I've been giving away books for years, awesome habit! I finally got rid of all my old gaming books (hundreds) and their in the trunk of my car now ready to be dropped off at a nearby gaming store. Almost every technical book, algorithmic book, or fun book that comes my way gets stashed on my kindle ebook account, a pdf on dropbox, or now iOS apps.
Favorite trends/futurist tech book: Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy, preorded his next book created from the Technium, What Technology Wants
All time favorite fantasy book: The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazney (I read the series separately then got this awesome compilation of both series).
The books I'm actively reading or have read recently. My backlog is growing much faster than I can read them (some of the books on my list): Design Patterns in Ruby
CouchDB the definitive guide
Javascript the good parts
Seth Godin's work, idea Virus, everyone is an expert, Tribes, Zen Unicorn,
Four Steps to Epiphany
The Search
Don't Make me Think
Fun stuff that I read and affected who I am over the past few years: Awakening The Buddha Within
The Art of happiness
Peace in Every Step
How to Get Rich
Other fun fiction books: Pandora's star and the sequel
Ender's Game + 1 sequel
The Dark tower series (didn't finish)
The Wheel of Time (didn't finish, stopped book before last)
Stuff I haven't read yet but purchased/downloaded (in the queue): Viral Loop
Getting Real
The innovators dilemma
The Age of Spiritual machines
Cognitive surplus
I live in the future, here's how it works
BhagavadGita
The Rails Way (great reference), Why's Poignant Guide, The book of ruby
Beginning Scala, Scala By Example
Byte of Python, Think Python, Dive into Python, Learn Python the Hardway (can you tell I'd love a chance to learn more about python programming)
older stuff ( I blame wikipedia for getting me going on these):
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
The Critique of Practical Reason
Politics: a treatise on government
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the wealth of nations
How to make friends and influence people
The only book I've released/written (based on my first few months blogging last year) 3 Steps to Satisfaction http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/05/29/my-first-ebook/
Hopefully soon to be released, a future fantasy rpg I coauthored primarily with one friend with input from another. My coauthor is finishing the final editing while I work in a shrinking industry (systems engineer), push forward with a startup (go web apps!) and look for potential positions at active startups (love meeting people that dream big). Children of the Ark http://www.victusgames.com/Welcome_to_Victus_Games.html
Presentations: My slideshare favorites: http://www.slideshare.net/Victusfate/favorites
Startup Metrics for Pirates (nice Dave Mcclure!)
Dean Keynote Ladis (Google Designs, Lessons and Advice
building large distributed systems)
The Interoperable Web
Digital Intuition: Applying Common Sense Using
Dimensionality Reduction (Classification, Suggestion algs, Hunch!)
Design with Intent (more slides than cards)
Learn to Use semantic technologies using open source tools
Skill vs Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs
ubuntu pocket guide
If anyone needs a copy of a pdf of one of the above presentations, let me know