Books you have read and would recommend.

[PrometheusRumiHuxley]

Carl Sagan's Billions & Billions is one of my absolute favorite books. It assisted me greatly letting go of religion. A friend of mine who had helped me let go in many ways lent me the book. The ending will be rather difficult to ever replicate, and it is this which makes it so unbelievably good. I'm sad that, since so much is focused on the science as he was writing, the book becomes more sort of outdated every year, because, oh the ending, so lovely, so unreproducible. The book provides an overall view of life, which I found to thoroughly satisfactorily replace the Christian view. I highly recommend it as a transition from Christianity book, though the reader needs to be pretty liberal to begin with.

[Tom62]

I always liked books that give me a "sense or wonder" and surprises me with unpredictable plot twists. One of the greatest "plot-twist" and "sense of wonder" master, was Roger Zelazny. Roger Zelazny's books have three things in common: a flawed hero who sometimes fails, endlessly surprising plot twists, and a blend of lyricism, literary allusions, and sly puns that makes the pages fly. If your up to an amazing ride than get "The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)" at Amazon.

[oscarstrok]

if you like dark science-fantasy, then any of the warhammer 40k books would be good, though i would recommend any of Dan abnett's books

[Crow]

After so many of the authors I normally read reference the works below I thought it was time to read them. Turns out there brilliant and is no wonder that they have inspired so many other creations.

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (penguin classics edition in three volumes),
Journey to the West by Cheng'en Wu (W. J. F. Jenner translation).

Both of these translations air more to the side of enjoyment of the read without getting stuck in the trappings of direct translations, but if your a stickler for translations then I would avoid.

[danny boy]

For an intense action story:
"Without Remorse" by Tom Clancy

For an interesting perspective on life:
"Way of a Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman

For a good sci-fi story:
"He, she and it" by Marge Piercy

[Cooper20]

'Candide' -Voltaire

Rape and Murder and Theft and Disease and fun things like that.

[darkcyd]

Science: Sagan is nice but I like Hawking better. The reason for that is Hawking, even though he is horribly afflicted still has a better understanding of society and what people can handle. He is more human than Sagan. Sagan I think is a great visionary but perhaps still is too professoresque (woot new word) for the average layperson interrested in science not as a profession.

[Davin]

Ender's Game

[Too Few Lions]

I read 'Seconds' a few weeks ago by David Ely, which is great, though unfortunately out of print and tricky to come by. Thought I'd give it a go as I love the John Frankenheimer film adaptation (also highly recommended...and also out of print!)

[Tank]

Currently working through The Forever War - Dispatches from the War on Terror by Dexter Filkins

Very interesting so far. Just goes to show how ridiculous having a War of Terror really is and how the nature of Afghanistan has screwed over all the major powers who have attempted to run it.

[Nimzo]

   

One I read recently: The Doors of the Sea, by Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, written after the tsunami in December 2004 but particular pertinent given the recent tsunami in Japan. Hart smashes that uncompassionate idol of the philosophical theist - the god of theodicy - and exposes evil as absurd nothingness (Barth's das Nichtige) and the Cross and Resurrection as the ultimate victory of God (that is, the One True God) over death.

[Will37]

My favoriate work of fiction is Death and the Dervish my Mesa Selimovic.  The book is almost poetry in many parts.  It is dense and ponderous but it's a wonderful book about moral cowardice and the corrupting influence of power.  Anything by Dostoevsky after Poor Folks is great.  Tolstoy's War and Peace is great.

Gogol is wonderful but you kind of have to learn how to read him.

For non-fiction.  Anything by Phillip Bobbitt is great.  Hilary Putnam has some great books out there on pragmatism and philosophy in general.  I'm currently reading Monk's biography on Wittgenstein and it seems pretty interesting.  Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil by Arendt is good.  After virtue by MacIntyre is brilliant.  The best book on morals I've ever read. 

I think Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a good book, if you read Kuhn and not his followers who try to use his work to destroy science.  He also wrote a previous book on the Copernican Revolution which is good if a bit tedious.  The theoretical structure is also not fully formed.  A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide seems good, though I've only read the parts about Bosnia.  Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kolakowski seems great, although I've only read about 200 pages of it.  The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL by Eric Greitens is great.  It's a story of war and the fight against terrorism by a thoughtful and intelligent man, not a book of 'look at what a bad ass mother fucker I am'.

I;ve also been skimming Jack Miles God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God and both seem good, if a bit wordy.  Christianity: The First Thre Thousand Years also seems good, but not too profound.

Anything by Shabbir Akhtar.  He's the most brilliant religious philosopher.  It's interesting to read a man who is a pretty Orthodox Muslim who can admit to some troubling features of the Qur'am (the excessive focus on Muhammad's personal life, or example) but also offer a brilliant criticism of Hume.  He's really a man who has actually mastered Islamic Theology and Philosophy, secular western philosophy, and Christian Theology.  Really illuminating fascinating to read. 

[McQ]

Best writer of the past 25 years in all of the genres I like is Dan Simmons. Best novels of his and at the top of my all time favorites:

1. The Terror

2. Hyperion (the entire four volume series is supposed great, but the first two, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are the only two I've read).

3. Drood

Away from that and to non-fiction, one of my top three best books of all time is the Pulitzer Prize Winning book by Richard Rhodes, The Making of The Atomic Bomb.

[Will37]

Salman Rushdie.  Can't believe I forgot him.  I just started Shame today.  The best anglophone author I've ever read.

[ThinkAnarchy]

Ender's Game
1984
1776 (non-fiction)
Dune
The Fountainhead

All are great books.