A top ten for readers - play along!

Suppose you have been living in another country far away from your home in the U.S.A (or U.K. or Australia) for the past 3 years.  Perhaps it's a place lacking some of the normal conveniences or access to products and services you knew before. Strange dialects, food, and customs. Not knowing who to trust. A situation where moving about the city is unsafe and your freedom is limited in several ways because of your skin color and nationality. But this is not another post about human freedoms. Just setting up a little contrast about daily life. Things are not so instant. Getting things done is a slooow process requiring repeated follow-up calls and prodding. Online access is sketchy and frustratingly slow. You are removed from American political campaigns, hourly updates detailing the woes of the economy, Black Friday pre-dawn sales at the mall, and so on. Hmm--that's starting to sound better. 

My real friend, Sharon, an avid reader, has been living away from her home country. Here is her real question:

What are the top ten books you would recommend to someone who has had little access to books in the last 3 years?

It's a great question--one that I need your help with! I tend to get a little myopic and think of only a short list of what I'm reading right now. For example, this book by Roger von Oech: A Whack on the Side of the Head, How You Can Be More Creative. It's full of ideas to jump start your creativity and contains great quotes from a variety of thinkers. Here's one from today's reading:

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.

by Nobel prize winning physician Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Here's your chance to jump in and suggest some books worthy of Sharon's naira (Nigeria's currency.) Give a list or even just a couple of suggestions. You can tell why you chose them, but you don't have to. I will come back and add a few more titles after you.