This pops up from time to time on stackoverflow as well:
[1]: Favourite programming related academic papers
[2]: Influential books every programmer should read
[3]: Favourite (or most brilliant) Algorithms
[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/358033/what-are-your-favo...
[2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-m...
[3]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/189/algorithms-f...