We've definitely heard of "Racing the Beam." It has been very successful, selling really well on Amazon and attracting a really surprising amount of attention. The premise of the book is interesting as well. I was under the impression that it was an academic book, but it seems like more casual geeks and retrogamers are enjoying it, too.

I really liked Nick Montfort's earlier book, Twisty Little Passages, which covered text adventures. I'd be curious what you think of Ian Bogost's Unit Operations, which pretty much made Bogost a household name among game studies folks. I have to admit, I'm not really into heavy critical theory these days (left most of my interest in that back in graduate school), preferring history or biography instead.