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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
It's better than any other personal development book.
- Built to last (tips and best practices)
- Blink (helps not to waste ideas, shows how your first impressions/thoughts could be useful)
- Phylosophy Books (Republic and Politics) - you can understand and have good insights about this social networking and community fever moment.
Anything you could read regarding usability, interfaces and scalability would help a lot when dealing with low money web2 related startups.
To know about extreme programming would be very good.
I really liked "The Tipping Point". Anything by Malcolm Gladwell I would have to recommend.
Most business books are fun to read, but it's really hard to say that any have been truly helpful. Most lean more to the motivational/inspirational side, instead of focusing on case studies. My suspicion is that business is probably not best learned from a book. But I'll list a few I like anyways.
Alan Sugar: The Amstrad Story - Great story about how Sir Alan grew an empire selling stereos out of the back of a car. Instructive because his key insights revolved around understanding what the average user wanted, as opposed to the technical elite.
Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison - He started his first company at 33 after working for other high tech firms. This book is neat because Ellison adds his own comments in the footer when he disagrees with the biographer.
Founders @ Work - Pre-ordered it. I was tempted to read it all at once, but decided to spread it out over 2 weeks. I'm glad that I did - there's a lot to digest....
Product side:
Designing Interactions - If you want to design great user experiences, it helps to see the thought processes great designers go through to create successful products.
Bulletproof Web Design - Well written, concise. Cederholm knows CSS.
Hardening Linux - I've seen many guides at the bookstore. This one appealed to me because it has both breadth and depth. The chapter on configuring firewalls was alone worth the price of the book.
There's plenty of interesting books out there and many are fairly specific for the task you're trying to solve. The book that has helped me out the most is Getting Things Done by David Allen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done It's better than any other personal development book.
The bits that I did find useful were
1) make lots of lists
2) read your lists often
iCon: the unofficial biography of steve jobs. Tremendous into steve's character
(Disclaimer - I am moonlighting on my startup idea, but have these books to be a huge source of inspiration. Also, Joel's list is highly recommended. Another book, and it may seem off-topic is Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It helps to study the lives of those who have managed to pull off very successful businesses)
and Felix Dennis' "How To Get Rich"