Recently on the NZACDITT list serve there has been a discussion about books to recommend to the school library.

Here is a summary of that discussion.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is a fiction tale with lots of cool things about computers in it. Available as a free download here. Recommended by Max.

The Sams Teach Yourself in 24 hours series as recommended by Vanessa

"In the Beginning was the Command Line", by Neal Stephenson is a nice (and gentle) read. It's available for download as well as hardcopy: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html. Recommended by Josh.

"The Cuckoo's Egg" great non fiction account of early computer hacking. Recommended by David.

PHP and MySQL Web Development. By Luke Welling etal. Now in it's third edition. Expensive, complete and awesome. Recommended by Max.

Iwoz - History and birth of apple. Recommended by Mike.

How Computer Programming Works by Daniel Appleman

This starts at a level where the writer assumes the read knows nothing and explains up to binary trees, recursion, searching ...
It has loads of nice clear graphics and short paragraph explanations. I would recommend it to anyone looking at 1.31, basic concepts of computer science, as most other literature out there is focused at undergrad level.
Oh and you can get real cheap copies second hand through amazon. Recommended by Bill.

How Computers Work
By Ron White, Timothy Edward Downs (Illustrated by)

Is popular in our library, it is probably cheaper elsewhere as
Fishpond has been more pricy but it is where I found a link so you could "see" the book I was referring too. It covers heaps of different devices and really well illustrated. Recommended by Mel.

The Inmates are Running the Assylum

This book is gold for looking at the way we design computer based tools - especially the move to goal directed design.
http://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/Book/The-Inmates-are-Running-the-A...

The journal on cooper.com is also regularly has some interesting interaction design posts:
http://www.cooper.com/journal/

Jakob Nielsen is a fairly well renowned usability practitioner. Graphic designers tend to dislike what he has to say but the alertbox is student friendly (i.e. short) and covers a wide range of topics:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

Designing with the mind in mind

These recommendations are great books (and would be a great background for the HCI part of AS 1.44); there's also a new book out that's both fun (it has lots of tricks from psychology you can try) and serious (it explains how a lot of software plays those tricks on users!) called "Designing with the mind in mind", by Jeff Johnson. In fact it's recommended by Don Norman - and I'd second Karen's recommendation of Norman's "Design of Everyday Things" - although it was first written in 1988, it's still a must read. These books aren't technical, just thought-provoking - so are excellent for reading at the beach or bach.

http://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/Book/Designing-with-the-Mind-in-Mind-Simple-Guide-to-Understanding-User-Interface-Design-Rules/6305632/