Sorry, this took so long to add, but here are my 'designy' additions:

Design Monographs
Wim Crouwel: Mode and Module
If you can read Dutch you will appreciate this hefty tome accounting the giant impact of the Netherland's design legend. Was he ever prolific...

TIBOR: The Perverse Optimist
Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist is the definitive and exuberant document of the late Tibor Kalman's work and ideas. This full-color, oversize title reveals Kalman's thoughts on magazines, advertising, sex, bookstores, food, and the design profession. Product designs, stills and storyboards from his film and video projects, and spreads from his book and magazine work are included.

Sagmeister Made You Look
"Another self-indulgent design monograph (practically everything we have ever designed including the bad stuff) is Stefan Sagmeister's hand-scrawled subtitle for the first book about his work, Made You Look. This, and the book's clear red case and silver-gilded pages, seem contrary to the raw, handwritten style he is known for, already setting us up for a wild and very personal ride through almost the entire corpus of the 39-year-old designer's work. Sagmeister once scratched words into his skin for his own lecture poster at Cranbrook, and this is the book version--sometimes enlightening, sometimes embarrassing, always self-conscious, and ultimately touching. The story is a conversation between Peter Hall's text and Sagmeister's handwritten commentary, a perfect and believable device for an absorbing dialogue. Self-indulgent as Made You Look may be, Sagmeister lays himself open with idealism, irony, and humor, creating one of the most moving books about design." -Juliette Cezza

Karel Martens: Printed Matter
Eye magazine said: "Martens is the heir of the European Modernists, and shows the influence of Bauhaus and the Swiss school....An artist and craftsman, Martens creates work for himself and for clients in equal quantitiy. He seems to regard every project he undertakes as another great adventure. This book, designed by Jaap van Triest with Martens himself, makes every effort to represent these qualities. From its double, folded brown paper cover to its uncoated double pages, it feels both precious and hand-made. The mass of images that at first seem piled up like goods on a flea- market stall turn out to be painstakingly arranged... Such a book is a delight."

Design & Typography Manuals

The Elements of Typographic Style
The Elements of Typographic Style is a book by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992, it was revised in 1996, 2002 (v3.0), and 2005 (v3.1). A history and guide to typography, it has been praised by Hermann Zapf, who said “I wish to see this book become the Typographers’ Bible.” Because of its widespread use, it is sometimes abbreviated simply as "Bringhurst". And it is the typographer's bible.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design
By designer Josef Müller-Brockmann. You work for them says "A Visual Communication Manual for graphic designers, typographers and three dimensional designers. Considered by most to be the definitive book on grid systems. This book is a must for any designer. From concept to instructional, this book covers typography through grid systems used in design both 2D and 3D."

Typographie
Emil Ruder's classic. The books 19 chapters (Introduction, Writing and Printing, Function and form, Form and counter-form, The techniques of typography, Arrangements, Geometrica l- optical and organic aspects, Proportions, Point - line - surface, Contrasts, Shades of grey, Colour, Unity of text and form, Rhythm, Spontaneity and fortuity, Integral design, Variations, Kinetics, Lettering and illustration) are laid down simply and packed with wisdom applicable today. Emil is considered by many to be the father of typography as we know it today.

Asymmetric Typogaphy
German type and book designer Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) revolutionized modern typography through his bold, asymmetrical designs and use of sanserif typography, both inspired by the work of the Bauhaus. He proclaimed his new design philosophy through a series of articles and books, including Die neue Typographie, published in Berlin in 1928. His international renown came largely as a result of his redesign of Penguin's entire series of paperback novels just after World War II. Any graphic designer practicing today owes a debt to Tschichold's innovation. Asymmetric Typography is the lesser known english translation companion to his modernist manifesto, The New Typography.

Cultural Critiques / Current Afairs / Sociology:

Technopoly by Niel Postman
A must read for anyone living in modern culture. Little do we realize how we have come to accept any and all new technologies as good things we must use. Postman helps us begin to question: we can, but should we? He also articulates a great variety of things as 'technologies' that you would never have thought of as such. A great book.

The End of Education by Niel Postman
Sorry, I had to include this one by Postman too. If you can't read the whole thing, read the chapter he calls 'a fable' (chapter 8 maybe?) — it articulates the crux of the whole book in a truly exciting and entertaining ten pages or so.

Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
This book was like a plunge into an icy mountain stream: shockingly painful, yet refreshing and exciting all at once. This book opened my mind to consider ideas and options I had previously thought impossible.
A description from their site: 'a manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. Through historical sketches on the roots of the industrial revolution; commentary on science, nature and society; descriptions of key design principles; and compelling examples of innovative products and business strategies already reshaping the marketplace, McDonough and Braungart make the case that an industrial system that "takes, makes and wastes" can become a creator of goods and services that generate ecological, social and economic value.'

No Logo by Naomi Klein
Perhaps a bit dated now, I read this while on sabbatical from design work in 2001, living in Italy right after the 9/11 attacks. Klein argues cogently and convincingly that all that is branded may not be good.
A description: 'Coloured by compelling, first-hand accounts of - among others - the McLibel trial, Reclaim the Streets, covert ad-busting missions in the 'Export Processing Zone' (i.e. sweatshops outside Manila producing the branded clothes that crowd our shops) No Logo is based on hundreds of interviews, on both sides of the fence, with young activists and advertising executives, with union leaders and corporate directors. It offers a fascinating re-reading of our times.
'Equal parts cultural analysis, mall-rat memoir, political manifesto and journalistic exposé, No Logo is the first book to attend the birth of the new resistance and the first to put this informed anarchy into pop-historical and clear economic perspective.'

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
A fascinating book about 'what should we eat?' Addressing the issue in everything from the history of farming and hunting to our current American food culture to veganism to cooking and so much more. This book will make you think so differently about what you eat and where it comes from. Truly amazing.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
A book that tells the marvelous stories of what factors affect change. It brought to light how many influences must converge to enact a cultural phenomenon.
From his site: 'It's a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does... It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.'

Religion / Philosophy
The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer
I read this review on Amazon and it is virtually identical to what I was about to write: 'Schaeffer's book has changed my life and many around me. Using a historical-cultural approach, Schaeffer explains the development in ideology and practice of what he calls "the line of despair," the divide between the physical realm and the metaphysical realm that prevents humanity from knowing about transcendent things. But he is not only able to identify the line, he also explains how to get beyond it.
'I have lived for years in a society that has told me that such things are unknowable, that they must be a matter of belief only, but Schaeffer's book dispells all such misconceptions. "The God Who is There" provides a solid intellectual foundation for faith in a world of shifting sand.
'If you read and like this book, I would recommend reading Schaeffer's book "He is There and He is Not Silent" immediately afterward.'

Fiction:
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut's style of writing is not for everyone, but his bizarre combination of sci-fi ridiculous with his autobiographical sublime appealed to me greatly. I could easily have put Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five here too, but I list Champions because it was the first Vonnegut I read.
Wikipedia describes it well: 'Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut, and is a prime example of Vonnegut's peculiar brand of deadpan satire. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a normal-looking but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer who becomes obsessed with the writings of the other man, Kilgore Trout, taking them for literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fiction writer who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout journeys toward Midland City to appear at a convention where, unbeknownst to him, he will meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.'

Deliverance by James Dickey
Of course the movie of the same title is much more famous than the book - an unfortunate fact. I remember sweating nervously as I read the accounts detailed in this novel, reading late into the night, unable to put it down. One heck of a read...
A good summary on Amazon: '"Deliverance" is a gripping adventure story, but also of one humiliation, murder, tragedy, and ultimately a soul searching study of one man's struggle with courage, morality, and ethics. Dickey offers an unapologetic and unflattering portrait of the hill people of northern Georgia, yet without malice or prejudice - simply the necessary backdrop to serve as the physical manifestation from which there can be "deliverance". Fiercely told and every bit as suspenseful as the excellent film, this great classic should be read by all lovers of American fiction.'

Food / Cooking
Heat by Bill Buford
The subtitle says it all: 'An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.'
One of my absolute favorite books of late, I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of Buford's tale of his move from editor at the New Yorker to an 'extern' for Mario Batali and then on and on into deep culinary journeys. I was sad to reach the end this marvelous story.

Reference:
Roget's Thesaurus by Dr. Peter Mark Roget?
I am not sure of the date of my copy as the cover an initial interior pages are long gone, but the paperback's spine is mustard yellow with a '35 cent' cost indicating that my parents bought it sometime before 1970 (my birth). I love it and have not seen any like it nowadays. One looks up the words in an index to find where to reference both synonyms and antonyms of various words. Exhaustive and comprehensive. A masterful compilation.
'Roget's Thesaurus is composed of six primary classes. Each class is composed of multiple divisions and then sections. This may be conceptualized as a tree containing over a thousand branches for individual "meaning clusters" or semantically linked words. These words are not exactly synonyms, but can be viewed as colours or connotations of a meaning or as a spectrum of a concept. One of the most general words is chosen to typify the spectrum as its headword, which labels the whole group.'