tkamphefner

This guy samurai sword fights. Your list includes Moby dick, which stands out to me as pretty different (much more intense read) than the rest. What'd you get out of it?

How would you describe your experience with the Baroque cycle?

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, for a coming of age story, using nanotechnology as a futuristic concept for understanding the differences of being fed one's needs and being given the tools for meeting them.

Steinbeck's East of Eden for coming to grips with a fundamental moral struggle of what is good and what is choice.

Anything ever written by Kurt Vonnegut for the proper cynicism needed to live in this world.

Oscar Wilde for that same cynicism minus the science fiction, plus more witty one liners.

I consider Steinbeck's way of creating a multi-character narrative that so completely encompasses human nature in as many ways as he does one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had reading. I would compare the satirical cynicism of the multifaceted characters of Catch-22 (a recommendation) to the rich characters of EoE.

Pirsig has a way of writing that appeals to people of an engineering mind. Don't know much about the others.