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. Anything by Ruth Reichl except Tender at the Bone
  28. Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error by S. M. Casey
  29. Anything by Alexis A Gilliland, with lowest preference going to the Wizenbeak trilogy
  30. To Engineer Is Human by Henry Petroski
  31. Chaos for Breakfast: Practical Help and Humor for Nonprofit Executives by Robert A. Hall
  32. Drug Discovery: A History by Walter Sneader
  33. Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael Scott
  34. Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science by John M. Zelle
  35. Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
  36. Learning From Museums: Visitor Experience and the Making of Meaning by John Falk and Lynn Dierking
  37. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Goffman
  38. Practical Crime Scene Processing and Investigation
  39. Anything by Atul Gawande
  40. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
  41. Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson
  42. The WisCon Chronicles, Volumes 1-4, from Aqueduct Press
  43. The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers by Sheridan Blau
  44. A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
  45. A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder et al.
  46. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
  47. Design, Form, and Chaos by Paul Rand
  48. The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
  49. Anything in Anthony Price's Audley series, especially The Labyrinth Makers, The Hour of the Donkey, Soldier No More or Other Paths to Glory
  50. Learning the Law by Glanville Williams
  51. Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime
  52. Raphael Carter's The Fortunate Fall
  53. The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick
  54. Daniel Abraham's Long Price books
  55. Peter Brazeau's Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered
  56. Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger
  57. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA by Richard C. Lewontin
  58. Numbers by Rachel Ward
  59. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
  60. Triton by Delany, or anything by Samuel Delany
  61. Jack Finney's Time and Again
  62. Double Star by Heinlein
  63. Any work by Rupert Thomson, such as Divided Kingdom or The Book Of Revelation
  64. Super Spy by Matt Kindt
  65. Lucy A. Snyder's Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Other Oddities
  66. Peter Dickinson's King and Joker
  67. The Wrench by Primo Levi
  68. Murder at the MLA by D.J.H. Jones
  69. The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
  70. Lauren Beukes's Moxyland
  71. The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin
  72. Dave Allan's Stream Ecology: Structure and Function of Running Waters
  73. Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style
  74. No Trumpets or Bugles: Recollections of an Unrepentant Babu by J.B. D'Souza
  75. Up At The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
  76. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner
  77. Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball
  78. Anything by Vandana Singh, such as Distances: A Novella
  79. The Geography Of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  80. Practical Homicide Investigation by Vernon Geberth
  81. Homicide by David Simon
  82. Trance-Formations by Bandler and Grinder
  83. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
  84. Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
  85. The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, and Strata R. Chalup
  86. Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Kaner, Bach, Pettichord
  87. The Investigative Reporter's Handbook
  88. Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual
  89. A Fly for the Prosecution
  90. Democracy and the Foreigner by Bonnie Honig
  91. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by F.W.H Myer
  92. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
  93. The Mud Pie Dilemma
  94. Why Buildings Fall Down
  95. The Backstage Handbook
  96. Introduction to Airborne Radar
  97. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
  98. Thinkertoys
  99. Becoming The Parent You Want To Be
  100. The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook by Genevieve Jolliffe & Chris Jones
  101. Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their Art
  102. Scenic Art for the Theatre
  103. The Lie that tells a Truth by John Dufresne
  104. Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary, ed. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins
  105. On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
  106. Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens by James N. Davidson
  107. Don't Believe Everything You Think
  108. Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn
  109. Moving the Earth by Herbert L. Nichols and David A. Day
  110. The Norton Book of Women's Lives, edited by Phyllis Rose
  111. The Horse's Mind by Lucy Rees
  112. Stephen Pheasant's Bodyspace
  113. Regeneration or any other World War I novel by Pat Barker (The Eye in the Door or The Ghost Road)
  114. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society by Lila abu-Lughod
  115. Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern
  116. Reading The Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud
  117. Misquoting Jesus by Ehrman
  118. In Their Own Words by David Savran
  119. Formulas for Painters by Massey
  120. The Painter's Handbook by Gottsegen
  121. Pathologic Basis of Disease by Robbins & Cotran
  122. The Movie Business Book by Jason Squire
  123. Victor Villenueva's Cross-Talk in Comp Theory
  124. Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points
  125. Which Equalities Matter? by Anne Phillips
  126. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman's Essays in Taxation (author may be mixed up there)
  127. Weston's Rulebook for Arguments
  128. [Hidden] Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
  129. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts by Susan Hayward
  130. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (How to Help Your Child) by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
  131. Any work by Anthony Trollope excepting The Way We Live Now and Barchester Towers and The Warden and his autobiography
  132. Anything by Bruce Schneier, except Beyond Fear
  133. The Aeneid, Robert Fagles translation
  134. American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
  135. Jan Slonczewski's Still Forms on Foxfield
  136. Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge by Martin Sprouse
  137. Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo
  138. Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan
  139. Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida
  140. Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
  141. Any work by George Eliot excepting Middlemarch or Silas Marner
  142. Shari Tepper's science fiction, especially The Gate to Women's Country
  143. Deadly Meeting by Robert Bernard
  144. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap Press, April 2007)
  145. Anything by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
  146. How to Design Programs by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi (the paper version, though I can access it for free online)
  147. Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey and Stewart C. Myers
  148. Stage Lighting Design: The Art, The Craft, The Life by Richard Pilbrow
  149. 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
  150. Seeing Like A State by James Scott
  151. Charles Taylor's Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition
  152. Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century by Philip Ball
  153. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese
  154. Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
  155. John Holt's How Children Learn and How Children Fail
  156. 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
  157. 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")
  158. Personal Days by Ed Park
  159. Immunology: The Immune System in Health and Disease by Janeway, Travers, Walport, and Shlomchik
  160. The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
  161. The Revenge Effect by Edward Tenner
  162. Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler
  163. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
  164. Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack
  165. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
  166. Information Storage and Retrieval by Robert R. Korfhage
  167. The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman
  168. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
  169. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman
  170. Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch
  171. The Machine That Changed The World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
  172. Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality: the Enemy Within
  173. The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzberg
  174. Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine
  175. 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?
  176. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics by Michael Walzer
  177. Life's Dominion by Ronald Dworkin
  178. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo With Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965 by Samuel M. Steward
  179. Michael Blumlein's The Healer
  180. The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter
  181. The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis
  182. Any of the Blue Monday anthologies by Chynna Clugston-Major
  183. Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
  184. 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
  185. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz
  186. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts
  187. The Family Cow by Dirk Van Loon
  188. My Life With the Saints by [Father] Jim Martin
  189. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by Adam Phillips
  190. Psychological Testing by Anastasi and Urbina
  191. Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries
  192. The Murder of Helen Jewett by Cohen
  193. The Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston
  194. A Budget of Trisections by Underwood Dudley
  195. John Rawls's Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
  196. Any work by Douglas Coupland, excepting Microserfs, Hey, Nostradamus!, Eleanor Rigby, and All Families Are Psychotic
  197. Any children's book in Russian
  198. Kevin Carson's Organization Theory
  199. Fiasco by Stanislaus Lem
  200. Children's letters to God: the new collection (Workman Publishing, 1991, New York)
  201. Mayflower Madam: The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows by Sydney Biddle Barrows
  202. The Key to Metal Bumping An Instructive Manual of Body and Fender Repair Practices by Framnk T Sargent
  203. 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 12 March 2010
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