It is hard to say what my favorite book is. But the book that impacted my life most was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Read it.

My favorite authors and playwrights are (in no meaningful order) Michael Lewis, Carl Sagan, Siddhartha Gautama, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, Patrick Marber, Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare.