"The Tesseract"? Does that book feature a Mr. Charles Watson, by any chance?
That dude wrote "The Beach," too? And yes, the video game thingamajig made me laugh out loud; I couldn't believe how ridiculous it was.
A few of my favorites (sorry; they're not all fiction):
- "The Screwtape Letters," by C.S. Lewis
- "The Chronicles of Narnia," ditto
- "Animal Farm," by George Orwell
- "Radicals & Visionaries," by Thaddeus Wawro
- "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, " by J.R.R. Tolkien
- "The Tipping Point," by Malcolm Gladwell
- "Organizing Genius," by Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman
- "The American Leadership Tradition," by Marvin Olasky
- "Why I Am Not A Christian," edited by Bertrand Russell
The first one on there may be my favorite book of all time. The concept is original and interesting, and the book is wonderful. "Animal Farm" I've read anywhere from 6 to 10 times (I've honestly lost track). It's so simple...an incredibly light read; but it is not boring.
The last one on the list I read years ago, and don't remember as many specifics as I'd like. I hope to read it again sometime fairly soon. I listed it here despite having forgotten a good deal of it because I remember being quite glad that I'd read it, for one reason or another. I do dislike the fact that it is, essentially, just a collection of essays, however. Books like that always sort of bug me, if only because the essays sometimes overlap, repeating certain concepts or points.
Speaking of points, "The Tipping Point" is a must-read for anyone in a management position of any sort, IMO. It really paints a remarkable picture. I have to wonder to myself now and then: where is my "tipping point"? On a related note, even though I've only read a little bit of it, I recommend "The 80/20 Principle." Another interesting concept.
"Radicals & Visionaries" is a book made up of (I think) 50 short chapters (a few pages each), each devoted to a certain business figure of some sort. I dig it...big time. The small, digestable chunks make it very easy to read. It's a lot of fun.
"The American Leadership Tradition" does a remarkable job of linking moral shortcomings with professional shortcomings, and shows us clearly why we've come to distrust our President, and, as part of that, our Government. There was a time when The President was an honorable man that people put faith and trust into. Quite a change from the way people look at The Presidency today! This book will help to show you why morality DOES matter, and what happened to cause us to think the way we do about our Presidents these days.