Today I was going through some old RSS feeds and ended up splurging on Amazon. The first book on the list is Beyond Java which was recommended by Joel. I was intrigued by a comment, specifically, "its starting to look like type declarations are one of those accidental difficulties that good programming languages can eliminate". Which I don't really agree with, but hey, I'll comment once I've read the book.
The second is The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind , which I was pointed to indirectly via BoingBoing, which discusses philosphy, cognition and AI.
And going with the brain topic, Classic Case Studies in Psychology, looks like an enjoyable, and probably slightly easier read than The Hidden Pattern.
I also picked up some sci-fi, Broken Angels, as recommended by the AI that is Amazon.