
The Great Divorce
C. S. Lewis
4.7 on Amazon
4 HN comments

Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track
Will Larson and Tanya Reilly
4.4 on Amazon
4 HN comments

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Graphic Library)
Marjane Satrapi
4.6 on Amazon
4 HN comments

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot
John Muir , Tosh Gregg , et al.
4.8 on Amazon
4 HN comments

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Jon Krakauer, Scott Brick, et al.
4.5 on Amazon
4 HN comments

Writing Better Lyrics
Pat Pattison
4.6 on Amazon
4 HN comments

Stuff You Should Know: An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things
Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
4.7 on Amazon
4 HN comments

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
4.8 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The Book with No Pictures
B. J. Novak
4.8 on Amazon
3 HN comments

Wonder
R. J. Palacio
4.8 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Timothy Keller
4.7 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The House of God
Samuel Shem and John Updike
4.5 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E Baptist
4.8 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less
Richard Koch
4.6 on Amazon
3 HN comments

The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Viet Thanh Nguyen
4.3 on Amazon
3 HN comments
bluewavescrashonDec 12, 2018
* The Goldfinch -- Donna Tartt
* Hotel New Hampshire -- John Irving
* A Prayer For Owen Meany -- John Irving
* Wonder -- R.J. Palacio
* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain
* The Elegance of the Hedgehog -- Muriel Barbery
Irving and Tartt are my favorite.
iceyonAug 7, 2008
nostrademonsonJune 1, 2009
One observation though - and this is a gross generalization, and obviously doesn't apply to everyone. The people who never studied CS before college and never worked on outside projects tend to be less innovative, less willing to think outside the box. So they're more dependable engineers and often write cleaner code, but they're less likely to come up with a crazy idea or go beyond their established job description.
There are exceptions, of course. Wonder Wheel was done by someone who didn't program until he was a couple years into college, and was initially interested in being a filmmaker (and he's only a year or so out of college, so that's only 3-4 years total experience).