A snapshot of what's on the small shelf above my desk. Updated roughly quarterly. These are the books currently doing work — not the ones I keep for sentiment.

• Christopher Alexander — The Nature of Order, Vol. 1 (currently re-reading)
• John Berger — Ways of Seeing
• William Hazlitt — Selected Essays
• Ursula K. Le Guin — Steering the Craft
• Gwern Branwen — printout of selected long-form essays
• Yi-Fu Tuan — Space and Place
• Kim Stanley Robinson — The Years of Rice and Salt
• Annie Dillard — The Writing Life

Eight books. The full library is much larger; the working shelf is small on purpose. See A library of the living for the rule.

I don't recommend this list for anyone else. They're the books that are doing work for me right now. Yours will be different.

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