"Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" by Martin Fowler made a big difference for me at the time. Also, "Domain Driven Design" by Eric Evans. Both ha

"Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" by Martin Fowler made a big difference for me at the time. Also, "Domain Driven Design" by Eric Evans. Both have a focus on high level architecture. Of books that are more on the craft of programming, "Refactoring" (Also Fowler) is good. And I enjoyed "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel too. In general, I suspect that the value of a book has more to do with where the reader is, than where the book is.