This is a great introduction to Sci-Fi if one wants to get a peak at what it's like.  The reading is short and easy, but the story is magnificent.  Also if you have seen the movie 2001 and felt like "what the hell?" at the ending, you need to read this book.  It will clarify the issues that the movie cannot cover.

Based on the continuous evolution of man, Clarke sets out to exhibit that we did not evolve from God or random gene sequencing.  Our evolution was guided by the monoliths.  And this time they are back to help us into a new phase of transformation.  Along the way we learn not to trust HAL, right Dave? Dave are you there?

This book contains six stories written by Douglas Adams which includes: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Mostly Harmless, and Young Zaphod Plays it Safe.  I would recommend buying The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, that way you won't have to find and purchase all six different books.

Adams writes about the chaotic and highly improbable travels of Ford Perfect, Trillion, Marvin, Zaphod, and Arthur on the Heart of Gold spacecraft.  For pure entertainment there is nothing more compelling to read then this comedy/sci-fi series.  If you love British humor like Monty Phython, this book also provides the same wacky and silly situations that will make you wet your pants.  I don't think that I've ever laughed out loud reading a novel, till I started reading Adams' The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide.

The setting for this book is in New Orleans.  I highly suggest that if you have never been to New Orleans, on or around Mardigra, you start making plans to go next year.  The city is immense and incredibly diverse and knows how to throw a party.  After you've seen it and experienced it read this book.

Toole wrote this book when he was only 25 years old.  It almost never got published because he committed suicide and his mother was left with the manuscript.  I consider this book a literary masterpiece.  Toole cleverly tells the madcap misadventures of Ignatious Rielly as he waddles through New Orleans trying to expand peoples' worldview.  Ignatious is one of the most self-inflated, overdeveloped characters I have ever read, making this a hilarious and often a head shaking in disbelief storyline. 

Leapold was an early self-converted environmentalist and this book is his memoir of that conversion.  Leapold writes with sincerity and conviction as he deconstructs his worldview of man vs. nature to man dependent on nature. Leapold and his family also went to the extent of moving from their home into a small shack with no electricity and using conservation methods to live by.

This book is not filled with statistics and scientific proof of why we should change our live to be ecologically minded--Instead there is the sincere convictions of a man who understood why he needed to change his life and modeled for us to do the same.

Many people get a chance to hear about Malcolm X but few take the time to learn about him.  This man as far as I'm concerned has an unprecedented affect in the history of civil rights today.  His father died a follower of Martian Gaurvy.  His mother, who was left in charge of him and his brothers and sisters, was later instituted in a mental health ward leaving him and his siblings divided into foster care.  At a young age in school he told one of his favorite teachers that he wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer.  He was told by the same teacher that Negros were better at working with their hands instead.  Thus the ever changing Malcolm X seeks to find himself but finding only solitude.

Anyone with the slightest interest in civil rights and the role of Malcolm X needs to read this book.  It comes across as powerful symbol to how one man's journey helped changed the policy of a nation.