Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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Reading List

This is a lifetime to-read list and also tracker of books I’ve read. The initial list came from Reddit’s Favorite Books in 2010. In 2011, I added entries from NPR’s top 100 sci-fi/fantasy novels. Every so often I’ll add some books recommended to me to the list. The items are generally sorted in the order given above. I don’t restrict myself to reading books only from this list. You can browse the books tag to see other things I’ve read.

Finished reading (parentheses indicates year read, and link to relevant content if any) (You can jump to the unread list.)

  1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
  2. 1984 by George Orwell.
  3. Dune by Frank Herbert. (2014)
  4. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. (2013)
  5. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. (entire series sometime around 2006-2008)
  6. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. (2016)
  7. The Bible by Various. (circa 1992)
  8. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. (2016)
  9. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
  10. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman. (2016)
  11. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (2016)
  12. The Foundation Saga by Isaac Asimov. (2013 - Foundation Trilogy only: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation)
  13. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
  14. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. (1992, 2nd year HS English class)
  15. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
  16. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
  17. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
  18. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. (2016)
  19. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (1992, 2nd year HS English class)
  20. The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
  21. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. (2014)
  22. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (2016)
  23. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. (2016)
  24. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. (first three books 2011, the rest as they came out)
  25. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. (1991 - 1st year HS English class)
  26. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.
  27. John Dies at the End by David Wong. (2016)
  28. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. (2016)
  29. American Gods by Neil Gaiman. (2004)
  30. The Dark Tower by Stephen King. (2005-2006)
  31. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. (2004)
  32. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. (during college, sometime between 1996-2001)
  33. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. (2016)
  34. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. (around 1996-2013(!!))
  35. Watchmen by Alan Moore
  36. The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind (around 2006-2007)
  37. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson (2015-???)
  38. Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson (2017)
  39. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (2005)

Unread:

  1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
  2. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
  3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
  4. Neuromancer by William Gibson.
  5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
  6. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.
  7. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
  8. Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
  9. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse.
  10. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwelski.
  11. The Giver by Lois Lowry.
  12. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
  13. Animal Farm by George Orwell.
  14. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
  15. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
  16. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
  17. The Stranger by Albert Camus.
  18. Various by Dr. Seuss.
  19. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
  20. The Monster At The End Of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin.
  21. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.
  22. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
  23. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick.
  24. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
  25. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
  26. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
  27. The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various.
  28. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
  29. Odyssey by Homer.
  30. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
  31. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  32. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
  33. Ringworld by Larry Niven.
  34. The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick.
  35. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein.
  36. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
  37. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
  38. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
  39. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
  40. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
  41. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
  42. Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi.
  43. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
  44. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley.
  45. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
  46. Contact by Carl Sagan.
  47. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
  48. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
  49. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
  50. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
  51. The Stand by Stephen King.
  52. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.
  53. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.
  54. Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
  55. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
  56. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer.
  57. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media ** by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.
  58. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov.
  59. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
  60. Collapse by Jared Diamond.
  61. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallave.
  62. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
  63. Chaos by James Gleick.
  64. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
  65. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon.
  66. You Can Choose to Be Happy by Tom G. Stevens.
  67. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler.
  68. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
  69. Candide by Voltaire.
  70. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
  71. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum.
  72. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.
  73. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
  74. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
  75. The Making of a Radical by Scott Nearing.
  76. The Turner Diaries by Andrew MacDonald.
  77. The Scar by China Mieville.
  78. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
  79. Going Rogue by Sarah Palin.
  80. 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis De Sade.
  81. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke.
  82. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
  83. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.
  84. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
  85. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.
  86. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke.
  87. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
  88. The Book of Ler by MA Foster.
  89. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.
  90. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
  91. Watership Down by Richard Adams.
  92. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.
  93. Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel.
  94. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.
  95. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
  96. The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson.
  97. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck .
  98. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
  99. The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
  100. The Chomsky Reader by Noam Chomsky.
  101. The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould.
  102. Flatland by Edwin Abbot.
  103. On the Road by Jack Kerouac .
  104. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
  105. The Classical Style by Charles Rosen.
  106. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman.
  107. An American Life by Ronald Reagan.
  108. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.
  109. The Little Schemer by Friedman & Felleisen.
  110. Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau.
  111. Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West.
  112. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
  113. Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
  114. The Game by Neil Strauss.
  115. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.
  116. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
  117. The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter.
  118. Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft.
  119. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
  120. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.
  121. The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker.
  122. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
  123. The Wasteland by TS Elliot.
  124. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
  125. Pi to 5 million places by [kick books].
  126. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
  127. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
  128. Guts by Chuck Palahniuk.
  129. fear and trembling by Søren Kierkegaard.
  130. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey.
  131. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.
  132. Ulysses by James Joyce.
  133. Macbeth by Shakespeare.
  134. Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
  135. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith.
  136. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.
  137. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
  138. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.
  139. Women by Charles Bukowski.
  140. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
  141. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
  142. How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland.
  143. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
  144. The singularity is near by Ray Kurzweil.
  145. The Day of the Trifids by John Wyndham.
  146. The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman).
  147. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
  148. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts.
  149. The Elegant Universe by Brian Green.
  150. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.
  151. Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
  152. King Lear by Shakespeare.
  153. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell.
  154. The Voyage of Argo: The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes.
  155. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.
  156. Nichomachean ethics by Aristotle.
  157. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandlla.
  158. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
  159. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
  160. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.
  161. The Occult by Colin Wilson.
  162. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
  163. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
  164. Hamlet by Shakespeare.
  165. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
  166. Fahrenheit 451
  167. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  168. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
  169. The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles) by Patrick Rothfuss
  170. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  171. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
  172. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
  173. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
  174. Dragonflight (Pern) by Anne McCaffrey
  175. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  176. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  177. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  178. Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
  179. The Belgariad by David Eddings
  180. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
  181. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  182. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
  183. The Once and Future King by T.H.White
  184. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
  185. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
  186. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
  187. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
  188. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
  189. The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
  190. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
  191. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  192. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark
  193. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  194. The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
  195. The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks
  196. Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard
  197. The Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb
  198. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Aurdrey Niffenegger
  199. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne
  200. The Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore
  201. Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi
  202. Kushiel’s Dart trilogy by Jacqueline Carey
  203. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
  204. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  205. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series by Steven Erickson
  206. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
  207. The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
  208. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
  209. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
  210. The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
  211. The Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn (partially read as of 2017)
  212. Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
  213. The Elric saga by Michael Moorcock
  214. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
  215. Sunshine by Robert McKinley
  216. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
  217. The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
  218. Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven
  219. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
  220. The Xanth series by Piers Anthony
  221. The Space trilogy by C.S.Lewis
  222. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  223. Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
  224. Gentlemen Bastard series by Scott Lynch
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