Saturday, March 12, 2005
books knuth likes
- Life A Users Manual by Georges Perec (perhaps the greatest 20th century novel)
- Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers (captures Oxford high-table small-talk wonderfully)
- An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (also Oxford but in the 1660s)
- Death of a Salesperson by Robert Barnard (who is at his best in short stories like these)
- The Haj by Leon Uris (great to read on a trip to Israel)
- Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk (in-depth characters plus a whole philosophy) On
- Food and Cooking by Harold McGee (applied biochemistry in the kitchen)
- Food by Waverley Root (his magnum opus, a wonderful history of everything delicious)
- The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (the Great California Novel, entirely in 14-line sonnets)
- The Age of Faith by Will Durant (volume 4 of his series, covers the years 325--1300)
- Efronia by Stina Katchadourian (diaries and letters of a remarkable Armenian woman)
- The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel (biographies of Ramanujan and Hardy)
- Hackers by Steven Levy (incredibly well written tale of our times)
- The Abominable Man by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (one of their brilliantly Swedish detective novels)
