Parallel Worlds is a fascinating book by Michio Kaku. By far he is my favorite Theoretical Physicist. :-) He has a gift for explaining very complex concepts in a way that I can understand them. If, like me, you find yourself glued to the cable science channels I think you will love this explanation of the Universe.

SOA: Principles of Service Design reads like a text book so be ready to skim to the parts that interest you. I have found this book to be a great aid in explaining the concepts of SOA to new developers and to business leaders. The diagrams are illuminating. I found the comparison between Service-Orientation and Object-Orientation particularly interesting. Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart.

Founders at Work: Stories of Start-ups' Early Days is a great break from technical reading. It was both inspirational and great fodder for trivia when talking to my fellow IT geeks. There is definitely something to be said for learning from those entrepreneurs that have succeeded in building technological empires. If you ever thought it would be nice to spend time with the founders of companies like Flickr, PayPal, Hotmail, GMAIL, Blogger, and Yahoo and ask them how they did it, this is the book for you.

Amazon.com Mashups is another in a series of 'mashups' books by Wrox. Amazon never ceases to amaze me with their commitment to SOA and the concepts of Software as a Service (SaaS). I found this book to be a useful introduction to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the examples are in C#.Net which is good too.