Since it's that present-buying time of the year, and sicne I saw someone else do it and was inspired, I thought I'd mention some good books to buy for people. Let me warn you, though. These books are for people who really like to read, not someone who has never read a book longer than Harry Potter.

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand- It's tough to explain. It's a political philosophy hiding inside a fantastic story. Or maybe it's a story hiding behind a philosophy. Liberals hate, religious fanatics probably hate, but libertarians and objectivists love it.

The Lord of the Rings- Simply the best fantasy literature ever written, and certainly one of the few fantasies that completely deserves to be called literature. The movies were great, but still couldn't tough the books.

A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin- A fantasy with so little magic, and so much violence and intrigue that it reads more like a thriller than a sword and sorcery novel. No one is sacred, and Martin kills off heros and villains alike when the storyline calls for it.

Harrington on Hold'em Vol. 1- If you know someone that enjoys poker and seems to want to improve, you can't do better than this book.

The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil- Ok, I haven't actually read this one, but I want to soon. The premise is fantastic. The Vingean Singularity is the idea that technology is advancing at such a rate that there is a point beyond which it is nearly impossible to predict what life will be like. This will be when the slope exponential curve of technological advancement is going nearly straight up. Kurzweil attempts to predict past that point.

The Watchmen, Absolute Edition, Moore and Gibbons- Possibly the best, but certianly the most revered, comic books series of all time, The Watchmen is collected in this beautiful edition. Moore took various superhero archetypes, mostly of the DC variety, changed their names and identities, and wrote a damn fine tale of murder, redemption, and villainy.

Maus I and II, Spiegelman- Won a Pulitzer, and, along with Watchmen, is probably the only comic that is considered literature by "intellectuals" who give it a chance. It's about the Holocaust, but Spiegelman manages to present it as if we (Jewish people) haven't been bombarded with Holocaust imagery our whole lives by using mice instead of people. Somehow it brings the humanity back instead of it being just another tragic tale of someone getting gassed.

FairTax, Boortz and Linder- I forget the exact title, but it's got a blue cover and is about the FairTax Plan. Buy one for me, too. :)

THat's it for now, more later if I think of more.