Any books recommendations?

The book I most enjoyed reading last year was Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose. I must say I wasn't expecting a novel about a 14th century Italian abbey to be that exciting, but once I got into the first chapters, I couldn't put the book down. Besides learning much more about the conflict between Franciscans (and many related sects) and the wealthy papacy (at this time, the French papacy) than I had been aware of, there were labyrinths, murder, cryptography, ancient manuscripts, and a particular thread of theological questioning which ties the whole thing together perfectly. I couldn't explain the plot much without ruining the enjoyment, but if you have ever been interested in the origins of modern science from the "heretical" mystics of the dark ages (like Francis Bacon or Giordano Bruno), then I strongly suggest this book.

I also recently read Italo Calvino's t zero which is kind of a continuation of his cosmicomics and continues with more stories in the adventures of the ever-existing qfwfq. Calvino's style is a lot like Jorge Luis Borge's, full of paradoxes and out-of-time archetypes. I think it a makes a good "light" read, because the stories are short and not necessarily connected.

That's pretty much it for recent reads. My favorite books have always been oriented towards those that break from the traditional narrative style, like James Joyce's Ulysses (unfortunately, I still do not have enough historical background to understand most of Finnegan's Wake...) and Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel). Sci-fi was my first love, starting with Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time when I was real young, but evolved into authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and the more psychologically-oriented sci-fi. I would also put Arthur C. Clarke into that category, though his style is more traditional. Also enjoyable reads I have found from Ian McDonald and James Morrow. Its hard to narrow down the field of authors, though, because there is so much good stuff out there...

An Imaginary Tale: The Story of sqrt(-1) (Paul J. Nahin) - for the mathematically inclined, this book follows "preposterous ideas" in mathematics, such as i, throughout time.

How mathematically inclined?

I'm interested in this one. Can you tell me more? I'm not very mathematically inclined, I wondered if I can read. I know + - * / and some algebra and complex numbers. Those suffice?