Books I recommend

Update: Works whose copyrights have expired can be found at the Project Gutenberg Web Site. This mostly applies to the classics I've listed below.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story - I start with a book I haven't read yet. I've read Liar's poker and found it quite interesting. I expect this one to be even better.

Liar's Poker : Rising Through the Wreckage of Wall Street - this is a must for any finance major as well as anyone interested in getting an "inside look" of a major Wall Street investment bank.

Brothers Karamazov - I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky (who's birth date is the same as mine, BTW). I find his writing to be clear, concise, yet thoughtful and interesting. This book is no exception. It is one of my favorite works by this author.

Crime and Punishment - it is through this book that I was first introduced to Dostoevsky during my high school years. Certainly this is one of the timeless classics that transcends time and national borders. The story is that of a young university student named Raskolnikov who commits a murder by justifying it as being morally acceptable, for the outcome of the crime will not have any negative consequences on the society. The author ultimately succeeds at describing Raskolnikov's psychological portrait as the character travels the journey wrought with madness, terror, and self-doubt. Fans of other great 19th century Russian authors like Chekhov (and to a lesser extent Tostoy or Pushkin) will not be disappointed.

Webmaster in a Nutshell (Nutshell Handbook) - those working in the Unix environment will find this O'Reilly book to be an invaluable resource. It covers not only HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, HTTP, but also delves into CGI, Perl and PHP. This book provides a good overall technical background for those managing web sites as well as to those who plan to do so in the future.

The list above is very limited in scope and should not be regarded as all-inclusive.