Good things to read

Here are some things to read that I have found useful, valuable, or fun.  I hope you do too.

For the most part I have tried to avoid self-consciously "philosophical" works because often they are stuffy, academic, and boring.  And the whole point of philosophy, by my lights, is to be practical ... to offer something you can take away into your life.  That's how I have approached compiling this list.  Also I looked for books that I enjoyed.


Bryant, Dorothy

• The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You

• Confessions of Madame Psyche

Chatwin, Bruce

• The Songlines

Didion, Joan

• "On Self Respect" in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

• "On Morality" in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Hadot, Pierre

• What is Ancient Philosophy? (Yes, a book about philosophers. But Hadot makes the critical point throughout that philosophy was about How to Live, and not mere logic-chopping.)

Hardy, G.H.

• A Mathematician's Apology

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

• "Who Thinks Abstractly?" (Yes, Hegel is a regular philosopher. But this piece is very funny, and also makes a good point.

Heinlein, Robert

• Stranger in a Strange Land

Lewis, Clive Staples

• The Abolition of Man

• The Great Divorce

• Till We Have Faces

McMillin, Laurence

• The Schoolmaker: Sawney Webb and the Bell Buckle Story

Murdoch, Iris

• Acastos (Two plays trying to guess what Plato must have been like back when he was a troubled adolescent.)

Pirsig, Robert Maynard

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

• Lila

Rich, Adrienne

• "Women and Honor" in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence

Ryan, Christopher, and Cacilda Jethá

• Sex at Dawn

Ulph, Owen

• The Fiddleback: Lore of the Line Camp