This isn&#x27;t a list from a tech person but a list from a ghostwriter for a retired billionaire businessman.  Its going to have to be bland and vaguely uncontroversial.  So it can&#x27;t be fiction or biography and comedy is iffy.<p>Here let me try.  On my non-fiction pile is Clojure for the Brave and True.  Look how I&#x27;m signalling.  I&#x27;m bland and inoffensive because its nonfiction.  I&#x27;m playing the signalling game so you can play along with me.  I&#x27;m quirky and interesting because its a semi exotic language and paradigm.  I&#x27;m leading the pack because its new, or at least recently was kinda new, both the book and the language.  I&#x27;m altruistic and all around nice guy (true story!) because buying the book basically funds the free website.  Its a great book to signal because its common and popular enough that if I have to explain the book or its topic or its funding model to you, you probably don&#x27;t belong on the site (nothing personal, of course, I&#x27;m just saying I donno how you&#x27;d be here without the common background).  Its also a pretty good book.  I like the author&#x27;s writing style and I can signal my good taste to you all.<p>Now lets try some pseudonymous public declaration of biography.  Two days ago I finished &quot;Battle on the Loomba&quot; which is pretty obscure so I&#x27;ll explain it.  This kid (literally a kid) gets drafted into the south african army in the late 80s, and participates in the craziest, most one sided, most dramatic, largest armor battle in Africa in half a century, second only to Rommel&#x27;s actions in sheer size and intensity.  And thats about it.  I was slightly disappointed, as a biography of a kid it missed all the strategic &#x2F; tactical goodness I like.  I like wargames and hex based maps with chits all over them.  Then again, as a short biography and memoir it was OK and interesting to compare his experiences to my own army service in the USA a couple years later.  Now look how horrific the signalling is for this biography.  First of all every race now hates me, because race was totally F&#x27;ed up in that conflict, so the S.A. govt he was fighting for is hated by the blacks and white progs for obvious reasons, yet the specific fight was to defend a neighboring black country against the Cuban invasion which on the surface appears dumb but the S.A. govt didn&#x27;t want a failed communist state or civil war state right on their border, well anyway it was complicated and basically every race on the planet can cherry pick a side to hate and transfer that abstract hate of a historical event to me because I voluntarily read the book, which ironically almost never discusses race directly.  Also I&#x27;m a warmongering bloodthirsty killer because I sometimes read military related books, which is about as stupid as claiming I&#x27;m a professional french chef because I&#x27;ve read a few cookbooks in my day, of course hatred and signalling are invariably irrational and illogical.  Also its frankly only a so so book, I&#x27;d give it an honest 5&#x2F;10 which means half the worlds books are worse, and that signalling makes me look like an idiot, people are only supposed to signal stuff they are 100% behind as fanatic supporters, so I&#x27;m some wishy washy lunatic with bad taste (may even be true!).  All reviews &quot;MUST&quot; be either 10&#x2F;10 or 0&#x2F;10 rants, wtf can I even claim to be part of modern internet culture without applying that basic rule?  Anyway the signalling sucks for biography and fiction, never ever discuss it in public.  Ever.  Even if you read it, or even if your ghostwriter thinks it would be interesting or great progressive signalling.<p>Comedy is 50&#x2F;50.  XKCD from the link is safe, but if it was George Carlin or Bill Cosby the race baiters would be out in force.  &quot;Yeah Cosby was funny but you know what he, and now by extension, you, did to those young women?&quot; etc etc.