If you know Rob, chances are he's asked you for a list of ten "books you would not want to have missed". Here's mine:

1. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands.
2. Aha! Insight, by Martin Gardner.
3. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.
4. Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges.
5. The Cyberiad, by Stanislaw Lem.
6. Thinking Physics, by Lewis Epstein.
7. Price Theory and Applications, by Steven Landsburg.
8. Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.
9. The TeXbook, by Donald Knuth.
10. Inversions, by Scott Kim.

• Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.
• Ideals, Varieties, and Algorithms, by David Cox, Donal O'Shea, and John Little.

Interestingly, though I first read most of the top ten in high school or earlier, none of them were introduced to me by my teachers! Does that mean I have unique tastes or does it mean that the school curriculum is too dry? Perhaps it means that my experiences in high school classes gave me bad memories of books that would have otherwise made the list.