Books (and other items) That Sumana Would Like

Man. Material goods. We need them, they clutter our lives, and then there is the gift thing.

If you are thinking of purchasing a gift for me, note that I support almost everything that the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union do, and that they can always use your donations. Especially in the wake of 2004's and 2005's natural disasters, I really, really would prefer you donate to charity rather than give me something for my birthday or a like occasion. Charity Navigator's donation guide can help you find reputable, competent charities.

However, if you must give me an object, you can't go wrong with any of the books or other items below. Sure, I don't have enough shelf space as it is, but that's my problem.

Sumana's Book Wishlist

These are books that I would like to read, roughly ordered by my desire. When I borrow them from the library I take them off the list. You can probably find all of these books at Bookfinder, and many of them at the Powell's Books website or at any other independent bookstore.

  1. Hammer & Tickle by Ben Lewis
  2. In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing by Walter Murch
  3. Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office by Kevin Davis
  4. Working Fire: The Making of an Accidental Fireman by Zac Unger
  5. Judy McKay's Managing the Test People: A Guide to Practical Technical Management
  6. The Hotel: Backstairs at the World's Most Exclusive Hotel by Jeffrey Robinson
  7. The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work by Danny Hillis
  8. Gerald Weinberg's Becoming a Technical Leader: an Organic Problem-Solving Approach
  9. From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice
  10. Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina comic series, starting with anthology #7. Oh, Brian K. Vaughan, I will follow thee.
  11. Taken by Edward Bloor
  12. The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source by Maria Winslow (self-published through Lulu.com)
  13. Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo
  14. Any work by Gordon Korman. Many are out of print -- I'd specifically like those, his young adult works of the 1980s. Especially neat would be No Coins, Please or Our Man Weston. I think I own all his post-2000 stuff.
  15. Code by Charles Petzold
  16. The Avatar Way of Leadership - Leadership Lessons from Rama, Krishna and Draupadi by Harsh Verma
  17. Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel
  18. Dear Greenpeace by Simon James
  19. Anything by Ruth Reichl except Tender at the Bone
  20. Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael Scott
  21. Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon
  22. On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman F. Dixon
  23. Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science by John M. Zelle
  24. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
  25. Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
  26. Seeing Like A State by James Scott
  27. Barbara Hambly's Stranger At The Wedding, a.k.a. Sorcerer's Ward
  28. The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, and Strata R. Chalup
  29. Any work by Anthony Trollope excepting The Way We Live Now and Barchester Towers and The Warden and his autobiography
  30. Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error by S. M. Casey
  31. Anything by Bruce Schneier, except Beyond Fear
  32. The Aeneid, Robert Fagles translation
  33. Jan Slonczewski's Still Forms on Foxfield
  34. Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge by Martin Sprouse
  35. Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan
  36. Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
  37. Hearing Beyond the Words: How to Become a Listening Pastor by Emma J. Justes
  38. Any work by George Eliot excepting Middlemarch or Silas Marner
  39. Gynaecology by Ten Teachers by Geoffrey Chamberlain, Stanley G. Clayton and Ash Monga
  40. The Money Machine: How the City Works by Philip Coggan
  41. Shari Tepper's science fiction, especially The Gate to Women's Country
  42. Deadly Meeting by Robert Bernard
  43. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap Press, April 2007)
  44. Sara Bongiorni's A Year Without "Made in China"
  45. Murder at the MLA by D.J.H. Jones
  46. Anything by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
  47. How to Design Programs by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi (the paper version, though I can access it for free online)
  48. Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey and Stewart C. Myers
  49. Any of Rick Cook's Wizardry series, such as Wizard's Bane, The Wizardry Compiled, The Wizardry Cursed, The Wizardry Consulted, and The Wizardry Quested
  50. Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime
  51. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
  52. Any work by Rupert Thomson, such as Divided Kingdom or The Book Of Revelation
  53. The Wrench by Primo Levi
  54. The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
  55. Dave Allan's Stream Ecology: Structure and Function of Running Waters
  56. Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style
  57. No Trumpets or Bugles: Recollections of an Unrepentant Babu by J.B. D'Souza
  58. War Through The Ages by Lynn Montross
  59. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
  60. Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
  61. Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century by Philip Ball
  62. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese
  63. Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
  64. John Holt's How Children Learn and How Children Fail
  65. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch
  66. Immunology: The Immune System in Health and Disease by Janeway, Travers, Walport, and Shlomchik
  67. The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers by Sheridan Blau
  68. A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder et al.
  69. The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
  70. The Revenge Effect by Edward Tenner
  71. Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler
  72. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
  73. Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack
  74. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
  75. Information Storage and Retrieval by Robert R. Korfhage
  76. The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman
  77. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
  78. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman
  79. Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch
  80. The Machine That Changed The World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
  81. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. bRamachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
  82. Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality: the Enemy Within
  83. The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzberg
  84. Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine
  85. Any work by J.D. Salinger, excepting Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey. Yes, I've never read Catcher in the Rye. Yes, I was an angsty teenager. I never got the memo, okay?
  86. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics by Michael Walzer
  87. Life's Dominion by Ronald Dworkin
  88. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo With Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965 by Samuel M. Steward
  89. Michael Blumlein's The Healer
  90. The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter
  91. The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis
  92. Any of the Blue Monday anthologies by Chynna Clugston-Major
  93. The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
  94. Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
  95. Any children's book in Russian
  96. Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton
  97. Fiasco by Stanislaus Lem
  98. Children's letters to God: the new collection (Workman Publishing, 1991, New York)
  99. Mayflower Madam: The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows by Sydney Biddle Barrows
  100. Any work by D.H. Lawrence, excepting Lady Chatterley's Lover and Sons and Lovers and the stories contained in Dover's Selected Stories anthology
  101. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz
  102. A Budget of Trisections by Underwood Dudley
  103. John Rawls's Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
  104. Any work by Douglas Coupland, excepting Microserfs, Hey, Nostradamus!, Eleanor Rigby, and All Families Are Psychotic
  105. The Key to Metal Bumping An Instructive Manual of Body and Fender Repair Practices by Framnk T Sargent

Non-Book Item Wishlist

If you've read this far and you wish I would give you weird ideas for non-book, non-charity gift ideas for me, you're in luck.

Last updated 8 August 2008
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