I'm not reading these now, just the best of a lifetime of reading.
Always check the library first!
History
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
Who Invented the Computer? The Legal Battle That Changed Computing History
by Alice Rowe Burks and Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
(Time said it is the best book of the 20th century. I wouldn’t argue.)
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould.
Biography
Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life by Moshe Dayan
Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko.
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
Alias Shakespeare by Joseph Sobran
Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History by Alan T. Nolan
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
Finance
Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald, (The Enron collapse)
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis,
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
by Ben Mezrich
The House of Rothschild: Volume 1 and Volume 2: The World's Banker: 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson
Politics
Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West by Walid Phares
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson
Collapse by Jared Diamond.
Military
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew
The Making of a Quagmire by David Halberstam
Fiction
The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Backroads by Tawni O’Dell
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Kockroach: A Novel by Tyler Knox
The Emperor of Ocean Park by
Guilty Conscience Fiction
Little Girl Lost and Gone Baby Gone by Richard Aleas
Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child
Children’s Books
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill
The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald
Pierre, Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators all Around by Maurice Sendak
Amphigorey by Edward Gorey