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. Hearing Beyond the Words: How to Become a Listening Pastor by Emma J. Justes
  2. Gynaecology by Ten Teachers by Geoffrey Chamberlain, Stanley G. Clayton and Ash Monga
  3. Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon
  4. Judy McKay's Managing the Test People: A Guide to Practical Technical Management
  5. From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice by Patricia Benner
  6. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown
  7. The Hotel: Backstairs at the World's Most Exclusive Hotel by Jeffrey Robinson
  8. Hammer & Tickle by Ben Lewis
  9. The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work by Danny Hillis
  10. Barbara Hambly's Stranger At The Wedding, a.k.a. Sorcerer's Ward
  11. People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork
  12. Gerald Weinberg's Becoming a Technical Leader: an Organic Problem-Solving Approach or The Psychology of Computer Programming to reread -- or, heck, probably anything else he wrote on the general topic
  13. The Money Machine: How the City Works by Philip Coggan
  14. The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source by Maria Winslow (self-published through Lulu.com)
  15. 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 books.
  16. 13 Fatal Errors Managers Make and How You Can Avoid Them
  17. The Game Producer's Handbook by Dan Irish
  18. Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina comic series, starting with anthology #8. Oh, Brian K. Vaughan, I will follow thee.
  19. Code by Charles Petzold
  20. Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel
  21. The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk
  22. At Amberleaf Fair by Phyllis Ann Karr
  23. Drugs: From Discovery to Approval by Rick Ng
  24. William Esper's The Actor's Art and Craft
  25. Dear Greenpeace by Simon James
  26. The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
  27. An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews
  28. Anything by Ruth Reichl except Tender at the Bone
  29. Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error by S. M. Casey
  30. Anything by Alexis A Gilliland, with lowest preference going to the Wizenbeak trilogy
  31. To Engineer Is Human by Henry Petroski
  32. Chaos for Breakfast: Practical Help and Humor for Nonprofit Executives by Robert A. Hall
  33. Drug Discovery: A History by Walter Sneader
  34. Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael Scott
  35. Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science by John M. Zelle
  36. Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
  37. Learning From Museums: Visitor Experience and the Making of Meaning by John Falk and Lynn Dierking
  38. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Goffman
  39. Practical Crime Scene Processing and Investigation
  40. Anything by Atul Gawande
  41. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
  42. Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson
  43. The WisCon Chronicles, Volumes 1-4, from Aqueduct Press
  44. Stasiland by Anna Funder
  45. The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers by Sheridan Blau
  46. A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
  47. A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder et al.
  48. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
  49. Design, Form, and Chaos by Paul Rand
  50. The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
  51. Anything in Anthony Price's Audley series, especially The Labyrinth Makers, The Hour of the Donkey, Soldier No More or Other Paths to Glory
  52. Learning the Law by Glanville Williams
  53. Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime
  54. Raphael Carter's The Fortunate Fall
  55. The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick
  56. Daniel Abraham's Long Price books
  57. Peter Brazeau's Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered
  58. Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger
  59. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA by Richard C. Lewontin
  60. Numbers by Rachel Ward
  61. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
  62. Triton by Delany, or anything by Samuel Delany
  63. Jack Finney's Time and Again
  64. Double Star by Heinlein
  65. Any work by Rupert Thomson, such as Divided Kingdom or The Book Of Revelation
  66. Super Spy by Matt Kindt
  67. Lucy A. Snyder's Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Other Oddities
  68. Peter Dickinson's King and Joker
  69. The Wrench by Primo Levi
  70. Murder at the MLA by D.J.H. Jones
  71. The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
  72. Lauren Beukes's Moxyland
  73. The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin
  74. Dave Allan's Stream Ecology: Structure and Function of Running Waters
  75. Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style
  76. No Trumpets or Bugles: Recollections of an Unrepentant Babu by J.B. D'Souza
  77. Up At The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
  78. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner
  79. Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball
  80. Anything by Vandana Singh, such as Distances: A Novella
  81. The Geography Of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  82. Practical Homicide Investigation by Vernon Geberth
  83. Homicide by David Simon
  84. Trance-Formations by Bandler and Grinder
  85. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
  86. Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
  87. The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, and Strata R. Chalup
  88. Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Kaner, Bach, Pettichord
  89. The Investigative Reporter's Handbook
  90. Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual
  91. A Fly for the Prosecution
  92. Democracy and the Foreigner by Bonnie Honig
  93. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by F.W.H Myer
  94. Osamu Dazai's "Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy"
  95. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
  96. The Mud Pie Dilemma
  97. Why Buildings Fall Down
  98. The Backstage Handbook
  99. Introduction to Airborne Radar
  100. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
  101. Thinkertoys
  102. Becoming The Parent You Want To Be
  103. The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook by Genevieve Jolliffe & Chris Jones
  104. Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their Art
  105. Scenic Art for the Theatre
  106. The Lie that tells a Truth by John Dufresne
  107. Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary, ed. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins
  108. On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
  109. Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens by James N. Davidson
  110. Don't Believe Everything You Think
  111. Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn
  112. Moving the Earth by Herbert L. Nichols and David A. Day
  113. The Norton Book of Women's Lives, edited by Phyllis Rose
  114. The Horse's Mind by Lucy Rees
  115. Stephen Pheasant's Bodyspace
  116. Regeneration or any other World War I novel by Pat Barker (The Eye in the Door or The Ghost Road)
  117. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society by Lila abu-Lughod
  118. Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern
  119. Reading The Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud
  120. Misquoting Jesus by Ehrman
  121. In Their Own Words by David Savran
  122. Formulas for Painters by Massey
  123. The Painter's Handbook by Gottsegen
  124. Pathologic Basis of Disease by Robbins & Cotran
  125. The Movie Business Book by Jason Squire
  126. Victor Villenueva's Cross-Talk in Comp Theory
  127. Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points
  128. Which Equalities Matter? by Anne Phillips
  129. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman's Essays in Taxation (author may be mixed up there)
  130. Weston's Rulebook for Arguments
  131. [Hidden] Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
  132. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts by Susan Hayward
  133. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (How to Help Your Child) by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
  134. Any work by Anthony Trollope excepting The Way We Live Now and Barchester Towers and The Warden and his autobiography
  135. Anything by Bruce Schneier, except Beyond Fear
  136. The Aeneid, Robert Fagles translation
  137. American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
  138. Jan Slonczewski's Still Forms on Foxfield
  139. Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge by Martin Sprouse
  140. Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo
  141. Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan
  142. Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida
  143. Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
  144. Any work by George Eliot excepting Middlemarch or Silas Marner
  145. Shari Tepper's science fiction, especially The Gate to Women's Country
  146. Deadly Meeting by Robert Bernard
  147. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap Press, April 2007)
  148. Anything by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
  149. How to Design Programs by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi (the paper version, though I can access it for free online)
  150. Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey and Stewart C. Myers
  151. Stage Lighting Design: The Art, The Craft, The Life by Richard Pilbrow
  152. 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
  153. Seeing Like A State by James Scott
  154. Charles Taylor's Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition
  155. Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century by Philip Ball
  156. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese
  157. Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
  158. John Holt's How Children Learn and How Children Fail
  159. 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
  160. Crash: Ten Easy Ways to Avoid a Computer Disaster by Tony Collins and David Bicknell (subtitle also listed as "Learning from the World's Worst Computer Disasters")
  161. Personal Days by Ed Park
  162. Immunology: The Immune System in Health and Disease by Janeway, Travers, Walport, and Shlomchik
  163. The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
  164. The Revenge Effect by Edward Tenner
  165. Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler
  166. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
  167. Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack
  168. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
  169. Information Storage and Retrieval by Robert R. Korfhage
  170. The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman
  171. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
  172. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman
  173. Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch
  174. The Machine That Changed The World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
  175. Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality: the Enemy Within
  176. The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzberg
  177. Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine
  178. 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?
  179. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics by Michael Walzer
  180. Life's Dominion by Ronald Dworkin
  181. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo With Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965 by Samuel M. Steward
  182. Michael Blumlein's The Healer
  183. The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter
  184. The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis
  185. Any of the Blue Monday anthologies by Chynna Clugston-Major
  186. Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
  187. 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
  188. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz
  189. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts
  190. The Family Cow by Dirk Van Loon
  191. My Life With the Saints by [Father] Jim Martin
  192. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by Adam Phillips
  193. Psychological Testing by Anastasi and Urbina
  194. Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries
  195. The Murder of Helen Jewett by Cohen
  196. The Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston
  197. A Budget of Trisections by Underwood Dudley
  198. John Rawls's Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
  199. Any work by Douglas Coupland, excepting Microserfs, Hey, Nostradamus!, Eleanor Rigby, and All Families Are Psychotic
  200. Any children's book in Russian
  201. Kevin Carson's Organization Theory
  202. Fiasco by Stanislaus Lem
  203. Children's letters to God: the new collection (Workman Publishing, 1991, New York)
  204. Mayflower Madam: The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows by Sydney Biddle Barrows
  205. Why churches should not pay taxes by Dean M Kelley
  206. Little Children by Tom Perrotta
  207. The Key to Metal Bumping An Instructive Manual of Body and Fender Repair Practices by Framnk T Sargent
  208. War Through The Ages by Lynn Montross

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 30 April 2010
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