reading Egan's "Quarantine", and it's amazing stuff. I've read Sterling's "Islands in the Net" so many times I've lost count.
If you like mystery/suspense mixed in with your hacker lit, then check out The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. It's the true story of a Unix (copyright Novell) administrator who is able to track and help capture someone hacking into his systems at the Lawrence Berkeley labs in the late 80's. A very good read.
Without a doubt the best fantasy series I've read is "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin. It is ongoing, and hopefully won't suffer the same fate as "The Wheel of Time" -- going on and on and on... These books are rich, interesting, exciting, warm and the thing I like the most about them: it is very difficult to say with certainty who is "good" and who is "bad" because the story is told from many different point of views. Well worth reading.
I read alot. :P
:)
I rank the books I read on a 1-10 scale.
Not everyone agrees with me
http://www.remsbox.com/showBooks.php
might give you some ideas if nothing else.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Slaughterhouse Five is a brilliant piece of work, and fairly geeky as well. IIRC, the first line is, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."
Jailbird is another Vonnegut classic worth picking up.
Same with Poe. Last summer I read the complete works of Poe and two things stuck out. First is his prose. It is absolutely fantastic. People just don't give Poe credit for the quality of his writing. Unfortunately the second thing that sticks out is the redundancy. The guy really only had about 3 themes he worked over and over.
Lovecraft is much the same. Read Cthulu, be disappointed at the ending, ask "Is this it?" and move on. The rest of his stories are reformulations of the same.
Lila, the pre-quel, is great read as well
If you do decide to read Foundation, read it in the order they were written, not the order of the timeline. There are prequels, post prequels, pre-prequels, and postquels. The first three books (written in the 1950s) were genius. The remainder (written in the 80s) are good, but not as good. Asimov was basically pressured into writing the later books by his publisher.
Then there are the ones written after his death by other authors. Don't bother. I got about 1/4 of the way through Foundation's End and realized I had no idea what was going on.
try neal stephenson's: cryptonomicon
good read, great plot, and the tech stuff isnt too shabby either.
bonus treat: perl source for the cryptographic alogrithm described [and used in the story] called solitaire [the algo, courtesy of bruce schneier of counterpane and "practical cryptography" book] presented at the back of the book...
I heartily agree with this recommendation.
My mother bought me this book because she thought I would find the "motorcyclists of the apocalypse" amusing. It was a great read, and I have often laughed about some of the images.
Do yourself a favor and get this book. Then start listening to NPR. Buy the books they review. You get a wide variety of good reads this way. I got _Ice_Masters_ via NPR last summer, and I never would have bought it otherwise.
If you haven't read _Confederacy_of_Dunces_ do it soon. _Catch_22_ is another classic I have read more than once. _Jupiter's_Travels_ is a winner and the author is currently going around the world again.
I'll spare you a longer list.
I find my ignorance slapping me around too often. I wish I had a better background in literature so I could understand Western culture, the one I live in. More accurately, I'd just like to catch the gist; I know the culture is beyond anyone. I'd like to know more about the rest of the world's cultures, too.
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Various Mark Twain works
The Bible
so much more. Curse me for my laziness.
Stuff I have read and recommend highly...
Kurt Vonnegut books, particulary Slaughterhouse Five It is hilarious.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller It, too, is hilarious and biting.
J. D. Sallinger books and stories
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
That book changed my world view by applying game theory to behaviour of evolved creatures. The Selfish Gene is probably the best book on popular science I've read in my life. (If you know any better books, please add them as comments!)
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Also, be sure to read the notes in the second edition -- they are as interesting as the book itself.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
For the last 3 days I have been reading Breakfast of Champions. Until now, the only book I had read of his was Slaughterhouse Five. I had no idea his stuff was so great. Before that, I read Survivor by Palaniuk on a recommendation. I finished it in 2 days and then proceeded to buy and read the rest of his books within a week. Fantastic stuff, and for those not in the know he is the author of Fight Club.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
The Terminal Experiment, by Robert J. Sawyer.
It's about what happens to society when someone discovers proof of the human soul... and a whodunit involving virtual personas created as a method of simulating possible afterlifes.
Heck, nearly any of his works would do.
I just wish more people would read Keep the Aspidistra Flying by Orwell, too. Now there's a great book.
You asked about a "scifi-geek-hacker book".
;-)
You may like my book, Dancing Barefoot. There's a really long story all about Star Trek (scifi) and me (geek) and Vegas (hackers, I suppose, if you count Bringing Down the House, which is a GREAT summer -- or anytime, really -- read.)
But I won't pimp the link for BDTH, because I'm only shamelessly promoting myself.
Dont get me wrong, reading LoTR was great. It was difficult in the sense that it just drags on, mainly in detail. Yea I wish the movies had more to it (ie Tom Bombadill(sp?)) - but I also realize that it might get too long. The Enders seriers was something that kept me wanting to read constantly, hence why I could finish the book in 2 days. It had enough detail. It also doesnt have the backdrop of history that LoTR has, and alludes to all the time.
As for the Ender series, I enjoyed them all. The first book stands on it's own. The next three (chronological by publish date) are sequels, and you should definently read them in order. The last two (Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon) are directly along/after Ender's Game. Read them at the end of everything (I did) or after the first. I personaly think that Hegemon was the weakest - but undoubtly leaves room for an another sequel.
-dave
/* Lobster Stick To Magnet!*/
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" would be a good starting point for someone who's fresh out of school and wondering what sort of future their diploma will bring. It might also open your eyes to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of dot-bomb paupers out there who thought a 60-hours-per-week job with a signing bonus was the epitome of success....
P.J. O'Rourke is good - definitely a conservative, though - if you have a problem with that, you might not want to bother. He has a lot of insight, though, even if you disagree with his politics. His Parliament of Whores is very good - excellent insights on how the US government works (and doesn't). Think of de Tocqueville's (spelling?) prediction that democracy is threatened when the electorate discovers that it can vote itself largesse from the public treasury. That's the common thread between liberalism and corporatism - using the government to further one's own ends (and screwing everyone in the middle).
O'Rourke is funny and insightful, and he does not take himself too seriously. He's also (or was in the past) a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, for what it's worth.
Hmmm, better post this anonymously - it's not yet karma burn Friday.
Not to offend anyone, but I've never really gotten the whole obsession with Ender's game. (I've only read the first book in the series). It seemed like a pretty good story to me, but it's not like you put it down after reading it and think "that story completely changed the way I see the world."
If I were going to recommend a couple of really excellent books for hacker summer reading, I'd aim for some quality writers who are also going to make you sit down and think a bit afterwards.
First, I'd go with Jack Womack. Strictly in terms of how he writes, I think he's one of the most interesting SF writers around. His books experiment very interestingly with language (although they are page-turner readable), with ideas about the post-national or post-government future of the world, with artificial intelligence, and even with mutant post human freaks.
The first book I read by him was Ambient, about a corporate assasin in New York City in the not-so-distant future. The main character thinks and tells the story in an oddly compelling near-future english slang that will have you thinking in Ambient yourself by the end of the book. Another, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, is a kind of prequel to Ambient, in which a young Upper East Side rich girl watches her world collapse into post-national chaos. The language in the book changes from proper english (with a snotty schoolgirl attitude) to Womack's invented post-English gradually to reflect the character's own slide into violent street life as the city collapses around her.
Another hacker classic I have not seen mentioned here (surprisingly) is Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime series(there are three, read them all), which many people credit with inventing cyberpunk (the first one precedes Gibson). A more recent Vinge book, and my favorite, is A Fire Upon the Deep. Vinge is not (I would say) as good a writer as Womack, but he is a hell of a lot better than most of the hacks I've seen mentioned in this discussion, and he's had by far some of the most interesting and influential ideas in SF writing.
\
I would highly recommend this story by Shamus Young. Its online, free, relatively short, but its a nonstop futuristic hacking and zombie killing romp from start to finish. Did I mention it was heavily based off of System Shock 2? ;0)
by Steven Levy. The mother of all hacker books. Hacking used to mean 'clever means of improving electronic and computer systems'. At what point did it get perverted to mean unauthorized access to computer systems? Sigh.
The books begins at MIT in the late 50s, with hacking at the model railroad club, and ends at MIT in the 80s with the Richard Stallman about the freedom to hack software. I found the beginning and the end of the book much more interesting than the stories in the middle set in Stanford and the Valley.
The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card -- technically sci fi, it's really about the author's exploration of human nature: What makes us human? What makes a person great? People go on about Ender's Game, and it's pretty good, but I think the story of Jason Worthing goes much deeper.
Trader by Charles de Lint -- A story about waking up in a stranger's body sounds a bit cheesy, but this one sucked me in with its exploration of identity and personality. The ending wasn't the predictable warm, fuzzy, everything's okay type, either.
Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice, both historical fiction with no vampires or magic whatsoever. She does a wonderful job of bringing these places and times to life.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson -- just incredibly engaging. The book is huge, but it's a page-turner from start to finish. Actually, I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson or Steven Bury (an alternate pen name) that I haven't adored.
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower). Epic, beautifully written coming of age story set within the context of a compelling war between good and evil. The characters really come alive.
-monique
Continuing down the non-hacker line, I love Salman Rushdie. His non-linearity never fails to amaze me.
I loved Fury and Midnight's Children. Reading Satanic Verses right now and The Ground Beneath Her Feet is on my post-graduation list.
Also try Bill Bryson's books. A Walk In The Woods is very good.
Cry of the Kalahari was one my favourite books of all time.
Surely You're Joking, My Feynman - while not very "non-hacker", this book is _the_best_ I've read. Funny, nay hilarious, witty, amazing. Quite a few things to learn.
Finally, if you're coming out of tech school with an engineering degree or something of the sort, (ie without a significant liberal arts background) now might be a good time to round off your educations with some books about religion, philosophy, economics, politics and business (to name a few). While the subjects might sound drab, you might just find your calling (econ for me).
Happy reading.
i must say, even though some of the scenarios are interesting, the book reads a bit too much like a dale carnegie self-help book. there is no narrative whatsoever, just details of fictionalized phone calls. most importantly, the chapters are all structured identically. he details the scenario, then analyzes the con, then says how to prevent it. i think it is a good read for trusting americans, i.e. people who really do trust their neighbors. but, having come from the ussr, none of this is new. i always say NO to phone surveys and always go out of my way to be suspicious. i must admit that i have gotten caught doing things with my computer that could have been avoided, but that was mostly cause i was just curious what the obviously-a-trojan-or-a-virus download was. about the only thing i can away with was: large corporations are bad. i work in a small company and 95% of the things he describes could never happen because everybody knows everybody. most of his hacks presume there exists a person whose voice you might have never heard before or you do not know personally. otherwise, nothing terribly surprising...
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I realize that there is the ability to use internal phones or hack caller id systems, but most of the phone based attacks played out in the book can be avoided with callerid, which is pretty ubiquitous these days. Its not fullproof by any means, but while reading a lot of the scenarios, I kept thinking caller id...
I've totally lost patience with Jordan.
His characters have been marking time for close to 2000 pages. I love epic fantasy...but only if it GOES SOMEWHERE.
Only thing that annoys me more, is that his success is making Terry Goodkind do the same thing.
More productively, I just read Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, which was fun and short. The previous night I read Mil Millington's Things my Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, which was also short and fun.
Now I'm reading Interface, by Stephen Bury, which is a Neal Stephenson pen name. Interesting political sci-fi joint. I'm only 50 pages into it, and it's great stuff.
Other staples of my library: David Weber's Honor Harrington books are just fun bubble-gum reading. Nothing profound, just good space opera.
Anything by Orson Scott Card. Highlights: Pastwatch; The Redemption of Christopher Columbus and the Alvin Maker books. Ender: Duh. Of course. : )
Anything by Sheri S. Tepper. She won't be to everyone's taste, but she's always very imaginative. And very feminist. Be warned.
Signal to Noise and Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. Imaginative and dark.
Deepness in the Sky and Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
Uplift War series (9 books?) by David Brin.
If you haven't read it, turn into a thirteen year old again and read The Belgariad and The Malloreon by David Eddings. The rest of his books get a bit tiresome but the first ten have legs. Also, while in the same mindset, the first three Dragonlance books by Weis and Hickman (Dragons of Autumn Twilight &c) are worthwhile and not too masturbatory.
Hmmm....what else? OOOH!
Rudy Rucker. His 'ware series (Software, Wetware, Freeware, Realware) is funny cyberpunk. Saucer Wisdom is...indescribable and bizarre.
That should keep you busy. Let me know when you're done with these.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Oooh! Oooh! Yeah! how did I forget Gaiman?
Everything that's come out of Neil Gaiman's pen is freakin' awesome. I haven't read all of Sandman, but his novels are really imaginative and evocative. I loved his children's book, Coraline.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Iain M Banks is probably not counted as hard-scifi author but his books are thought-provoking and entertaining as hell (I even recommend you to take a look at his non-scifi books, published under the name Iain Banks, some real gems there too). Try The Player of the Games, Use of Weapons or State of the Art which is a excellent collection of short stories. Cheers, Tero
Also, reading it now is an opportunity to be nostalgic about that Internet Boom Thing that was so many quarters ago....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yup, definitely grittier. My basic summary of it is "lots of swords, not much sorcery", and in the (third?) book he credits so-and-so "who made me put in the dragons" which are involved with most of the sorcery side (and really end up more as an excuse to have a couple of characters who hang around locations and cultures that are different from most of the book, which is good for balance and variety.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Its not that Ender's Game is somehow mindbending, but that it affirms many reader's beliefs. It's often on the reading list for students, and it strikes a chord with them. Many (like myself) were students pressing through a difficult education and in high school, when disillusion and cynicism become a worldview. They see themselves as Ender, someone whos trouble they understand.
Personally, I enjoyed the internal dialoges of Ender, but perhaps that simply displays the undiagnoses Asperger's in me. I wouldn't say that Card has tapped any powerful positive human truths or displayed them in a particularly fascinating fashion.
In fact, most of the message is pretty negative. Survival is the first priority. To defeat your enemy you must love them (its written in the book but its not what I'd call supported). The people of the world (and even your parents!) are easily manipulated by children thanks to the power of the Internet and anonymity. People are out to trick you into doing bad things for them. You might argue that the book serves as some form of cautionary tale, like Das Boot, but the lack of consequence, carnage amd dispair makes it a poor one.
Its pretty clear why its popular. When most soon-to-be-fans read it, its what they want to hear, and they haven't looked back. If you want to see SF writing that works well, refer to the first halves of Neal Stephenson's books. Snow Crash was witty, fast paced and full of commentary. The introductory pages were a well written colloquial storytelling. Unfortunately Stephenson ususally lacks an overall plan of where things are going. Focus would benefit the man nicely. Snow Crash had too much going on with the virus, Y.T. and Hiro, Raven, Da5id and ultimately ran out of a point. Diamond age had something to do with the liberation of China from foreign dependence, something do with educating women in the sciences and something to do with a sexual computer. Cryptonomicon had to use two seperate timelines (and a lengthy pornographic letter to the editor concerning grandma's furnature) to accomadate his logorrhea. And apparently he's not done, and moved onto another toilet called 'Quicksilver.' If someone associated with Stephenson could show a little editorial restraint, its likely his works would be among the high eschelons.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
First, the parts of the book that I flipped through when I first opened the package and took it out were either A) So self-congratulatory of Wolfram's "discoveries" so as to be annoying or B) Details of simple experiments with Cellular Automata conducted in Mathematica. You might have seen Commodore BASIC source code for similar experiments in Compute! magazine in 1982. Okay, maybe not, but you get my point. Even with those points against it, Wolfram appeared to make some interesting conclusions, so I decided to attempt it.
Which brings me to point the second: When I sat down and started to read the book, the lengthy copyright notice caught my eye. Lucky for me it did. Rather than go off on a rant, I'll let the copyright statement speak for itself:
I read no further than the end of the copyright statement and haven't opened the book since except for the purpose of this post.
Perhaps people might think it unreasonable, but I have to take issue with a book claiming to deliver A New Kind of Science in which all the science appears to be held under lock and key. Where the hell would we be if Newton, et al. patented calculus, or Knuth patented algorithmic analysis?
So all I can offer is my completely uninformed opinion based solely on my layman's interpetation of the copyright statement: Stop before you infect your mind with Wolfram's IP.
It may not, in your opinion, be as good as his other books, but it is the only one of his I've read, so far.
I am looking forward to reading his other books.
Things I liked about it
1) Intelligent. Not scared of hard things
2) Funny sense of humour. eg the breakfast cereal thing
3) Way out there storyline, combined with nitty gritty details (similar to Miss Schmilla's Feeling for Snow)
4) nerdiness. The nerd-as-protagonist (if not hero) appeals to my inner nerd.
Still 'non degustebum' and all that...
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter will blow your mind.
Godel Escher Bach, The Mind's I, Fluid Concepts and Creating Analogies, or if you are adventurous and don't mind getting headaches from thinking about things, Metamagical Themas.
All his books from Amazon , but I would go to best book buys to find the best prices on them.
My wife has read Le Ton Beau De Marot, and she loved it. She has her masters in French Linguistics, and found this book in the bookstore at the same time that I found Metamagical Themas. We were kind of surprised when we went to check out and found that we had found books by the same author in different sections of the bookstore. Hofstadter is a very smart and interesting guy, and writes some awesome stuff. I think that GEB is a must read.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd suggest Moneyball by Michael Lewis, a book that follows Oakland A's GM Billy Beane through the 2002 season.
Yes, I know, the idea of reading a book about sports is probably not appealing to most slashdotters. But this one may be different. Essentially the book describes how Beane and his staff of math geeks and computer nerds have been able to succeed on a low budget by employing some radical ideas about player talent evaluation.
If you've ever wanted to see a real-life case study of the smart kids beating the jocks at their own game, this is it.
Possibly the best futuristic novel you're likely
to encounter. And reading it will provide you
with oodles of postmodern cachet.
(Don't waste your time on adolecent b.s. like
_Ender's Game_ or the latest Larry Niven wankfest
for heaven sake!)
After you chew through IJ, try _The Tunnel_
by William Gass, _Auto da Fe_ by Ellias Canneti,
or _Gravity's Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon.
Try something non geek, but worth reading. Theres a big world out there.
I've read the following two recently - The New Rulers of the World - John Pilger & Reffer Maddness - Eric Schloser. Both are worth reading. Alternatively take a look at Stupid White Men by Michael Moore.
Fiction wise, Spider by Patrick McGrath, Body of Evidence by Jon Banville and No Great Mischief by Alistar MacLeod would all rate up in my recent reading as being good.
Sci-fi, take a look at anything by Ian M. Banks or else for the fantasty stuff try some Tad Williams, both excellent. Morgan Llewellyn has done some beautiful takes on Irish legends which could be worth taking a look at as well.
Finally if your up to it take a look at Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Beware, its not easy reading, but its one of the best books I've ever read. But beware of following into its theories.
I'd have to disagree. Cryptonomicon balances character and plot much better than Diamond Age. I've read most of Stephenson's stuff, except for Big U. Zodiac, Snow Crash (x3), Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon (x2.5--I'm in the middle of my third go-round right now).
I loved Cryptonomicon. It was the first of his books that I read. I think the characters are fully realized, fully realistic, and, best of all, dynamic.
The Cap'n Crunch chapter is good, but my favorite is Ronald Reagan's interview with Bobby Shaftoe. Bobby Shaftoe is awesome. Haiku-spouting, Philipina-loving stupendous bad-ass. Actually, I changed my mind. My favorite passage (out of almost any book) is the first paragraph. That and the "until he's 25" section of Snow Crash. Stephenson has the pulse of man-geeks.
Uninteresting characters? Maybe. Maybe...no. Both main Waterhouses are interesting, and I think the depiction of Lawrence's naivete is just amazing. His ability to switch viewpoints from character to character and to modulate his writing style just enough to let you get a feel for each character. He doesn't write the same for Lawrence, Randy, or Bobby.
The worst thing about the book is, unfortunately, the editing. There are quite a few typos, and some major slip-ups that should have been caught.
By the way, if you get a chance, listen to the audiobook of Snow Crash. Audiobooks are the saving grace of commuting.
I won't even think about mentioning my favorites, since I guess all alternative to Gibson and Stephenson have been mentioned 3 times allready.
:-)
I recommend two rock solid classics that are considered the best in putting people to thinking (and finding answers). Aka:
The best in philosophy:
Arthur Schopenhauer;
The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
This is, iirc, Schopenhauers last book and is generally considered one of the references in philosophy in general. Basically an extract of modern & classic philosophy since the ancient greek. Actually a must-read for every literate grown-up. Beware Schopenhauers pessimism though, that's the catch with his stuff. Very educative read though.
Rudolf Steiner;
The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception
This one is generally rewarded as the best 'unknown' work of philosophy of our cultural epoch. Steiner is a monist, just like Schopenhauer, but he unweeds Schopenhauers general pessimism and takes on all the dualists generalisims that are used nowadays to prove that humans have no free will (and stuff like that) and does a very good job at correcting Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Kant and a whole league of all the rest of know philosophers.
I personally consider this a *very* important read for anyone who likes to ponder the life and times of the human race and the human individual. So I think you could say everybody should read it.
BTW: Afaik one could say that the currently very popular Ken Wilbur is something like a 'makeshift Rudolf Steiner'. Allthough I have to admit that I haven't gotten around to reading a lot from him....
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca