That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent

That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent. But for what it's worth, here's a subset, cribbed from my previous HN comments: Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg Hyperspace - Michio Kaku Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin About Time - Paul Davies Time Reborn - Lee Smolin The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos - Seth Lloyd Higgs - The invention and discovery of the 'God Particle' - Jim Baggott Analogy Making As Perception - Melanie Mitchell Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky Engineering General Intelligence, Part 1 - Ben Goertzel Engineering General Intelligence, Part 2 - Ben Goertzel The AGI Revolution - Ben Goertzel Hackers & Painters by our very own Paul "pg" Graham Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Katie Hafner & John Markoff Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology - Steven Levy Ghost In The Wires - Kevin Mitnick The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand It's Not About The Bike - Lance Armstrong Ultramarathon Man - Dean Karnazes Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Robert Bly Report From Engine Co 82 - Dennis Smith Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries, Jack Trout and Philip Kotler The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! - Al Ries and Jack Trout Re-Positioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition - Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin Marketing High Technology - William H. Davidow Marketing Warfare - Al Ries The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb