I wonder what kind of authors / flippant novels hackers around these parts read..
My favourite would probably Count of Monte Cristo (Bridge of San Louis Rey a close second + for whom the bell tolls), what are yours (non-technical)?
a few off the top of my head in the fiction genre: Joyce's Dubliner, Ulysses & Finnegans Wake. Cervantes' Don Quixote. Borges. Dashiell Hammet. William Burroughs. Bukowski. Faulkner. Jim Thompson. Stewart O'Nan. Nabakov. Philip K Dick's more schizophrenic works ( Scanner Darkly, Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale ). Henry Miller. Gogol. Mary Karr's The Liars' Club. Flannery O'Connor. Denis Johnson. Hunter S. Thompson. Italo Calvino. T Coraghessan Boyle.<p>I reread Finnegans Wake and Don Quixote every couple years.<p>EDIT: and I have to admit to an odd attraction to and repeated returns to reading Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(1980_novel)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(1980_novel)</a>
Fiction: Iain Banks (the bridge; wasp factory; walking on glass; player of games). Ender's game. Asimov. Dostoyevski. Ayn Rand (Fountainhead). Sigurd Hoel. (excellent norwegian writer)<p>Non-fiction: stuff about military strategy (Sun Tzu, Clausewitz; musashi - the book of 5 rings). Philosophy (zen, taoism; epistemology and philosophical logic). Mathematics.<p>+ stuff on TODO-list that I have to catch up with.
I read mostly fantasy and sci-fi - some favorites:<p>"Lord of the Rings" J.R.R.Tolkien<p>"The Last Wish", "The Sword of Destiny" A.Sapkowski<p>"The Last Unicorn" P.Beagle<p>almost anything by S.Lem.<p>My favorite mainstream book is<p>"Wielki Las" Zbigniew Nienacki (unfortunately no English translation available).