One of my favourite books I read in China was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Right now, due to McNally Robinson’s excellent Bargain Books section, I’m reading his Baroque Cycle and it is enthralling.
I love the idea that 17th Century Natural Philosophers had that they could categorize everything. I love dealing with that impulse in the Dewey Decimal System at work. It’s fun to try and figure out what a call number means when there’s only one example on the shelf. (I could do a trivial amount of googling for these things if I cared but my way is more fun.) Example: As far as I can tell, 779.93915 is for Photographs of Hair.
I also like that there’s a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Faith.