Whatcha readin'?

I'm reading two stories at the moment: The Hugo and Nebula award-winning "The Wind Up Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi and a story on WdC called "The City of Locked Doors" by TristenKozinski, and then I've just finished the non-fiction book "Peak" by Prof. Anders Ericsson.

The Wind Up Girl is strange dystopian sort of science fiction story. Strange, in that it's the usual all-grim and world-weary.Even though the world has run out of gasoline, major corporations causing massive damage in their lust for profit, and much of the word's animal and plant life have gone extinct, people get by.
The story takes place in Bangkok, Thailand, where you follow an uncoruptable police officer, a genetically engineered prostitute, a greedy but resourceful refugee, and an American seeking to help his employers exploit the Thai's recent discoveries in genehacking.
In my opinion the story is great for three reasons:
Bacigalupi makes the setting come alive like few others. His descriptions of the futuristic, halfway to being sunk Bangkok are magnificent. The different protagonist are all more or less unlikable, yet somehow the author makes you root for all them.
The book has a clear message about how the world will end up if we carry on burning fossil fuels the way we do and if we don't regulate big businesses. It is evident from start to finish, yet the book never becomes preachy; the author never tries to stuff the morale down the reader's throat.

The City of Locked Doors is science fiction/ fantasy novel set in a world where the remaining survivors all suffers from an affliction that turns them in to different sorts of monsters by night. Minor cities only survive because the harsh rulers makes sure everyone are locked up in their own houses at night.
We follow a mysterious shadowmancer on his quest for revenge which, so far, has lead him right into the middle of a massive power struggle.
I've only just begun chapter four, but so far the story is one of the best I've read on WdC. The author has created a very unique and dark setting which is very well described, and so far there haven't been a boring moment.

Peak is the one non-fiction book I would recommend to all aspiring writers, even though it's not really about writing. The book is about expert level performance and how people achieve it. It's not really a self-help book, which is part of what makes it so great. It's not filled with easy (read: unrealistic) ways of achieving expert level performance in any field.
It is written by the psychology professor Anders Ericsson, who have spend decades studying experts in different fields such as sport, music, and chess, and in the book he explains in layman's terms what the research show, that people plateau if they don't put in enough training time (which should be pretty obvious). More importantly, the data shows that people plateau despite spending hours and hours every day practicing, because they tend to practice the things you already know because those are more fun. Whereas experts spend almost all their practicing time pushing their limits and practicing with a purpose.
Ericsson goes on to explain what the requirements for optimal practice is, leaving it up to the reader to apply this to his or her own field of desires expertise.