My own humble suggestions - although the books are hardly forgotten. But I think people focus a lot on technical / engineering books, and very little on design

My own humble suggestions - although the books are hardly forgotten. But I think people focus a lot on technical / engineering books, and very little on design / user experience / human behavior, which arguably contribute much more to the overall impressions end users have of programmers' work. First, the greatest book of all time, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - an amazingly introspective and insightful look into how to live an examined life and improve oneself. And then if you want to learn lower-case "design thinking", my top 10 books * Design for Everyday Things - duh. I re-read chunks of it all the time. * Tufte - hard to pick one, I might actually be iconoclastic and go with Visual Explanations which I think has more to offer programmers over pure data visualization. Again, just grab one every day, flip through 3-4 pages, rinse, repeat. * User Story Mapping - Extremely memorable book - it gives you a pretty clear field guide on prioritization, empathy, communication ... just a great book. * Badass by Kathy Sierra - I flip through this book again and again. It is gospel truth about what motivates humans. * The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO's most practical book. (Close second: Designing Interactions.) * Universal Methods of Design - another deeply practical book, lots of good tips and examples. * Universal Principles of Design - Sister book to the Universal Methods. Again, straightforward, flip to any page and get an idea when you're brainstorming. * Thinking in Systems - I recommend you skim this book through, but come back to it a lot, it grows with you. * Inspired by Marty Cagan - again, love nuts and bolts process books. * Don't Make Me Think! - still a classic, still see these mistakes being made all the time in modern app dev.