Reading List

Here is a non-exhaustive series of books I have read, some of which I think are must-reads, some with comments and criticisms.

Philosophy

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas R. Hofstadter)

A work in progess…

A Defence of Poetry (Percy Shelley)

This short pocket book, although written in the 19th century, has aged very well. Shelley aimed through this text to defend the poet. I think what he was defending was not just the poet in the literal sense but any individual whose work is not analytical or scientific but purely creative. To me this includes all of the arts whether it be dancing, poetry, sculpting, creative writing or music. He was defending the arts against the rising hubris of the sciences and the shadow it was casting on other human activities. To do science, the human mind capitalizes on its reasoning and calculating abilities whereas to be a poet implies nourishing the productive and imaginative parts of the mind. Shelley sees danger in silencing the creative impulses of the human mind to the benefit of science. Although science has greatly increased humanity’s rule over the external world, only through poetry, in the larger sense, can humanity extend its reach into the inner world.

The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)

Civilization and its Discontents (Sigmund Freud)

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Carl Gustav Jung)

The Gay Science (Friedrich Nietszhe)

And Thus Spake Zarathoustra (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Global Burnout (Pascal Chabot)

Depression and Philosophy (Robert Redeker)

Science and the Common Understanding (Robert Oppenheimer)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn)

The Politics of Experience (Ronald D. Laing)

History

Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)

A work in progress…

Prisons We Choose to Live In (Doris Lessing)

I can’t remember exactly why I picked this book up at the library. It was probably referenced by another book I was reading at the time. In any case, this historical and philosophical collection of essays was written by Nobel prize-winner Doris Lessing. I particularly enjoyed the last essay which discussed the benefits of studying history objectively and reading literature to guide our approach to building better societies. Lessing emphasizes that the successes and failures that have characterized the sociopolitical climate of our societies over the course of history as studied by the humanities can be viewed as the result of what she calls the “social transformation labs” of the past 250 years. The following excerpt was one of my favorites: “We will teach you to read history, so that you understand that ideas are ephemeral creatures, that the ideas that seem most compelling can and do disappear overnight. We will teach you to read literature which is the study of humanity by humanity, so that you understand the development of the individual and peoples. Literature is a branch of anthropology, of history; and we will ensure that you are able to evaluate an idea based on the memory fund of humanity. For literature and history are offshoots of human memory; they are the archives of this memory.”

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)

I was not too impressed by this book despite the hugely positive press coverage it has received. Most of it is speculative, as futurist-leaning books tend to be. Humans tend to be very bad at predicting the future precisely over relatively large time scales. And that’s true whether the human doing the predicting is an expert or a layperson. One thing worth mentioning of Harari’s thought is that over-arching narratives are central to human societies. They tend to guide our everyday actions, how we organize our societies and what things we value. Part of shaping a better future for humanity involves carefully and collectively reinventing our narratives so as to avoid the many potential pitfalls and catastrophic endings that don’t seem so easily avoidable.

The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Theodore Roszak)

Computer Science

Our Final Invention (James Barrat)

At the time I was reading this, I was taking a sabbatical year before starting my bachelor’s degree. I already had a strong interest in AI and was curious what this book had to say about it. I think it turned me off about AI research and development. I wasn’t sure if contributing to the invention of “the end of humanity” was something I wanted to do. Although the book does bring forth legitimate criticism of AI research and tries to shed some light on the potential dangers of artificial general intelligence (AGI), now having a deeper understanding of state-of-the-art machine learning systems, most of the fears that the author expresses seem a bit overblown and far-fetched. His claims are in the same vein as the all too popular fears that Elon Musk has been expressing with regards to AI. I think that one of the main mistakes that proponents of this current of thought make is that they confound intelligence, agency and human desires. Anthromorphizing yet to be invented machines can definitely bring one to think about AGI as potentially very dangerous. It is essentially a projection of the “evil genius” onto these machines but to me it is not so clear that an intelligent machine must have desires of its own in a human sense or any agency at all that is not restricted to what it has been designed to do. Very intelligent machines such as AGI may just be very good at solving problems that we are very bad at solving, only when asked to solve them.

Fiction

Fear and Trembling (Amélie Nothomb)

I read this in French, so I can’t vouch for translations but I was quite amazed by the virtuosity with which it was written! It is short, deep and has a kafkaesque flavor to it that is unmistakable.

Une vie divine (Phillipe Sollers)

The Stranger (Albert Camus)

The Castle (Franz Kafka)

2666 (Roberto Bolano)

The God Formula (José Rodrigues Dos Santos)

I can’t say that I feel like this book was a great work of fiction. The writing wasn’t spectacular nor was the storyline. What was spectacular though was the weaving of all these different and fascinating ideas from quantum physics to Taoism and philosophy. It also does a good job of piquing one’s curiosity for these subjects in a light and easy to read way.

Huis Clos (Jean-Paul Sartre)

The Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov)

It’s been a while since I read this but I do remember it being a series of great science-fiction novels that I thoroughly enjoyed. The series really does the job of feeding the mind with intricate and imaginative potential scenarios of human life in the future.

1984 (George Orwell)

Animal Farm (George Orwell)

A Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

The Schopenhauer Cure (Irvin D. Yalom)

When Nieztsche Wept (Irvin D. Yalom)

This is one of my favorite books of all times. Being an amateur reader of Nietzschean philosophy, I found that this was a great way to learn more about the life of Nieztsche and his philosophy. It is expertly written and you really get out of it feeling like you had a momentary glimpse into one of the greatest minds of philosophy.

Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)

The Count of Monte-Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

One of the first classics of French literature that I read during my early teenage years. It is a book very dear to me as it was offered to me by my father. I remember reading it during a three day roadtrip and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. It was at the time that I was transitioning from avid reading of comic books to reading more dense “adult” literature. The Count of Monte-Cristo is the quintessential story of revenge and it ends beautifully. Definitely recommend!