My favorite books - all 30 of them

A while ago, Wim Oosterlinck asked me to select my top 3 favorite books of all time so we could discuss them in his podcast show "Drie boeken". Before I was able to distill these 3 books though - one of the hardest things I had to do in my life, to be honest - I gathered a long list of no less than 30 books. Now, since we're still enjoying the Summer holidays and people tend to have a little more time to read now, I thought I'd share these 30 gems here on my blog. Enjoy!

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These were my top three:

  1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
  2. What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly
  3. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - Peter Frankopan

And these are the rest, not in any order of preference:

  1. Last Chance to see - Douglas Adams
  2. Meaning of Liff - Douglas Adams en John Lloyd 
  3. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
  4. I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
  5. Solaris - Stanislas Lem
  6. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (inspiration 1984)
  7. Neuromancer - William Gibson
  8. Thee body problem - Liu Cixin
  9. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
  10. The Whole Earth Catalog - Stewart Brand
  11. Xanadu - Ted Nelson
  12. The Little Kingdom - Michael Moritz
  13. Revolution in The Valley - Andy Hertzfeld
  14. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman
  15. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick
  16. Red Alert - Peter George (inspiration for Dr. Strangelove)
  17. World Order - Henry Kissinger
  18. Captain Scott - Ranulph Fiennes
  19. Huey Long - T. Harry Williams
  20. The Path between the Seas - David McCullough
  21. 1585 De Val Van Antwerpen - Gustaaf Assaert
  22. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
  23. Setting Free the Bears - John Irving
  24. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
  25. A Whack on the Side of the Head - Roger von Oech
  26. Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB)- Douglas Hofstadter
  27. Department of Mind-Blowing Theories - Tom Gauld

You can listen to my (Dutch) conversation with Wim Oosterlinck about my favorite books here: