Recommend Books

After a recent snafu with Google, we’ve moved to Amazon ads to fund the site. In addition to making ends meet, I’m hoping this will also let us recommend books to each other.

I’ve added a few of my recent favorites, but if you have any you’d like to add, post them below. By default, I’ll include the username of the recommender and any comments they include, but if you’d rather not be attributed just say so.

Can we make donations to the site, or is there anything regular users can do [ads, promotions, etc.] to help with funding?

We have a paypal account connected to admin@ilovephilosophy.com, but it’s not listed anywhere because I’m in law school and haven’t made the time (when I’ve had time I’ve prefered discussing philosophy to mucking about on the server).

And do share your reading list; I get the impression that people here are readers, so I hope for this to be useful to users as well as offsetting costs.

Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised and The Possibility of an Island

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Island

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag

Nafeez Ahmed’s The War on Truth

David Ray Griffin’s Debunking 9/11 Debunking

Orwell’s 1984

Butterworth’s The World That Never Was

Peter Lance’s Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI–and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him

David Mitchell’s Number9Dream

The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution [size=85]http://www.amazon.com/Peasant-Prince-Thaddeus-Kosciuszko-Revolution/dp/0312625944

“…as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

  • Thomas Jefferson[/size]

The Complete Chronicles of Conan
[size=85]http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Chronicles-Conan-Robert-Howard/dp/0575077662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353364780&sr=1-1&keywords=complete+chronicles+of+conan[/size]

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
[size=85]http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353365846&sr=1-1&keywords=dumbing+us+down[/size]

The Theater and Its Double
[size=85]http://www.amazon.com/The-Theater-Double-Antonin-Artaud/dp/0802150306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353366235&sr=8-1&keywords=the+theatre+and+its+double[/size]

Story of a Secret State - An important historical piece and eyewitness account
[size=85]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OLE8EE/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_5[/size]

Awesome, thanks for the recommendations. I’ve added them with attribution. W.C., including links was very helpful. SIATD, if any of the versions I added is not the one you meant, let me know and I’ll swap it out.

Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas

Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn

Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott

Pragmatism As Post-Postmodernism, Larry A. Hickman

On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt

Thanks, upf.

Here are my recommendations, for the benefit of people using the ad-free style:

Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter

Siddhartha, Demian, and The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse

Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert

The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson

I’ve read GEB and the Glass Bead Game. Loved the former… not sure about the latter. It was definitely interesting.

Some more:
After Virtue; Macintyre
amazon.com/After-Virtue-Stud … 268035040/

Thinking, Fast and Slow; Kahneman
amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slo … 374275637/

The Case for Working with Your Hands, Or, Why Office Work Is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good; Crawford
amazon.com/Working-Hands-Off … 141047291/

The Black Swan; Taleb
amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improb … 81297381X/

The Art of Clear Thinking; Flesch
amazon.com/Clear-Thinking-Ru … 0064633691

Truth: A Guide; Blackburn
amazon.com/Truth-Guide-Simon … 195315804/

Fiction:
Q; Blissett
amazon.com/Q-Luther-Blissett/dp/0156031965/

Cat’s Cradle; Vonnegut
amazon.com/Cats-Cradle-Novel … 38533348X/

V; Pynchon
amazon.com/V-Perennial-Class … 060930217/

Power, Sex, Suicide : Mitochondria and the meaning of life

Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy”
Alfred Kazin (ed,) “The Portable Blake”

The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, by Thaddeus Golas
Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse
On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, by Douglas Harding
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

E. O. Wilson–“Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”
–“The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on the Earth.”

Time Wars by Jeremy Rifkin

About the increasing pace of society.

Out of print, but you can still find it.

Systematic Theology by Paul Tillich

Process and Reality by A.N Whitehead

Way to Wisdom by Karl Jaspers

Memories, Dreams and Reflections by C.G Jung

The View from the Center of the Universe by Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams

Twain (Clemens) “Letters From the Earth”
Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”-- “The Grand Inquisitor”
Matthew Fox “Original Blessing”

I only just now noticed the ads because I’m at work where there’s no ad block. The site looks a lot cleaner but would it be possible to have it use less real estate on the screen, or maybe put it in a sidebar?

For recommendations:

The Philosophy of Information by Luciano Floridi

That book is superb but may I suggest if you are new to that Russian you start with Crime and Punishment, it’ll not ease you in gently but Brothers is a magnup opus of his work that needs context.

Herman Melviles: Moby Dick, old but good, I read it far later than I should and I so got carried away on the rolling sea of peaks and troughs that carries this book.

Don Quixote: Cervantes, it’s funny and stupid and just wonderful. :slight_smile:

Swift, “Gullivers Travels” (the complete voyages)
Sterne, “Tristram Shandy”, the first “psychological” novel
Voltaire, “Candide”

Kaufman, “Discovering the Mind”
Dennett, “Sweet Dreams”

It’s kind of funny seeing “captaincrunk”'s suggestion up there. My name is gloriously unprofessional.

EDIT: not as unprofessional as uglypeoplefucking though