I've been on a bit of an alternate history kick recently. I can recommend both Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan-Behemoth-Goliath young adult steampunk v. biotech alternate World War One trilogy, and Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds-The Coldest War-Necessary Evil demonologists v. bioengineered ubermenchen series. (Neither is rationalist fiction in the sense of having super rational characters, but it is realist fiction in the sense of character's making mistakes for bias-related reasons.)

Also, I seem to recall seeing Yvain say something on his blog recently about being surprised that many of the people he knew who reference Lovecraft haven't actually read him. For those who aren't aware of it, all of Lovecraft's solo-authored work in chronological order is available as a free e-book here.

Fiction:

• reread R.A. Lafferty's Fourth Mansions
• Harrison's Light (review)

Also, may I take a moment to strongly recommend Ted Chiang's short stories?

• "Understand"
• "72 Letters"
• "Hell is the Absence of God"
• "Story of Your Life" (see also Lagrangians, Principle of Least Action, Greg Egan's "Infinite Assassins", and Qualia the Purple)
• "Liking What You See: A Documentary"
• "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"

A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. An amazing and hilarious novel. Believe the hype.

(If you've ever been annoyed by neoreactionaries, you'll delight in the main character. "A king? You want a king? Boy, nobody wants a king! Ignatius, are you sure you're OK?" First noted on Metafilter. I see one neoreaction fan who classifies it as "Red Pill fiction" ...)

The Last Samurai (2000) by Helen DeWitt. (Not related to the film with Tom Cruise.) About genius, rationality, art, and their limits, among other things. From one perspective it's both an argument about and an example of the creation and appreciation of art being valuable and exciting. Highly recommended for LWers.

If you want a better idea of the book, try the summary on Amazon. Save the horrifying Wikipedia book report for after you've read the novel if you want a good laugh.

Just finished Brandon Sanderson's book "Words of Radiance". It is the 2nd book in a (projected) 10-book series, and came out last month.

I thought it was a wonderful book. It developed the story from "The Way of Kings", some parts in obvious ways, but also in some new and unexpected ways. The world that Sanderson developed for this series is clearly huge, with many different actors and sub-stories going on.

Also, one sub-story in particular was very fun for me as an LW'er. I'm talking about: Gneninatvna, naq uvf VD punatvat rirel qnl (rot 13'ed).

Btw, I love Brandon Sanderson's work. It combines very "realistic" magic systems with awesome characters, and an epic back-story. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn trilogy, I consider it the finest fantasy work around.