Some good books I have read, recently or not:

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

Can Love Last? by Stephen Mitchell

Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr

Geography of Nowhere by James H. Kunstler

Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnum

Tenured Radicals by Roger Kimball

Home from Nowhere by James H. Kunstler

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Lost Japan by Alex Kerr

I recommend half.com for used books if you don't have a good used book store nearby.

Most influential to me:

• The Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander
• Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
• Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
• The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert
• Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstader
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• One Hundred Poems from the Chinese translated by Kenneth Rexroth
• Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, An Introduction by J. D. Salinger
• Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
• The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright
• The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats