Hmmm... my own list of memorable programming books would look like (in no specific order):

  1. The Mythical Man Month, Brooks
  2. Peopleware, DeMarco and Lister
  3. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Norvig
  4. The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie
  5. The Ruby Way, Fulton

I had a hard time deciding whether or not to include the Pragmatic Programmer, in the end I decided to go with The Ruby Way because it was an unusually enjoyable read for a language book.

I know the original list was supposed to be more esoteric books, not classics, but I'm anticipating this becoming a thread of everyone's favorites. : ))