My favourite parenting books are:

• Einstein Never Used Flash Cards -- it's subtitled "How our children really learn -- and why they need to play more and memorize less". That pretty much sums it up. It's all about how play is so important and how kids are over-stimulated with "educational" videos and toys.
• Touchpoints Birth to 3: The Essential Reference for the Early Years -- this is a T Berry Brazelton book that explains child development from a comprehensive physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioural point of view. It's brilliant.
• Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love -- it's all about the parent-child bond and how it influences the way we grow up and the choices we make as parents.
• What's Going On In There? How the Brain and Mind Develop if the First Five Years of Life -- it's not a scary to read as it sounds, and it basically explains how babies' brains develop and how they learn, and the nature vs nurture thing with regard to development.
• How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life -- gives a good picture of language development and has really helped me through Em's grommets and early speech patterns.

I'm also reading a brilliant book called The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women. It's about how the media portrays motherhood as this unattainable perfection and how women feel like they can never measure up. It's not really a parenting book, but it's really making me think, as I have "role issues"!