1984, Orwell

Brave New World, Huxley

Animal Farm, Orwell

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Persig

Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut

Catch-22, Heller

The first 3-4 books of the Foundation Series, Asimov

The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

1632 by Eric Flint - Very interesting alternative history, which really gets you thinking about what it takes to run civilization. It's a series, and 1632 is the first book.

Several answers buried on HN past threads. A couple searches you can make at the foot of this page:

> ask hn books impact > ask hn books made you > show hn books > ask hn favorite books > top hn books

The last one especially since someone already thought of attempting to compile lists.

The only problem is your question is too broad. Fiction, nonfiction, technical books? What are you trying to accomplish?

Enchiridion of Epictetus https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/the-enchiridion/...

Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion, from Cialdini.

A good book to grasp the meaning of influence on other people (or from them upon you)

The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) by Žižek

His Dark Materials series by Pullman

100 Years of Solitude by Marquez

The Culture series by Banks

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore

Antifragile Ishmael Siddhartha Black swan

The Design of Everyday Things – Donald Norman

I’m going to be “that guy” and not recommend books. I have read many (well 40-50) books and I wouldn’t say that books have taught me anything I couldn’t have learned by experiencing it.

I mean, of course, Computer Science has made me read a lot of books, articles, blog posts, etc. but from the personal point of view, experiences (traveling, meeting new people, moving to a new city, getting a new job) are the things that have taught me more.

I don’t know, maybe I’m an illiterate or maybe I was bad choosing books (I think the later could be true).

So, keep reading but also keep having new (healthy) experiences!