Books

Update: Yeah, this page is pretty neglected. Lately, I've started cataloging my books at LibraryThing. See my recent reviews there or at Amazon.

I've been meaning to put together a page of book recommendations for a long time. This isn't it. But someone (Sarah!) recently got me thinking about books to recommend, and I came up with a long list. This is it. They're all worth reading, though only a minority of them are recommended because I agree with what their authors wrote and advocate their point of view.

Someday, I'm going to write more about what these books are and make proper recommendations, but for now please browse through the list and check out the titles that look interesting. Maybe you'll find something to feed your head.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (& don't miss the audiocassette with readings by John Cleese, though it is, alas, abridged)
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
John Keegan, A History of Warfare
Mao Tse Tung, Basic Tactics (I believe these are the same lectures that are currently available under the title On Guerrilla Warfare)
Malcom Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time (Vol I: The Green Stick & Vol II: The Infernal Grove)
Malcom Muggeridge, Christ & The Media
Fydor Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment
Fydor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
Fydor Dostoevsky, The Double
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind
Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers (ignore the moronic movie)
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Robert Heinlein, Expanded Universe
Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash
Neil Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Neil Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
William Blake, Songs of Innocence & Experience
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell
Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land & Other Poems
Czeslaw Milosz, The Collected Poems
Chickering (trans.), Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition (c.f. the audiocassette with readings by Bessinger)
Homer, Robert Fagles (trans.), The Iliad (c.f. the excellent audiocassette with selections read by Derek Jacobi)
Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Roger Zelazny, The Amber Chronicles
A.E. Van Vogt, Slan
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
James Clavell, Shogun
James Clavell, The Children's Story
Dorothy Sayers (trans.), The Song of Roland
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Frank Herbert, Dune
Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
William Shakespeare, Henry V (& of course Kenneth Branagh's definitive movie version)
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Marquis de Sade, Justine (I hesitate to actually recommend de Sade, but if you're going to read one of his novels, this is the one)
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
Pat Califia, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex
Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, & American Culture: Essays
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
Jane Austen, Emma
R. Buckminister Fuller, Critical Path
John Cage, Silence
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time
Strunk & White, The Elements of Style
Robert Silverberg, Lord Valentine's Castle
Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio
Greg Bear, Slant
James Joyce, Dubliners
Douglas Hofstadter, Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Hofstadter & Dennett, The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul
Richard Powers, Prisoner's Dilemma
Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing & Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Kernighan & Pike, The UNIX Programming Environment
Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind
Eric S. Raymond (ed.), The New Hacker's Dictionary (a dead tree version of The Jargon File)
Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter, The Light of Other Days
Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
John Barnes, Orbital Resonance
John Barnes, Kaleidoscope Century
John Barnes, Candle
John Barnes, Finity
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Boston Women's Health Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves
Robert Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought in Action
Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire
Bruce Sterling, Distraction
Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: Law & Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
Stewart Brand (ed.), Howard Rheingold (ed.), The Whole Earth Catalog
Fernand Braudel, Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century
Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil (includes "The Nose"!)
Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata & Other Stories
Robert Heinlein, The Dishonorable Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Whittaker Chambers, Witness
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus Trilogy
Niccolo Machievelli, The Prince
Niccolo Machievelli, The Discourses
Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat (from there it turns into a trashy series, IMHO)
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (in all its installments & permutations)
Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No (AFAIK the only unabridged version is the pirate CIA translation that is floating around, but I think Simon & Shuster did come out with an authorized English translation)
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Herrnstein & Murray, The Bell Curve
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Steven Levy, Hackers
Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There
William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale
C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I
Harry Braverman, Labor & Monopoly Capital
Milton Friedman, Capitalism & Freedom
Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist
John Maynard Smith, Evolution & the Theory of Games
Arjo Klamer, Conversations With Economists
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman
Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Men & Women in Conversation
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics
Alan Watts, The Book
Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi
Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tuscon
William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage: What Our Garbage Tells Us About Ourselves
Marshall Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance
Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs & Ham

A great place to find used books is The Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut.

Last Update: 05 Jan 06

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