Summer Reading List 2011

Sunday, May 29, 2011

What Is It

Summer's just around the corner – what philosophers, philosophies, or philosophical issues do you want to read up on?  Kant's Critique of Pure Reason may not be the obvious choice to take on vacation, but there are lots of readable, beach-friendly classics and non-classics to add philosophical depth to your summer reading.  Not to mention new and classic fiction books with a philosophical bent.  John and Ken share some of the philosophically-minded titles on their reading list and take suggestions from listeners and special guests.

Listening Notes

 

Recommended by John & Ken

 

Bernhard Schlink, Self's Punishment

 

Bernhard Schlink, Guilt About the Past

 

Bernhard Schlink, The Homecoming

 

 

Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

 

Troy Jollimore, At Lake Scugog: Poems

Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary
(Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

Recommended by John McMurtrie (SF Chronicle Book Editor)

 

Garry Wills, Augustine's Confessions: A Biography

 

T.C. Boyle, When the Killing's Done

 

Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers

 

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty-One
Answers

 

Apostolos Doxiadis et. al., Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth 

 

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

 

Alain de Botton, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary

Recommendations by other guests

 

 

Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names For Love

Irv Yalom, The Spinoza Problem (forthcoming)

 

Helen Fisher, Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love By Understanding Your Personality Type

 

Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

 

Martin Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

 

Recommended by listeners on the air

 

Noam Shpancer, The Good Psychologist

 

William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

 

Leo Tolstoy, The Devil

 

Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel (reprinted in Labyrinths)

 

Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

 

Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place

Transcript