Ravings of the Semi-Lucid

It's the time of month where I use my text-to-speech conversion program to convert a new batch of books into MP3 to burn onto a new commuting CD.

I know mostly what's going on the CD, but I thought it might be fun to open the comment section. Consider this a general book recommendations thread. What should I be reading? Why?

Conversely, have you read anything really horrible lately?

Inquiring minds want to know!

And I'm not screening comments for this post, so hopefully the LJ spam bots will not take advantage of the fact, so go wild!