BOOKS I'VE ENJOYED

A bookshelf built by the author, volumes nicely "colored-coded" and positioned above Grandma's rocker.

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!

  1. (How To Keep) Snakes In Captivity

  2. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

  3. 100 Songs by Ted Quinn

  4. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei

  5. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

  6. A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

  7. A Brief History of France: An Introduction to the People, History & Culture by Cecil Jenkins

  8. A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matias

  9. A Commentary on Psalm 119 by Charles Bridges

  10. A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles by Joseph A. Alexander

  11. A Commentary on the Book of Romans by Karl Barth

  12. A Companion to Plato’s Republic by Nicholas P. White

  13. A Concert of Tenses by Tess Gallagher

  14. A Hole In The World by Richard Rhodes

  15. A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

  16. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  17. A Month of Sundays by John Cheever

  18. A New Pair of Glasses by Chuck “C”

  19. A Part of My Life by A. J. Ayer

  20. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

  21. A Philosopher Looks at Work by Raymond Geuss

  22. A Piece of Work by Jay Woodruff

  23. A Theory of Consciousness by Brian O'Shaughnessy

  24. A Warning by Anonymous

  25. A World Without Time by Palle Yourgrau

  26. All of Us by Raymond Carver

  27. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

  28. Allen Ginsberg: A Biography by Barry Miles

  29. An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States

  30. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic by Julia Annas

  31. Analects by Confucius

  32. Andy Warhol by Arthur Danto

  33. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

  34. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler

  35. Asian Philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman

  36. Augustine: A Life by Peter Brown

  37. Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

  38. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

  39. Basic Vocabulary List

  40. Beat Collection by Barry Miles

  41. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

  42. Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography

  43. Better, Not Bitter by Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five

  44. Bewilderment by Richard Powers

  45. Bisexuality: Theories, Research, and Recommendations for the Invisible Sexuality by D. Joye Swan and Shani Habibi

  46. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and Andronum

  47. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti.

  48. Butchy’s Rainbow by Gregory Wallace Gilbert

  49. Butler's Sermons

  50. By George by Wesley Stace

  51. Cannery Row

  52. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

  53. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

  54. Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno by Raymond Geuss

  55. Chinese Thought by Herlee G. Creel

  56. Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan

  57. Civilization And Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

  58. Classical Asian Philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman

  59. Cleansing The Doors of Perception by Huston Smith

  60. Cold Snap by Thom Jones

  61. Collected Writings: Isaiah Berlin (esp., “Two Concepts of Liberty”)

  62. Commenting and Commentaries by Charles Spurgeon

  63. Complete Essays by E. B. White

  64. Complete Poems by T. S. Eliot

  65. Confessions by St. Augustine

  66. Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  67. Consciousness: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris

  68. Consciousness: The Hard Problem by David Chalmers

  69. Consciousness and the World by Brian O’Shaughnessy

  70. Convention: A Philosophical Study by David Lewis

  71. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

  72. Das Kapital by Karl Marx

  73. Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier

  74. Deep Learning by John D. Kelleher

  75. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Brain by Antonio Damasio

  76. Desert Solitude by Edward Abbey

  77. Dictionary of Philosophy by Peter Angeles

  78. Does God Exist? by Hans Kung

  79. Dreyer’s English

  80. DSM-IV: Psychiatric Diagnostic-Statistical Manual

  81. Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard

  82. Elements of the Philosophy of Right by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  83. Expression and Meaning by John Searle

  84. Euclid's Elements of Geometry

  85. Faith And Rationality by Alvin Plantinga, editor

  86. Falconer by John Cheever

  87. Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

  88. Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story by David Wolf (read in 1972)

  89. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, wife of the poet, Percy Shelley – d. age 27

  90. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

  91. Free Will / Determinism by Bernard Berofsky, editor

  92. From Socrates to Sartre by Stumpf

  93. Ghosts of New York by Jim Lewis

  94. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland

  95. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

  96. Go! Dogs! Go!

  97. God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell

  98. Golden Boy by Christopher Odets

  99. Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton

  100. Green Eggs And Ham

  101. Gringos by Charles Portis

  102. Guerrillas by V. S. Naipaul

  103. Hafgorah: The Five Books of the Pentateuch

  104. HARD CANDY: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2nd Edition) by Charles A. Carroll

  105. History And Human Nature by Robert Solomon

  106. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock

  107. Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

  108. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

  109. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

  110. How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

  111. How To Be A High Desert Minimalist Gardener by Janet Tucker

  112. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

  113. Howl / Supermarket In California by Allen Ginsberg

  114. Husserl and Intentionality by Smith & McIntyre

  115. I And Thou (Ich Und Du) by Martin Buber

  116. I Can’t Believe I Lived the Whole Thing by Howie Cohen

  117. I Ching

  118. I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) by Richard Polsky

  119. Ideas by Edmund Husserl

  120. Ignore Everybody

  121. In A Free State by V. S. Naipaul

  122. In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria

  123. In Search of the Soul: A Philosophical Essay by John Cottingham

  124. In the Shadow of the American Century by Alfred W. McCoy

  125. Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats by Barry Miles

  126. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

  127. Junius Maltby by John Steinbeck

  128. Kirche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics) by Karl Barth

  129. Know My Name by Chanel Miller

  130. Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer

  131. Learning from Asian Philosophy by Joel Kupperman

  132. Leonard Bernstein: Biography

  133. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

  134. Let it Come Down by Paul Bowles

  135. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

  136. Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis

  137. Light in August by William Faulkner

  138. Like A Splinter In Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy by Matt Lawrence

  139. Linguistics and Rationalism by Noam Chomsky

  140. Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard

  141. Logic by georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  142. Looking For Mister Good Bar by Judith Rossner

  143. Love Is A Dog From Hell by Bukowski

  144. Lucretius

  145. Making the Social World by John Searle

  146. Marcus Aurelius

  147. Marx: A Biography by Isaiah Berlin

  148. Mental Content by Colin McGinn

  149. Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnston

  150. Middlemarch by George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans]

  151. Midnight Mass by Paul Bowles

  152. Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul

  153. Mind: A Brief Introduction by John Searle

  154. Misfortune by Wesley Stace

  155. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene

  156. Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow

  157. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet

  158. Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

  159. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

  160. Nature’s Challenge to Free Will by Bernard Berofsky

  161. Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matias

  162. Next to Nothing by Paul Bowles

  163. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (Terence Irwin translation)

  164. Nietzsche Contra Wagner

  165. Nietzsche as Philosopher by Arthur Danto

  166. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

  167. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

  168. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

  169. Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

  170. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

  171. Not For Profit by Martha Nussbaum

  172. Not Thinking like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss

  173. Obstinate Air

  174. On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner

  175. On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt

  176. On Parenthood by Bill Cosby

  177. On Preaching and Preachers by Charles Spurgeon

  178. On Truth by Harry Frankfurt

  179. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

  180. On Writing by John Gardner

  181. On Writing by Stephen King

  182. One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  183. Open Minded by Jonathan Lear

  184. Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter

  185. Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder

  186. Outlines of the History of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

  187. Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose

  188. Paul Bowles: The Collected Short Stories

  189. Paul K. Feyerabend: Autobiography

  190. Pensees by Blaise Pascal

  191. Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  192. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

  193. Philosophy and Real Politics by Raymond Geuss

  194. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty

  195. Philosophy on Tap by Matt Lawrence

  196. Piker: A Memoir by Larry Fike

  197. Plato's Dialogs

  198. Please Kill Me edited by Legs McNiel and Gillian McCain

  199. Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff

  200. Principia Ethica by G. E. Moore

  201. Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant

  202. Public Goods, Private Goods by Raymond Geuss

  203. Punishment and Responsibility by H. L. A. Hart

  204. Quiddities by William van Orman Quine

  205. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

  206. Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

  207. Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

  208. Rabbit Redux by John Updike

  209. Raymond Carver: A Life by Carol

  210. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

  211. Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll

  212. Representations by Jerry Fodor

  213. Robert Lowell: A Biography by Ian Hamilton

  214. Roger's Version by John Updike

  215. Rousseau: Basic Writings (Social Contract; Discourse on Inequality)

  216. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

  217. Scepticism and Animal Faith by George Santayana

  218. Selected Writings by Carl G. Jung

  219. Sexual Politics by Kate Millet

  220. Shopcraft as Soulcraft by Matthew C. Crawford

  221. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

  222. Sisters by Jim Lewis

  223. Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora

  224. Sonny Liston Was A Friend of Mine by Thom Jones

  225. Sophie's Choice by William Styron

  226. South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry

  227. Speech Acts by John Searle

  228. Spreading The Word by Simon Blackburn

  229. Stories by Woody Allen

  230. Stravinsky: Autobiography

  231. Sweet Thursday

  232. Systematic Theology by Paul Tillich

  233. Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tze

  234. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

  235. The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye

  236. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory by Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem

  237. The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy

  238. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer

  239. The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts

  240. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

  241. The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill

  242. The Beatles

  243. The Bible, KJV

  244. The Bible, NIV

  245. The Bill of Rights

  246. The Bondage of The Will by Martin Luther

  247. The Brothers Grimm: Fairy Tales

  248. The Brothers Karamozov

  249. The Carrying by Ada Limon

  250. The Chicago Manual of Style

  251. The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman

  252. The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell

  253. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

  254. The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

  255. The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare

  256. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

  257. The Complete Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway

  258. The Complete Short Stories of John O'Hara

  259. The Conscience of A Liberal by Paul Krugman

  260. The Constitution of the United States of America

  261. The Construction of Social Reality by John Searle

  262. The Courage To Be by Paul Tillich

  263. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

  264. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

  265. The Declaration of Independence

  266. The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

  267. The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch

  268. The Devil's Dictionary

  269. The Diary of Anne Frank

  270. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

  271. The Elements of Style by Strunk & White

  272. The Emancipation of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley

  273. The Encyclopedia of the History of Rock and Roll

  274. The End of Faith by Sam Harris

  275. The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul

  276. The Fall by Albert Camus

  277. The Farmer's Almanac

  278. The Federalist Papers

  279. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth

  280. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  281. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  282. The Hairy Ape

  283. The History of Art

  284. The History of Civilization by Will & Ariel Durant, 11 volumes

  285. The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

  286. The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

  287. The Iliad

  288. The Importance of What We Care About by Harry Frankfurt

  289. The Insect (The Bug) (The Vermin: Ungeheuer Ungeziefer) by Franz Kafka

  290. The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning by Justin E. H. Smith

  291. The Journals of Kurt Cobain

  292. The Joys of Yiddish

  293. The Library Book by Susan Orlean

  294. The Life of Martin Luther

  295. The Little Red Lighthouse and the Grey Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward

  296. The Loony Bin Trip by Kate Millet

  297. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

  298. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman

  299. The Many World of Logic by Paul Herrick

  300. The Mask by Jean-Pierre Vernant

  301. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton

  302. The Meaning of Life by Will Durant

  303. The Mimic Men by V. S. Naipaul

  304. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

  305. The New Yorker

  306. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

  307. The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

  308. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

  309. The Odyssey

  310. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

  311. The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin

  312. The Oxford American Dictionary

  313. The Passions by Robert Solomon

  314. The Philosopher: A History in 6 Types by Justin E. H. Smith

  315. The Philosopher's Holiday by George Santayana

  316. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

  317. The Poems of Sylvia Plath

  318. 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

  319. The Portable Nietzsche

  320. The Possibility of Altruism by Thomas Nagel

  321. The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

  322. The Queue by Vladamir Sorokin

  323. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

  324. The Rapture by Howard Lindsey

  325. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

  326. The Reveries of A Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  327. The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us by Adam Kirsch - 230112

  328. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

  329. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

  330. The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

  331. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Tim Snyder - A MUST READ.

  332. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

  333. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

  334. The Sovereignty of God by Arthur W. Pink

  335. The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch

  336. The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles

  337. The Spring: A Mythic Memoir by Annie Connole

  338. The Stranger by Albert Camus

  339. The Sudetenland Jews: A Study

  340. The Swimmer by John Cheever

  341. The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit by Melvin Konner

  342. The Tennessee Highway Death Chant by Keegan Jennings Goodman

  343. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

  344. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

  345. The Turn of the Screw

  346. The View From Nowhere by Thomas Nagel

  347. The Virtue of Faith by Robert Merrihew Adams

  348. The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen

  349. The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory by Brian O'Shaughnessy

  350. The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe

  351. The Worst Kind of Girl by Susan Rukeyser

  352. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

  353. The Years by Annie Ernaux

  354. They Whisper by Robert Olen Butler

  355. Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

  356. This Is Loving?

  357. Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

  358. Today's Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic? by Walter J. Chantry

  359. Toynbee: World History, 2 volumes

  360. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

  361. Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman

  362. Unheard Tick of Time

  363. Virtues and Vices: And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy by Philippa Foot

  364. Waking Up by Sam Harris

  365. War On Peace by Ronan Farrow

  366. We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  367. West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life by Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman

  368. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami

  369. What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel

  370. What is Political Philosophy? by Charles Larmore

  371. What It Is Like by Charles North

  372. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

  373. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

  374. Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson

  375. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

  376. Why The Tree Loves The Ax by Jim Lewis

  377. William S. Burroughs: A Life by Barry Miles

  378. Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne

  379. Without Stopping by Paul Bowles

  380. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke

  381. Writing With Power by Peter Elbow

  382. You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

  383. You’re an Animal by Jardine Libaire

  384. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

  385. Žižek's Jokes