I read a fair amount of books, I generally always have two on the go: a non-fiction one at work, and a fiction one at home. In the months since the last thread, there are two books which just blew me away completely:

Alfred Lansing - Endurance (Shackleton's Incredible Voyage)

This is the very definition of incredible, and the very definition of endurance. Read it, and cry the manliest tears you will ever cry. Then, whenever you think your're having a hard time, that book will come to mind, and it will either snap you out of your pathetic first world problem, or guide you through it.

The other is Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which had been taunting me from my bookshelf for a couple of years now, so I finally got round to starting it. It's beautifully written and utterly absorbing, and I know there will be a temporary void in my life when I finish it, which anyone who has read an absorbing book will be familiar with. The blurb on the cover says "The only catch to reading a novel as imposingly magnificent as this is that for the next few months, everything else seems small and obvious by comparison". Well, I don't usually subscribe to such drivel but this is pretty damn accurate, (although I'm guessing months is an exaggeration).

Other books I'd highlight are Children of Time, A Fire Upon the Deep, The Man Who Fell to Earth (fiction) and Everest 1953, Annapurna (non-fiction).

the ending of anathem is unfortunately rushed and not very rewarding, kind of typical of Neal Stephenson

Indeed. Great righter though, knows how to write an engaging story.
I've read all of Stephensons novels besides the first 2 in the 80s and Mongoliad. He has the problem on not being able to finish novels. Stories are great, the 1k pages go past like a breeze, he could go on another few thousand without a problem, but instead he just cuts off at a random point quite often.

solution: continue writing until infinity

the old testament, a collection of essays by Alan watts called this is it, just finished fingerprints of the gods by Graham Hancock, and have been slowly getting through antifragile by nassim taleb something or other

your books need more extreme vetting.

Democracy and Education by John Dewey. Only read it casually, which is probably a pretty stupid thing to do with a book like that. Nice thinking though.

Confessions by Saint Augustine and I'm also re-reading The Perfumed Garden by the Sheikh Nefzawi.

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski, because House of Leaves is phenomenal.

Masters of Doom ( for the 2nd time )

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.
Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie

Lev Tolstoi - War and Peace
Robert Jordan - The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time 5)
Bertrand Russell - A History of Western Philosophy
Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem
Timothy Zahn - Thrawn
A few books on art history

mastering audio by bob katz... not really doing mastering, just want to build on my knowledge.

giordano bruno and the hermetic tradition by frances yates... hard to say anything short about this one

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned
Herbert: Dune Messiah

I watch a lot of youtube videos does that count?

I'd rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made.

there are a bunch I'm "reading" but these are the ones that stick out:

Democracy in America
The International Jew
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Mein Kampf
The Holocaust Industry
The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle

Stephen King - Eyes Of The Dragon
Julius Evola and the Ur group - Introduction To Magic

As you're all more into fantasy/scifi I propose to read the new Nobel prize winner's "The Buried Giant" by Kazuo Ishiguro together?

I'm not much into the genre literature myself, but this could be a nice compromise?

Author and theorist Kehlmann spoke highly of it in this radio show I just listened to.

Not really a book but "The death of quake" or how other people to call it the latest patch notes after playing the latest QC patch.
Reason was that I was curious at what they thought they had fixed and what kind of known issues there were.
Not really sure if it's fiction or non-fiction though... I hope it's the first... but I'm fairly sure it actually happened ;(