Favourites

One particularly hilarious book which I liked a lot is:

Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There exists even a full-fledged web-page on the h2g2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is an adaptation of a famous radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio in 1978, was published as a "trilogy" in five parts, followed by a sixth novel written by Eoin Colfer in 2009. The book follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman, his friend Ford Prefect, an alien from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Galactic President, the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android, and Trillian the only other human survivor of Earth's destruction at the start of the book.

Some other great books, in the category of "vulgarizing scientific literature", are:

	Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, a must-read for every self-respecting computer scientist. In the book he relates the ideas of the logician Kurt Gödel, the artist M.C. Escher and great composer Johann Sebastian Bach, but the book is really about mathematics, meaning, intelligence, reflection and self-reference, language and much much more... Gödel, Escher, Bach won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.
	Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh gives a nice overview of the history of mathematics and how it eventually lead to the proof of Fermat's postulate by the mathematician Andres Wiles. A must for readers with a healthy interest in mathematics.
	Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick provides a good intuitive introduction to mathematical chaos theory and its applications.

In addition to these I liked most of the books written by my favourite authors (listed just below).

Some of my most favourite authors are:

	Douglas R. Hofstadter is probably best known for his famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, but he also wrote books such as Metamagical Themas, distilled from the column with the same name which he wrote for Scientific American from 1981 to 1983, and books on the nature of human consciousness, such as I Am a Strange Loop and The Mind's I.
	William Gibson is the author of books such as Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, All Tomorrow's Parties, Idoru, Virtual Light, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, ... With his debut Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace, and science fiction has never been the same since.
	Frank Herbert's award-winning Dune epic captured the imaginations of millions of readers worldwide — and transformed their perception of what the future could be. By his death in 1986, Frank Herbert had completed six novels in the Dune series. After his death, working from files left by his father, Brian Herbert and bestselling novelist Kevin J. Anderson collaborated on a new set of Dune novels, prequels and sequels to the classic Dune novels.
	Amélie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan to Belgian diplomats. She lived there until she was five years old, and then moved to many other countries including China, USA, Bangladesh, Burma and Laos. Since her first novel, Hygiène de l'assassin, published in 1992, she has published approximately one novel per year, including Les Catilinaires (1995), Stupeur et Tremblements (1999) and Métaphysique des tubes (2000). She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 1999 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française; the Prix René-Fallet; and the 1993 Prix Alain-Fournier.
	I'm almost ashamed to admit it but yes, I did like the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling too.

Beyond any doubt, my favourite architects are:

	Antonio Gaudi
	Victor Horta
	Hundertwasser

And here is a selection of some of my favourite cities :

Gent	Lisboa	Paris
Barcelona	London	Venice
Amsterdam	Moscow	San Francisco
Buenos Aires	Porto	Vancouver

Here are some of my favourite artists (in alphabetical order):

	Salvador Dali
	Paul Delvaux
	Mauritius Cornelius Escher
	H.R. Giger
	René Magritte