BOOKS I'VE ENJOYED
A bookshelf built by the author, volumes nicely "colored-coded" and positioned above Grandma's rocker.
It all started for me when I . . .
found myself reading a book. That must have been one of my first moments of self-awareness: it was "me there," and I was "doing this thing." And, I would now add, I was silently communicating, interpersonally, with another human being - an author. Many of them long dead, but they took time to leave behind vestiges of their psyches. Wonderful things, books. People, too, sometimes.
I don't remember learning how to read, and I certainly do not remember who taught me. When I asked my mother, "Mom, when did I learn how to read?" she said, "Oh, Larry, you've always known how to read."
Reading, for me, is like oxygen, and although I do now read electronically, I much prefer a dusty tome, preferably one snatched up off a high shelf in an antiquarian bookstore.
A few years ago a friend bet me I couldn't name a hundred books I'd read, so I typed up the first draft of this list then and there. (I think I stopped at around one hundred and fifty. It took maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.)
I don't update this list regularly, but, like walking into a disorganized room and not knowing what you might find, maybe you'll see an interesting title, or an obscured author will be recalled to memory. (In 2019, I finally alphabetized these by title.)
I couldn't possibly agree with all of these authors about everything, since they disagree among themselves, but I never fail to think affectionately back to the where and the when as I skim through this living graveyard. And I think, too, of the human spirits that have generously given of themselves for our education and amusement.
Enjoy!
(How To Keep) Snakes In Captivity
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
100 Songs by Ted Quinn
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
A Brief History of France: An Introduction to the People, History & Culture by Cecil Jenkins
A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matias
A Commentary on Psalm 119 by Charles Bridges
A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles by Joseph A. Alexander
A Commentary on the Book of Romans by Karl Barth
A Companion to Plato’s Republic by Nicholas P. White
A Concert of Tenses by Tess Gallagher
A Hole In The World by Richard Rhodes
A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Month of Sundays by John Cheever
A New Pair of Glasses by Chuck “C”
A Part of My Life by A. J. Ayer
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
A Philosopher Looks at Work by Raymond Geuss
A Piece of Work by Jay Woodruff
A Theory of Consciousness by Brian O'Shaughnessy
A Warning by Anonymous
A World Without Time by Palle Yourgrau
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
All of Us by Raymond Carver
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Allen Ginsberg: A Biography by Barry Miles
An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States
An Introduction to Plato’s Republic by Julia Annas
Analects by Confucius
Andy Warhol by Arthur Danto
Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler
Asian Philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman
Augustine: A Life by Peter Brown
Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Basic Vocabulary List
Beat Collection by Barry Miles
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography
Better, Not Bitter by Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Bisexuality: Theories, Research, and Recommendations for the Invisible Sexuality by D. Joye Swan and Shani Habibi
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and Andronum
Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti.
Butchy’s Rainbow by Gregory Wallace Gilbert
Butler's Sermons
By George by Wesley Stace
Cannery Row
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno by Raymond Geuss
Chinese Thought by Herlee G. Creel
Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
Civilization And Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
Classical Asian Philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman
Cleansing The Doors of Perception by Huston Smith
Cold Snap by Thom Jones
Collected Writings: Isaiah Berlin (esp., “Two Concepts of Liberty”)
Commenting and Commentaries by Charles Spurgeon
Complete Essays by E. B. White
Complete Poems by T. S. Eliot
Confessions by St. Augustine
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Consciousness: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris
Consciousness: The Hard Problem by David Chalmers
Consciousness and the World by Brian O’Shaughnessy
Convention: A Philosophical Study by David Lewis
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier
Deep Learning by John D. Kelleher
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Brain by Antonio Damasio
Desert Solitude by Edward Abbey
Dictionary of Philosophy by Peter Angeles
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Does God Exist? by Hans Kung
Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill
Dreyer’s English
DSM-IV: Psychiatric Diagnostic-Statistical Manual
Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard
Elements of the Philosophy of Right by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Expression and Meaning by John Searle
Euclid's Elements of Geometry
Faith And Rationality by Alvin Plantinga, editor
Falconer by John Cheever
Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story by David Wolf (read in 1972)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, wife of the poet, Percy Shelley – d. age 27
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Free Will / Determinism by Bernard Berofsky, editor
From Socrates to Sartre by Stumpf
Ghosts of New York by Jim Lewis
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Go! Dogs! Go!
God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell
Golden Boy by Christopher Odets
Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Green Eggs And Ham
Gringos by Charles Portis
Guerrillas by V. S. Naipaul
Hafgorah: The Five Books of the Pentateuch
HARD CANDY: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2nd Edition) by Charles A. Carroll
History And Human Nature by Robert Solomon
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock
Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
How To Be A High Desert Minimalist Gardener by Janet Tucker
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Howl / Supermarket In California by Allen Ginsberg
Husserl and Intentionality by Smith & McIntyre
I And Thou (Ich Und Du) by Martin Buber
I Can’t Believe I Lived the Whole Thing by Howie Cohen
I Ching
I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) by Richard Polsky
Ideas by Edmund Husserl
Ignore Everybody
In A Free State by V. S. Naipaul
In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
In Search of the Soul: A Philosophical Essay by John Cottingham
In the Shadow of the American Century by Alfred W. McCoy
Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats by Barry Miles
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Junius Maltby by John Steinbeck
Kirche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics) by Karl Barth
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer
Learning from Asian Philosophy by Joel Kupperman
Leonard Bernstein: Biography
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Let it Come Down by Paul Bowles
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
Light in August by William Faulkner
Like A Splinter In Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy by Matt Lawrence
Linguistics and Rationalism by Noam Chomsky
Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard
Logic by georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Looking For Mister Good Bar by Judith Rossner
Love Is A Dog From Hell by Bukowski
Lucretius
Making the Social World by John Searle
Marcus Aurelius
Marx: A Biography by Isaiah Berlin
Mental Content by Colin McGinn
Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnston
Middlemarch by George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans]
Midnight Mass by Paul Bowles
Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul
Mind: A Brief Introduction by John Searle
Misfortune by Wesley Stace
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Nature’s Challenge to Free Will by Bernard Berofsky
Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matias
Next to Nothing by Paul Bowles
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (Terence Irwin translation)
Nietzsche Contra Wagner
Nietzsche as Philosopher by Arthur Danto
Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
Not For Profit by Martha Nussbaum
Not Thinking like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss
Obstinate Air
On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner
On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality by Justin Smith-Ruiu
On Parenthood by Bill Cosby
On Preaching and Preachers by Charles Spurgeon
On Truth by Harry Frankfurt
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
On Writing by John Gardner
On Writing by Stephen King
One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Open Minded by Jonathan Lear
Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter
Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder
Outlines of the History of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick
Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose
Paul Bowles: The Collected Short Stories
Paul K. Feyerabend: Autobiography
Pensees by Blaise Pascal
Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy and Real Politics by Raymond Geuss
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty
Philosophy on Tap by Matt Lawrence
Piker: A Memoir by Larry Fike
Plato's Dialogs
Please Kill Me edited by Legs McNiel and Gillian McCain
Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff
Principia Ethica by G. E. Moore
Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
Public Goods, Private Goods by Raymond Geuss
Punishment and Responsibility by H. L. A. Hart
Quiddities by William van Orman Quine
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
Rabbit Redux by John Updike
Raymond Carver: A Life by Carol
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll
Representations by Jerry Fodor
Robert Lowell: A Biography by Ian Hamilton
Roger's Version by John Updike
Rousseau: Basic Writings (Social Contract; Discourse on Inequality)
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Scepticism and Animal Faith by George Santayana
Selected Writings by Carl G. Jung
Sexual Politics by Kate Millet
Shopcraft as Soulcraft by Matthew C. Crawford
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Sisters by Jim Lewis
Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora
Sonny Liston Was A Friend of Mine by Thom Jones
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
Speech Acts by John Searle
Spreading The Word by Simon Blackburn
Stories by Woody Allen
Stravinsky: Autobiography
Sweet Thursday
Systematic Theology by Paul Tillich
Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tze
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
Tenth of December by George Saunders
The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory by Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem
The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy
The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill
The Beatles
The Bible, KJV
The Bible, NIV
The Bill of Rights
The Bondage of The Will by Martin Luther
The Brothers Grimm: Fairy Tales
The Brothers Karamozov
The Carrying by Ada Limon
The Chicago Manual of Style
The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman
The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
The Complete Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway
The Complete Short Stories of John O'Hara
The Conscience of A Liberal by Paul Krugman
The Constitution of the United States of America
The Construction of Social Reality by John Searle
The Courage To Be by Paul Tillich
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
The Declaration of Independence
The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch
The Devil's Dictionary
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
The Emancipation of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley
The Encyclopedia of the History of Rock and Roll
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul
The Fall by Albert Camus
The Farmer's Almanac
The Federalist Papers
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Hairy Ape
The History of Art
The History of Civilization by Will & Ariel Durant, 11 volumes
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
The Iliad
The Importance of What We Care About by Harry Frankfurt
The Insect (The Bug) (The Vermin: Ungeheuer Ungeziefer) by Franz Kafka
The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning by Justin E. H. Smith
The Journals of Kurt Cobain
The Joys of Yiddish
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Life of Martin Luther
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Grey Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward
The Loony Bin Trip by Kate Millet
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
The Many World of Logic by Paul Herrick
The Mask by Jean-Pierre Vernant
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton
The Meaning of Life by Will Durant
The Mimic Men by V. S. Naipaul
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The New Yorker
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
The Odyssey
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
The Oxford American Dictionary
The Passions by Robert Solomon
The Philosopher: A History in 6 Types by Justin E. H. Smith
The Philosopher's Holiday by George Santayana
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The Poems of Sylvia Plath
The Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer: Everything You Need to Know About Craft, Inspiration, Agents, Editors, Publishing, and the Business of Building a Sustainable Writing Career by Kevin Larimer and Mary Gannon
The Portable Nietzsche
The Possibility of Altruism by Thomas Nagel
The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
The Queue by Vladamir Sorokin
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
The Rapture by Howard Lindsey
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Reveries of A Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us by Adam Kirsch - 230112
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Tim Snyder - A MUST READ.
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sovereignty of God by Arthur W. Pink
The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles
The Spring: A Mythic Memoir by Annie Connole
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Sudetenland Jews: A Study
The Swimmer by John Cheever
The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit by Melvin Konner
The Tennessee Highway Death Chant by Keegan Jennings Goodman
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
The Turn of the Screw
The View From Nowhere by Thomas Nagel
The Virtue of Faith by Robert Merrihew Adams
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory by Brian O'Shaughnessy
The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe
The Worst Kind of Girl by Susan Rukeyser
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Years by Annie Ernaux
They Whisper by Robert Olen Butler
Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
This Is Loving?
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Today's Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic? by Walter J. Chantry
Toynbee: World History, 2 volumes
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
Unheard Tick of Time
Virtues and Vices: And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy by Philippa Foot
Waking Up by Sam Harris
War On Peace by Ronan Farrow
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life by Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami
What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel
What is Political Philosophy? by Charles Larmore
What It Is Like by Charles North
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson
Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier
Why The Tree Loves The Ax by Jim Lewis
William S. Burroughs: A Life by Barry Miles
Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
Without Stopping by Paul Bowles
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke
Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert A. Caro
Writing With Power by Peter Elbow
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
You’re an Animal by Jardine Libaire
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Žižek's Jokes