Books are like having conversations with the greatest minds across the space-time continuum. Few conversations satisfy our optimal need for stimulation. Much of our attention is allocated to present anxieties, activities, and daily living to the sheer dismissal of energy sources and issues beyond the confines of the self. There are practical individuals who provide the skills, tools, and attentional allocation necessary for our survival, and there are those quixotic individuals who combine the insatiable curiosity, conscientiousness, and childish, dream-like qualities that are necessary for our evolution. Neither is better than the other, both are necessities. There is an old buddhist koan claiming two ways to ignorance: those who never read books and those who do nothing but read books. I keep this in mind as I spend a good proportion of my life propped up against the backside of trees, lying barefoot in the grass, or vegetating in my reading chair to consume the catalyzing ideas and stories of others. And the moment those book covers close, I solicit the best possible balance of action and reflection...
Just as the bulk of these books were culled from the recommendations of self-selected souls who offered me crystallizing moments over the years, please feel free to contact me about anything that you read or anything on this list that captures your mind's eye...
Paul Abramson.
With pleasure
Douglas Adams.
The salmon of doubt [January, 2007]
The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy [January, 2007--could be the fourth or fifth time I read it]
Restaurant at the end of the universe [February, 2007]
R. Albert.
Genius and emminence
Mitch Albom.
The five people you meet in heaven [October, 2004]
Tuesdays with Morrie
Stephen Ambrose.
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West [July, 2006]
Martin Amis.
The Rachel Papers [May, 2005]
London Fields [April, 2005]
Heavy water and other stories [March, 2005]
Success [March, 2005]
Yellow dog [December, 2004]
Dead babies
Time's arrow [will challenge the way you view bowel movements, sexual attraction, digestion, and pimps through an ingenious twist on the concept of time and order]
Hans Askenasy
Cannibalism: From sacrifice to survival [November, 2006]
Margaret Atwood
The handmaid's tale [September, 2004]
Cat's eye [September, 2004]
John Banville
The sea [February, 2007---one of the most aesthetically beautiful novels]
The Book of Evidence [December, 2004]
Clive Barker.
Everville
The damnation game
The great and secret show
Cabal
In the flesh
The inhuman condition
Georges Bataille.
Story of the eye
Roy Baumeister.
Meanings of life
James Beck
Three worlds of MichelAngelo [May, 2006]
Alfred Bester.
The stars my destination
Psychoshop
Thomas Blass.
The man who shocked the world: The life and legacy of Stanley Milgram [May, 2006]
Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings [favorite short story: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]
T.C. Boyle.
A friend of the earth
Tooth and claw and other stories
The inner circle [December, 2005]
Without a hero
The road to wellness
Descent of man
The river runs whiskey
Ray Bradbury.
The martian chronicles [May, 2004]
The illustrated man
Fahrenheit 451
A medicine for melancholy
The golden apples of the sun
Fiona Bradley
Surrealism [June, 2006]
Serge Bramly
Leonardo: The artist and the man [July, 2004]
Alan Brown and Chris Logan
The psychology of the simpsons [July, 2006]
David Jay Brown.
Mavericks of the mind
Bill Bryson.
A walk in the woods [June, 2006]
A short history of nearly everything [May, 2006]
Anthony Burgess.
The doctor is sick
A clockwork orange
William Burroughs.
Exterminator [January, 2003]
Italo Calvino.
Difficult Loves
Albert Camus.
The first man [December, 2002]
The stranger
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood [September, 2005]
Emmanuel Carrere
I am alive and you are dead: A journey into the mind of Philip K. Dick [June, 2004]
Michael Chabon.
The amazing adventures of kavalier and clay [May, 2003]
The mysteries of pittsburgh [May 2003]
Greg Child.
Over the edge: The true story of four american climbers' kidnap and escape in the mountains of central asia [September, 2006]
Arthur C. Clarke.
Frontiers of science
J.M. Coetzee
Disgrace [July, 2004]
Waiting for the barbarians [July, 2004]
Robert Coles.
The mind's fate
Neil Comins.
What if the moon didn't exist? [May, 2003]
Andre Comte-Sponville.
A small treatise on the great virtues [October, 2002]
John Connolly.
The book of lost things
Michael Crichton.
Congo
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Flow: The psychology of optimal experience
The evoling self
Creativity
Richard Cytowic.
The man who tasted shapes
Robertson Davies.
The cunning man [April, 2006]
The lyre of Orpheus [April, 2006]
What's bred in the bone [March, 2006]
The Rebel Angels
Fifth Business
The Manticore
World of Wonders
Richard Dawkins.
The god delusion [December, 2006]
Daniel C. Dennett.
Darwin's dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life
Jared Diamond.
Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies [June, 2007]
Philip K. Dick.
Now wait for last year [April, 2003]
The man in the high castle
Confessions of a crap artist
Ubik
The three stigmata of palmer eldritch
The unteleported man
A scanner darkly
Martian time-slip
Charles Dickens.
The Old Curiosity Shop [April, 2003]
James Dickey
Deliverance [July, 2006]
Thomas Disch.
The M.D. : A horror story
Fyodor Dostoevesky.
The brothers kazamarov [November, 2005]
The double [February, 2003]
Crime and punishment
Dave Eggers
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius [November, 2003]
Bret Easton Ellis
American Psycho [August, 2003]
Joseph J. Ellis.
Founding brothers [May, 2004]
Robert Emmons.
Thanks! How the new science of gratitude can make you happier
Jeffrey Eugenides
Middlesex [December, 2003]
Richard Feynman
The Pleasure of finding things out [February, 2006]
Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! [September, 2003]
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Great Gatsby [honeymoon reading in Aruba; July, 2002]
Bill Fitzhugh.
Pest Control [April, 2003]
Viktor Frankl.
The search for ultimate meaning in life [October, 2006]
Louis Franzini and John Grossberg.
Eccentric and bizarre behaviors
Ralph Freedman
Hermann Hesse: A pilgrim in crisis [November, 2003]
Sam Fussell.
Muscle
Northrop Frye
Anatomy of criticism [July, 2003]
Howard Gardner.
Creating minds
Leading minds
Frames of mind
Multiple intelligences
John Gartner.
The hypomanic edge [May, 2006]
Andre Gide
The immoralist [June, 2005]
Malcolm Gladwell.
The tipping point [May, 2006]
James Gleick.
Genius: The life and science of Richard Feynmann
Robert Graves.
Greek Gods and Heroes [February, 2005]
The Transformation of Lucius (or the Golden Ass) [August, 2004]
Claudius the God [September, 2002]
I, Claudius [August, 2002]
Donald Griffin.
The question of animal awareness: Evolutionary continuity of mental experience
Mark Haddon .
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time [June, 2006]
Thich Nhat Hanh.
Living Buddha, Living Christ
Sam Harris
The end of faith: Religion, terror, and the future of reason [April, 2007]
A letter to a christian nation [January, 2007]
Peter Haskel.
Bankei Zen
Nathaniel Hawthoren
The House of the Seven Gables [April, 2007]
The Blithedale romance [May, 2007]
Ronald Hayman.
A life of Jung
Kafka: A biography [a testament of how the excruiating pain of melancholy and social anxiety can be sublimated into immense creativity]
Zoe Hellner
Notes on a Scandal [October, 2004]
Nick Herbert.
Elemental Mind
Hermann Hesse.
The Glass Bead Game
Siddharta
Narcissus and Goldmund
Benjamin Hoff.
The Te of Piglet
Allen Hornblum.
Acres of skin
J. Huizinga
The waning of the middle ages [October, 2003]
Aldous Huxley.
Island
Brave new world
The doors of perception
Masuji Ibuse.
Black Rain: A Novel
John Irving.
The World According to Garp [August, 2002]
A Son of the Circus [honeymoon reading in Aruba; July, 2002]
The Hotel New Hampshire [June, 2002]
Kazuo Ishiguro.
Never let me go [February, 2007]
Susan Jacoby.
Freethinkers: A history of american secularism [January, 2007]
Kay Redfield Jamison.
Exuberance [November, 2004]
An unquiet mind
Touched by fire
Arthur Jensen and Frank Miele.
Intelligence, race, and genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen [September, 2006]
Paul Johnson.
Intellectuals
Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Full catastrophe living [January, 2004]
Wherever you go there you are
Franz Kafka.
Amerika [June, 2006]
The castle [June, 2006]
The great wall of china [July, 2003]
The trial
The metamorphosis, in the penal colony, and other stories
Jerome Kagan.
Galen's prophecy
Kenneth Kamler.
Surviving the extremes: A doctor's journey to the limits of human endurance [November, 2006]
Etgar Keret.
The bus driver who wanted to be god and other stories
Jack Kerouac.
The dharma bums
On the road
Ivan Klima.
Love and Garbage
Daniel Kline.
Thomas Young: The forgotten genius
Damon Knight.
Humpty dumpty: An oval
Thomas Kuhn
The structure of scientific revolutions [June, 2003]
Milan Kundera
Ignorance [February, 2006]
The unbearable lightness of being [January, 2006]
Immortality [January, 2006]
Identity [January, 2006]
Slowness [January, 2006]
Jhumpa Lahiri
Interpreter of Maladies [January, 2005]
R.D. Laing.
The politics of experience
Erik Larson
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America [May, 2005]
Timothy Leary.
Design for dying
The tibetian book of the dead
Sinclair Lewis
Babbitt [July, 2005]
James Lowen.
Lies my teacher told me: Everything your american history textbook got wrong [September, 2006]
John Lilly [No veneration can do him justice as his work ignited my interest in science and the virtues of curiosity...].
Programming and meta-programming the human bio-computer
The center of the cyclone
The scientist
John Lilly, so far...
David Lodge.
Small World [interesting parody of academic life; September, 2002]
Arnold Ludwig.
The price of greatness: Resolving the controversy of creativity and madness
Norman Mailer
Why are we in Vietnam? [April, 2005]
Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain [August, 2005]
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years [June, 2005]
Death in Venice
Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend
Yann Martel.
Life of Pi [October, 2004]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the time of cholera [April, 2007]
Memories of my melancholy whores [May, 2007]
Abraham Maslow.
The farther reaches of human nature
W. Somerset Maugham.
Of human bondage
D.T. Max.
The family that couldn't sleep: A medical mystery [October, 2006]
Patrick McCabe
The butcher boy [September, 2004]
Cormac McCarthy.
The Road
Carlton Mellick III
Satan Burger [February, 2004]
Ben Mezrich
Bringing down the house [December, 2005]
Henry Miller.
Tropic of cancer
Plexus
Nexus
Steven Millhauser.
Martin Dressler
Harvey Milman and Stanley Sunderwirth.
Craving for ecstasy: The consciousness and chemistry of escape
Yukio Mishima
Acts of worship [May, 2007]
Christopher Moore.
The island of the sequined love nun [January, 2006]
Practicial demonkeeping
The lust lizard of melancholy cove
Wendy Moore.
The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery
Marlo Morgan.
Mutant message down under
Edmund Morris
Theodore Rex [May, 2003]
The rise of Theodore Roosevelt [May, 2003]
Haruki Murakami.
Kafka on the shore [April, 2006]
Sputnik sweetheart [May, 2004]
Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world
A wild sheep chase
David Myers.
The American Paradox
Vladimir Nabakov.
Pnin [March, 2007]
The defense [March, 2007]
Lolita [January, 2003]
Audrey Niffeneger
The Time Traveler's Wife [November, 2004]
Chuck Palahniuk
Choke [July, 2005]
Yogasanda Paramahansa.
The autobiography of a yogi
Walker Percey.
The moviegoer [April, 2004]
Marisha Pessl.
Special topics in calamity physics [March, 2007]
Steven Pinker
The Blank Slate [February, 2004]
Robert Pirsig.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael
The story of B
Ayn Rand.
The fountainhead
Atlas shrugged
Anthem
We the living
For the new intellectual
Pauline Reage.
Story of O [September, 2002; will stretch your conception of love to pathological realms or will cause you revulsion...be open-minded and pick up a copy]
Mary Renault.
The Bull from the sea [July, 2004]
The Nature of Alexander [March, 2003]
The King Must Die [November, 2002]
Tom Robbins.
Even cowgirls get the blues [July, 2003]
Villa incognito [June, 2003]
Jitterbug perfume [August, 2002]
Half asleep in frog pajamas
Still life with woodpecker
Skinny legs and all...
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Another Roadside Attraction
Michael Ross
Salvador Dali and the surrealists [June, 2006]
Philip Roth.
Portnoy's complaint [December, 2006]
The Human Stain
Albert Rothenberg.
Creativity and madness
Arundhati Roy
The God of small things [May, 2005]
Matt Ruff.
Set this house in order [April, 2003]
Sewer, gas, and electric: The public works triology [February, 2003]
Fool on the hill
Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses [January, 2005]
Midnight's Children [December, 2004]
Bertrand Russell
The conquest of happiness [June, 2007]
Why I am not a christian [June, 2007]
Michael Rutter.
Developing minds: Continuities and discontinuities across the life span
Oliver Sacks.
The man who mistook his wife for a hat
An anthropologist on mars
Carl Sagan.
Broca's brain [June, 2003]
The demon haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark
The varieties of scientific experience: A personal view of the search for god
David Salsburg.
The lady tasting tea: How statistics revolutionized science in the twentieth century [October, 2006]
Jose Saramago.
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Blindness
David Sedaris.
Barrel Fever [made the 4.5 hour airplane ride return from Aruba a little less excruciating; July, 2002]
Marc Seifer
The life and times of Nikola Tesla [March, 2004]
Bernard Shaw
Man and superman [June, 2006]
Edward Shorter
A history of psychiatry
Paul Silvia
Exploring the psychology of interest [May, 2006]
Zadie Smith
White Teeth [February, 2005]
Dava Sobel
Galileo's Daughter [October, 2003]
Peter Stark.
Last breath: Cautionary tales from the limits of human endurance [November, 2006]
Robert Sternberg.
Psychologists Defying the Crowd [December, 2002]
Thinking styles
Henry David Thoreau
Walden [June, 2005]
Leo Tolstoy.
Anna Karenina [March, 2006-----excellent reading during my 10 day trip to Italy]
Ptolemy Tompkins.
This tree grows out of hell
John Kennedy Toole.
A Confederacy of Dunces [March, 2005]
Robert Wright.
The moral animal: Why we are, the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology
Abraham Verghese.
The tennis partner
Tony Vigorito
Just a couple of days [May, 2004]
William Vollman
Expelled from Eden [April, 2007]
The butterfly stories [May, 2007]
The rainbow stories [June, 2007]
Kurt Vonnegut Jr..
God bless you Mr. Rosewater
Galapagos
Sirens of titan
Player piano
Breakfast of champions
Deadeye dick
Slaughterhouse-five
Welcome to the monkey house
Hocus Pocus
Jill Paton Walsh
Knowledge of Angels [October, 2004]
James Watson.
The double helix
Peter Watson.
Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century
Jack Weatherhouse
Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world [March, 2004]
Jack Welsh
Jack: Straight from the gut [December, 2005]
Edward O. Wilson
Consilience: The unity of knowledge [August, 2006]
Simon Winchester
The Professor and the Madman: A tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary [May, 2005]
Irwin Yalom.
Nietzche sneezes
Lying on the couch
Love's executioner
Every day gets a little closerRichard Yglesias.
Dr. Neruda and the cure for evil
The game player
Akira Yoshimura
On Parole
Translated by Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer, & Jay Ramsay.
Tao Te Ching