I have finished the collected short stories of Saul Bellow, which I read as a way of deciding whether I wanted to tackle his longer novels. And I decided that his prose style, which has been much lauded, doesn’t appeal to me, so it’s into the bin with Saul. That’s sad, as he wrote a lot of highly-rated and fat novels that would have kept me busy for a while.
Therefore I’m appealing to readers for suggestions of good books to read. They can be either fiction or nonfiction, though I think I’m in a nonfiction mood. As I’m old and on the downhill slide to oblivion, the books should be world class, as I have little no time for less than brilliant works.
Let us know what you’re reading, but particularly put your recommendations in the comments. For example, you could tell us what you think is the best book you ever read. For me it’s Anna Karenina for long fiction and Joyce’s The Dead for short fiction. Non-fiction is harder, but Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson come to mind (I’ll probably think of another choice soon). “Best books,” then, are what I’m looking for, and I realize that such choices are subjective.
Please comment below.
Jerome Sallo’s suggestion of “The Spinoza problem” is certainly one I will read. Spinoza has been quite popular in recent years. Some time back, Antonio Damasio wrote “Looking for Spinoa”, which is still on my shelf waiting to be read. Then there was Rachel Kadish’s “The weight of ink”, which I liked a lot and you have probably already read. Then I found two fascinating books by Matthew Stewart, both concerning the Dutch philosopher. The first was “Nature’s god: (The heretical origins of the America republic)”, about the influence of Spinoza on Jefferson, Franklin and others. including Ethan Allen, who was more of an intellectual that I thought. The second was, “The courtier and the heretic”, those two being Leibniz and Spinoza. Great reads, both of Stewart’s books.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Some times the solution presented is not the one that is wanted and even a group of intelligent scientists cannot get over it.
Awesome story – there’s an illustrated expansion by Sobel – just get it!
So many good recommendations.
If it is a non-fiction book you are after then the best I’ve ever read is Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia.
A wonderful poetic take on the life and times of the author of the Prince.
Fiction: I’m re-reading Voltaire’s novella, “Candide.” I laugh out loud every couple of pages.
Non-fiction: I really enjoyed, “Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy,” by Trevor Pearce. It’s a detailed history of Darwin’s influence on American pragmatism, from the Metaphysical club of Peirce and James, through Spencer’s follies, and Dewey.
The Iliad, new translation by Emily Wilson. It is very readable, though violent. Seems current.
My very favorite Kurt Vonnegut book: Sirens of Titan
I recommend the hilarious trilogy by Julie Schumacher that satirizes academia: Dear Committee Members (for which Schumacher won a Thurber Prize, the first Woman to do so), The Shakespeare Requirement, and The English Experience. I also recommend the lovely Japanese novel The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. A bestseller in Japan, this book is heartwarming and profound and wonderful. And yes, teh kitteh is the narrator. If you are interested in science fiction, I highly recommend the duology The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell. Both novels are serious and thoughtful examinations of the first human contact with intelligent extraterrestrials and its consequences for human religion. Enjoy!
My all time favorite philosophy book series (pretending very successfully to be comedy) is the 5 volume “trilogy” of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by the late, great, Douglas Adams. My daughter’s wedding was HHGTTG themed. 🙂
21 Lessons for the 21 Century – Yuval Noah Harari
36argumentsForTheExistenceOfGod – Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
50PopularBeliefsThatPeopleThinkAreTrue – Guy P Harrison
A Brief Candle In The Dark – Richard Dawkins
A Crack in Creation – Jennifer A Doudna
Against All Gods – AC Grayling
AgainstEmpathy – Paul Bloom
A Good War – Seth Klein 5 Apr
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Atom – Lawrence Krauss
Basic Income for Canadians – Evelyn Forget
Basic Income – Guy Standing
Behave – Robert Sapolsky
Blueprint The Evolutionary Origins of A Good Society – Nicholas Christakis
BornACrime – Trevor Noah
ChasingTheScream – Johann Hari
Collossus – Niall Ferguson
CONSCIOUS A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind – Annaka Harris
Consciousness Explained – Daniel C Dennett
Countdown – Alan Weisman – 5 Oct 2021
Cynical Theories – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay – 2 Nov 2021
DarkMatterAndTheDinosaurs – Lisa Randall
Deer Hunting with Jesus – Joe Bageant
Democracy and its Crisis – AC Grayling
Democracy In Chains – Nancy MacLean – 4 May 2021
Doing Sixty and Seventy – Gloria Steinem
Dont Label Me – Irshad Manji – 1 Mar
DreamsOfAFinalTheory – Steven Weinberg
Dumpty – John Lithgow
Enlightenment Now – Steven Pinker
Ethics In The Real World – Peter Singer
Explaining Postmodernism – Stephen Hicks
Factfulness – Hans Rosling
Fascism – Madeleine Albright
F Bomb War On Feminism – Lauren McKeon
FieldNotesFromA-Catastrophe – Elizabeth Kolbert
Fighting God – David Silverman
Forward – Andrew Yang – 5 Jul
FromFatwaToJihad – Kenan Malik
Godel Escher Bach An Eternal Golden Thread – Douglas R Hofstaeder
God-TheMostUnpleasantCharacterInAllFiction – Dan Barker
Good and Mad – Rebecca Traister
Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari
How Not to Diet – Michael Greger
How the World Really Works – Vaclav Smil – 1 Aug 2023
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster – Bill Gates – 7 Dec 2021
How To Be Perfect – Michael Schur – on Kindle 7 Jun
How to Talk to a Science Denier – Lee McIntyre – 3 May
How We Will Live On Mars – Stephen L Petranek
Letters From an Astrophysicist – Neil DeGrasse Tyson
LettersToTheEditorFromAModernHumanist – Theo Meijer
Life Ascending – Nick Lane
Like Everyone Else but Different – Morton Weinfeld
Lost Connections – Johann Hari
Men Who Hate Women – Laura Bates – 4 Apr 2024
Merchants of Doubt – Naomi Oreskes – 3 Aug
Metamagical Themas – Douglas Hofstadter
No is Not Enough – Naomi Klein
Outgrowing God – Richard Dawkins – 4 Oct
Prey – Ayaan Hirsi Ali – 6 June 2023
Rationality – Steven Pinker – Dec 6
ReDesigning Life – John Parrington Sept 5
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism – Benjamin M Friedman 3 Jan 2023
Results At The Top – Barbara Annis
Sapiens A Graphic History – Yuval Noah Harari 6 Apr
Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
Shadow Sovereigns – Susan George – 6 Jul
Something Deeply Hidden – Sean Carroll
Surviving Autocracy – Masha Gessen – 7 Mar 2023
The Alure Of Toxic Leaders – Jean Lipman-Blumen
The Armageddon Factor – Marci McDonald
The Atheist Muslim – Ali A. Rizvi
The Clock of the Long Now – Stewart Brand
The Coddling of the American Mind – Jonathan Haidt
The Corruption of Capitalism – Guy Standing
The Deficit Myth – Stephanie Kelton
The Evolution of God – Robert Wright
TheFeminineMystique – Betty Friedan
The Good State – AC Grayling – Oct 3
The Great Agnostic Robert Ingersoll – Susan Jacoby
TheGreatestStoryEverToldSoFar – Lawrence Krauss
The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben – 7 Sept 2021
The Kindness of Strangers – Michael E McCullough – 1 June 2021
The Madness of Crowds – Douglas Murray
The Meritocracy Trap – Daniel Markovits
The Minds I – Douglas R Hofstaeder – Daniel C Dennett
TheMostGoodYouCanDo – Peter Singer
TheMysteryOfCapital – Hernando De Soto
The New Puritans – Andrew Doyle – 4 Jul 2023
The Nordic Theory of Everything – Anu Partenen – 1 Feb
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes
ThePrecariat – Guy Standing
The Problem With Everything – Meghan Daum
TheSixthExtinction – Elizabeth Kolbert
The Square and the Tower – Niall Ferguson
The Strange Death Of Europe – Douglas Murray
TheValueOfNothing – Raj Patel
The War on Normal People – Andrew Yang
The West And The Rest – Roger Scruton
The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
Too Dumb for Democracy – David Moscrop
Unfit for the Future – Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu
Unveiled – Yasmine Mohammed – 7 Feb 2023
What We Owe Each Other – Minouche Shafik 6 Sept 2022
What We Owe the Future – William MacAskill – 5 Dec 2023
Why Buddhism Is True – Robert Wright
Why Evolution Is True – Jerry Coyne
Why Sex Is Fun – Jared Diamond
Winter Is Coming – Garry Kasparov – 1 Nov
Woke – Titania McGrath
A non-exhaustive list of books I’ve read in the last few years. I’ve deleted the titles that I found to be a bit of a waste of time.
” The user illusion: cutting consciousness down to size ” by Tor Norretranders is missing.Classic book.
Can somebody suggest the book in the class /category/comprehensiveness of Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter? I am in search of such a book which will appeal to Jerry Coyne as well.
I would vote for the oddly named MEDICAL NIHILISM (2018) by Jacob Stegenga, Ph.D. in philosophy of science, specializing in philosophy of medicine. I’m only 20% of the way in, but I have heard him interviewed a few times and bought the book on the strength of his performance. The gist is that many medical interventions are not nearly as effective as we have been led to believe and consumers have placed too much faith in the medical establishment. He claims that many medical studies and clinical trials have very small effects and tend to exaggerate the efficacy of a wide variety of drugs and often fail to measure long-term harms. This is especially the case in psychiatric care where measuring effectiveness of a wide variety of psychoactive drugs (like anti-depressants, anxiolytics, and so on) is shot through with methodological difficulties that can be manipulated by researchers that may be incentivized to do so in the context of profit-making pharmaceuticals. This is not an entirely new thesis and could be considered a subset of the long-simmering “reproducibility crisis” that emerged over a decade ago.
Have you read Ryan and Jetha’s Sex at Dawn?
Much of their argument rests on evolutionary psychology, so maybe it’s old news to you.
Just finished reading Adam Goodheart’s The Last Island, which centers on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Archipelago. This is the Island that that that evangelist John Chau visited and was killed on in 2018.
Goodheart, who turns out to have been one of my daughter’s professors @ Washington College, Chestertown MD, to my great astonishment nearly set foot on the island in 1998, and went back in 2020 without getting that far, but after having discovered glass negatives and the diary of the Englishman Maurice Portman, who documented and interacted with the natives on Great Andaman Island in the 1890s (and most likely introduced syphilis to them).
In seeming total incongruity, Goodheart’s other book is “1861”, about what it was like in the first year of the Civil War, and that is also a good book – just that you probably wouldn’t expect such far-flung topics from one author.