Discussion on:

TechRepublic's geek reading list

The Laidoff Ninja by Craig Brown and Javed Ikbal available on Amazon.

When reading your title I really thought you were going to recommend Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan. He has a nice Geek-series of books.

Would be a great addition to the list.

cheers!

Since I read a lot of Sci-Fi when I was younger I recognised and had read many of those titles.
A lot that could go in there. How about "The World of Null A" By A E Van Vogt?

Serpents Reach
Foreigner Series
Honorverse
Cyteen Series
Crystal Series
Cast Series

I get them wherever I can find what I'm seeking. Online booksellers, chain stores, local booksellers, used booksellers.

I trade books online through paperbackswap.com

Now a real book, that's the thing.
It never loses power
You can't drop it and break it.
You can put it in your back pocket.
You can sit on it and not break it
You can use it to prop up a table
You can swap it
You can mark it up
A book lasts forever unless you lose it or your house burns down.
There are rare books that aren't in E form
A book doesn't shine in your face, I would think that after staring into a computer people would get tired of staring into another electronic device
need I go on?

Could not agree more! Geek as I may be, however, there is a pleasure in browsing through a bookshop with real books, seeing, smelling, feeling, that an electronic book cannot bring to me.

There is no joy in sitting down and reading a book from my computer's screen or any other electronic device, sorry, doesn't cut it!

Even when travelling I can still always find a corner to fit in a real book!

can't argue with your thoughts, but, there are also rare books that are ONLY available in e-form (I don't have the time or money to visit the libraries with the rare copies)

I guess you don't have a kindle..

Reading e-books on an e-reader is nothing like reading books on a PC or iPad.

It's not a book but sere as hell reads as one!

Enjoying all of the Gutenberg's classics is an expensive (if at all possible because of the rare books) hobby when you want to do it on paper.

And at the same time you can find many other free (geek) e-books or buy stuff from amazon.

cheers!

I agree with mikifinaz that there are a lot of downsides to E Books. I also agree that there a lot of positive sides to traditional hard copy books. I am attracted to the convenience of storing many books in a reader about the size of one real book. I would not call E books junk. I have not bought an eReader mostly because I'm not comfortable with giving Apple . . . any more the control over free speech than they already have.

as a student, I get access to netlibrary books.
Thousands of them, and I can both search them for topics and increase font size. Printed books often cram stuff into small print to cram more into the book. I could not afford all the books I have access to.

Plus storing hundreds of books online or on a kindle type device is quite an advantage.

As mentioned, some very rare manuscripts such as ethiopian or indian ancient texts are scanned and available for free or subscription.

I have a USB with Cool Reader and lots of ebooks as *.epub from Baen's Free Library and Project Gutenberg . Project Gutenberg is where I found Edison's Conquest of Mars.

A lot of good titles there of all types - brings back a lot of memories.
Most of my current reading is either Abe Books for ancient out of print materials or failing that, Gutenberg & Google. Some things just can't be had in hard copy and are not loanable from libraries.

Baxter writes fiction based on science theory and it stretches science fiction farther than any other author I have read.

The list would have been much more useful if it contained the following additional information:
Author
Publisher
Year published
Ebook version availability

Suggestion: The Wizard in Spite of Himself

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

John Brunner has three:
"The Shockwave Rider"
"Stand on Zanzibar"
"The Sheep Look up"

"The Adolescence of P1", Thomas J. Ryan, 1977 -- "Original AI" sci-fi, very readable, entertaining, thought-provoking. Not as "far-out" sci-fi as most of these "fantasy/fiction" titles -- not even in 1977, when I read it. Think of a "Capitalistic" AI program/entity to "acquire and grow capital". It may inspire some hacker-geeks to "try it at home".

Ye Olde Goate
"Olde Goates don't 'fade away', they just 'butt out'."

It should be in the top of the list for every geek.

I've only read 41 of the 75 books on the list. I'm off the book store...

Not counting the series, has anyone noticed that Ayn Rand hold three spots on the list; Atlas Shrugged , The Fountainhead and Anathem. While H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert A. Heinlein have only two each.

1963 by Pierre Boulle.

I use the Nook, rather than the Kindle, but I really like reading the books on the Nook. I purchased an actual, physical book this week because it wasn't available in ebook format yet, and I'm spoiled and didn't want to wait. The font was a bit small, and I really missed the ability to change the font size to a larger font.

I do like the feel of a real book and the ability to see the cover art better, but for cost savings and space savings, I'll go with the ebook before I'll buy the physical book. And before you say that there's no cost savings because of the cost of the device, yes, there is. I read a LOT and the nook paid for itself in 3 months.

I would add the Belgarion series by David Eddings, then the Mallorean series which is the sequel series. It's the typical fantasy quest novel with the company of diverse companions, but it's still awesome.

I was happy to see Little, Big on this list. Crowley is one of my favorites. I agree with about 80% of the list (the rest I haven't read yet...)

Atlas Shrugged was one long, repetitive, and wretched slog. If you must torture yourself with Rand so you can say you've read one of her "books," read the shorter Fountainhead. Only good thing about Rand is when you've read one, you've read them all.

Here's my "I can't believe it did not make a Geek Book List:" John Shore's, The Sachertorte Algorithm, http://preview.tinyurl.com/24auyt6

If you're "Management" or "GREEDY Capitalist", you won't like it. The more working people who read it, the more we will be "... Mad as Hell, and We're NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!".

Ye Olde Goate
"Olde Goates don't 'fade away', they just 'butt out'."

I'm neither management nor greedy capitalist and I still did not like it. I'm just not into hypocritical blowhards, be they on the right or the left. Classic example: While married, she's having an affair with also married and much younger Nathaniel Branden. Then when Branden had an additional affair with a much younger woman, Rand threw an unholy fit. This the champion of the philosophy of rational self-interest.

Just applying the basic (but popular, best-seller) theme/premise/title (of that era) to our current political/economic scenario. Some authors have writing styles that are difficult to "wade through", but what they have to say "has merit" (albeit in fewer words).

Ye Olde Goate

Atlas Shrugged was a long and hard read; but it did have some good ideas as well as explainations about why communism did not work. Rand immigrated from USSR and was enthusiastically capitalistic. The fault you hold against her is that her personal life did not match the ideals of her writings about Objectivism.

People are prone to temptations and also tend to rationalize their behavior when caught. Rand is no exception. It is not whether Rand was a bad person for not following her ideals; it is whether those ideals are worth following.

I enjoyed reading "Atlas Shrugged", but "The Fountainhead" lacked the mystery. "Atlas Shrugged" is not about greedy capitalists but about business leaders who love their industry and take pride in their products. The bad guys are the businessmen who do not like business and use politics to cheat their way to success. It was the political businessmen who pushed the industries into the ground while living large. Not far off from what is going on now with the financial industry taking huge risks without suffering the consequences.

If you think this book was about Greedy Capitalists" you've missed the whole point. Better listen to the "Money Speech" one more, make that several more times.

The book wasn't about GREEDY Capitalists, it was about the 20% of the people who do 80% of the work (GNP value-added) in our economy. If the book was ABOUT the GREEDY Capitalists, they'd be the only ones who bought and read it. (EGO boost, little do they need it). Never make the Best-seller list.

The book was really about one of the oldest characters in Western literature -- EVERYMAN.

Ye Olde Goate

Instead of Ayn Rand's polemic, add Issac Asimov's Foundation series. Old but still worth reading.

I cannot understand why the list did not include "The Mote In God's Eye," which is possibly the best science-fiction novel ever written. Of course, I also cannot understand why George Lucas has not made a movie out of that book.

I can't even remember the last time I bought a hardback (apart from coffee table-type books). Living in Australia has both advantages and disadvantages in this respect. Advantage - most books aren't published in hardback but go straight to paperback. Disadvantage - because of the restrictive import laws designed to protect local publishers, and the fact that many of the paperbacks are the large trade-sized ones, books are usually a lot more expensive here than in the US. I tend to save up my geek-type book purchases and put in orders to Amazon a couple of times a year.
I've never bought an eBook, partly for the same reasons. A lot of eBooks aren't available to buy in Australia, and many of the rest are priced to be cheaper than the hardback book which I wouldn't have bought anyway, but comparable to the mass-market paperback.

I would add The Anubis Gates. Or pretty much anything else by Tim Powers.

And no RR Martin represented?

I would add Peopleware, by DeMarco & Lister.

I would remove the 4 Serpentwar books.

I can't believe that the serpent war saga was broken down book by book, and there is not even a mention of DAVID EDDINGS???????

I can't believe Fahrenheit 451 was picked instead of of Martian Chronicles