Books
This is a list of books that I am either currently reading, have recently read, or have picked up with a view to reading in the near future.
Note: links here may not point to the edition that I have, but are provided as a convenience (and if you buy one, I’m supposed to get a couple of pennies ;-))
Currently reading
These books are currently the ones sitting in my day-to-day possession (usually within a Blackwell’s plastic carrier bag within my knapsack). The two exceptions to this are The Road to Reality and Asimov’s Guide To The Bible because they’re so bloody big, so they stay on the bookshelf or on my bedside table.
- Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Jared Diamond
- The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose
- Conversations On Consciousness by Susan Blackmore
- Asimov’s Guide To The Bible by Isaac Asimov
- Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett
- 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need To Know by Ben Dupré
- 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know by John D Barrow
Recently read
These are the books that I’ve recently completed reading. I may review a book, and if I do you will see a link to said review next to the title.
- Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
- Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
- Logic by Wilfred Hodges
- How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
- The Consolation of Philosophy by (Anicius Manlius Severinus) Boethius
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Republic by Plato (trans. C D C Reeve)
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
- Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett
- The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Failed States by Noam Chomsky
- Imperial Ambitions by Noam Chomsky
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey
- The Single Helix by Steve Jones
- Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps by Peter Galison
- Philosophy of Religion by Mel Thompson
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper
- History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
- Sceptical Essays by Bertrand Russel
- Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
- Critical Reasoning by Anne Thomson
- The Logic of Real Arguments by Alec Fisher
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
- Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
- The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts by Joan Konner
- The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
- The End of Faith by Sam Harris
- You Are Here by Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune
- The Meaning of Things by A. C. Grayling
- A Devil’s Chaplain by Richard Dawkins
- The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
- The Form of Things by A. C. Grayling
- Why Truth Matters by Ophelia Benson & Jeremy Stangroom
- How to Win Every Argument by Madsen Pirie
- The “God” Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper (review)
- A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber
- The Improbability of God edited by Michael Martin & Ricki Monnier
- The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome by Tony Attwood
- The Rough Guide to the Brain by Barry J Gibb
- God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion by Christopher Hitchens
- Your Body – The Fish That Evolved: The Amazing Story of Man’s Origins by Keith Harrison
- Welcome to Your Brain by Sanda Aamodt and Sam Wang
- Free to be Human – Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of Illusion by David Edwards
- An Introduction to Black Holes, Information and the String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe by Leonard Susskind & James Lindesay
- The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854 by Søren Kierkegaard
- The Age of Reason by Bacon, Pascal, Hobbes, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
On the shelf
These are the books that I’ve yet to read recently, although I may have read them previously.
- The Richness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould
- Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould
- The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong by Francis Hitchens
- The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
- 21st Century Discovery: The Structure of Life by Isaac Asimov
- The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future by James Martin
- Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
Recently acquired
These are books that I’ve recently bought or been given, and have yet to find space on the book shelves for them (and haven’t read).
New books! :-)
- The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the nonbeliever selected by Christopher Hitchens
- Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese
- A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston
- What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman
- 50 reasons people give for believing in a god by Guy P Harrison
- God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J Stenger
- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Books to buy
These are some books that I’m looking to buy in the near future, usually from some kind of personal recommendation.
- I Am a Strange Loop – Douglas Hofstadter
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
If you’d like to support me in my reading, please feel free to visit my Amazon (UK) wishlist and gift me a book. :-)
If you would like me to review a book, please consult my book review policy.
Last updated: 14 July 2008.









