Zeram

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

Because they were just recently discontinued by Intel and generally speaking discontinued equipment tends to go on sale.

I so feel this meme… and just putting it out there that there’s a good chance that pretty soon NUCs are likely to be deeply on sale.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Culture series by Iain M. banks. Much like Dune there is a ton of world building that occurs in the novels but it’s not the focus of any one novel. You can read them independently and still enjoy them. The concepts he tackles in the novels were way ahead of their time and his prose and s second to none. The novel Consider Phlebas is typically where most people start, but I started The Player of Games.