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Personal Choice
Revised 30-07-2019
How I made this list
I listed some books here a few years ago because they seemed important
but now I've revised my selection on a rather different basis. To
explain what I've done I'll describe how I made the new list.
There are over 600 book reviews on this site. To make my selection
I looked through the lists in the various subject categories and
picked out those that seemed to have a personal resonance for me.
Why these books and not others? Difficult to say. I suppose that
most of them have changed how I think in one way or another (a few
are there simply because I enjoy them). One criterion is that I should
have reread them at leat once. So it's a very personal
list, and no doubt says more about me than it does about the books.
It's quite a short list (though I shall add to it from time to time) but that's
how it came out and I didn't want to inflate it artificially. I was
going to include short notes about each entry but then I decided
there was no point in adding to what's already in the reviews.
The books are divided into fiction and nonfiction but are otherwise
listed in no particular order.
The Books
Fiction
At Swim-Two-Birds and
The Third Policeman, by Flann
O'Brien..
The Dead, by James Joyce.
Replay, by Ken Grimwood.
The Medusa Frequency, by Russell Hoban.
Nonfiction
Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, by Anil
Seth
The End of Time, by Julian Barbour.
Abducted: How People Come to Believe They
Were Abducted by Aliens, by Susan A. Clancy.
Religion and the Decline of
Magic, by Keith Thomas.
Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious
Experiences, by Marghanita Laski.
The Illusion of Conscious Will, by
Daniel M. Wegner.
Freedom and Belief, by Galen
Strawson. †
Reasons and Persons, by Derek
Parfit.
Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian
Barnes.
Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy, by Mel
Greaves.
Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the
Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane.†
The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of
Language and the Human Brain, by Terrence Deacon.
The Mind Is Flat: The Illusion of Mental
Depth, by Nick Chater.
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New
Millennium, by Bart D. Ehrman.†
The Ghost in the Universe, by Taner
Edis.†
Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus, by Anthony
Storr.
† See the list of authors for other
books on similar themes by these authors.
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