My top 15 books

Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it.

1. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Historical murder mystery with lots of debates about the power of reason, the Church, language, literature, etc.
2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. He always intended it to be one volume but the publisher made him split it. It was finally republished as one volume shortly before the Peter Jackson movies came out, but I still like the watercolours he made for the covers of the 3-volume set my parents have.
3. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. Sociological and evolutionary evidence for the existence of a hardwired human nature, and why it's necessary to morality whereas the modern and postmodern view of an infinitely malleable tabula rasa is not.
4. Where Monsoons Meet by anonymous. Cartoon history of Malaysia from the Malacca Sultanate, through colonization, to independence and the Emergency. The subtitle "A People's History" should have clued me in to where the author(s) were coming from, but I first read it at about age 12. It totally ruined my education since I never believed anything we were taught in Sejarah class after that.
5. I want to put one Asimov book in this list and can't decide between Foundation's Edge and the Robot Dreams anthology.
6. Mat Som by Lat. Graphic novel about a young guy from the kampung trying to make a living in KL. I have both the original and Adibah Amin's English translation; she seems to have done a decent job.
7. Where There Is No Doctor by David Werner. The bible for rural healthcare workers. I first read it at age 7 or so and that's what got me started on infectious diseases. I have a faint memory of carrying a book as big as my torso into the kitchen to ask "Mama, how do you pronounce T-E-T-A-N-U-S?"
8. Gilbert's Developmental Biology. Best college textbook I've ever owned. Beautiful illustrations and photos.
9. Gods That Failed by Vinoth Ramachandra. An overview of the false gods of this age (including a few movements from within the church itself).
10. The Sandman - well, yes, it's either 75 comic books or 10 paperback, so not technically "a book". But it's arguably a continuous story arc, and definitely by the same author. Maybe I should just get the 4-volume Absolute Sandman eventually.
11. CRC Press' Recombinant Poxviruses. My favourite work-related book, very comprehensive. A lot of new stuff has been done in the 17 (!) years since its publication, but it's a good overview of poxvirus biology and what to do with them.
12. Kine by A.R. Lloyd. Watership Down for predators - valiant English weasels fighting an invasion of the evil American mink (note: Mink are also in the weasel family but they mass about 20 times and measure about three times the length of Least Weasels. They became an invasive species in the UK after being introduced for fur farming, which is another reason Fur Is Bad).
13. Watership Down by Richard Adams. Er...I guess you can tell I like animals.
14. Sejarah Melayu by Tun Sri Lanang ("Sejarah Melayu" means "The History of the Malays"). My Malay sucks so reading this was a struggle but worthwhile. It starts out very fairytaleish and legendary (e.g. descendant of Alexander the Great travels from India to Indonesia in a magic bubble under the ocean) and becomes more historical as you move forward in time. The part near the end that describes the Portuguese slaughter of the Malaccans who had never seen firearms, made me cry.
15. Infinity's Shore by David Brin (and the rest of his Uplift series). I think many physicists who write science fiction tend to be lacking in their understanding of human nature and write wooden, stereotyped characters (Stephen Baxter being a spectacularly bad example), but Brin does great characters of all stripes - both human and non-. Also, he does very funny aliens. One of the few exceptions to my rule that if an author feels the need to put a cast of characters and glossary up front, that means he/she did a crappy job of introducing them in the story. His Civilization of the Five Galaxies is HUGE.

OK...I disobeyed the instruction to "don't take too long" since I just spent 15 minutes writing this.