Category: Books

Recommended reading

J. R. R. Tolkien


The Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Silmarillion
Unfinished Tales
The Children of Hurin
Beren and Lúthien
The Fall of Gondolin
The Annotated Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien, Douglas A. Anderson (Editor)
The Art of The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien (Author), Christina Scull (Editor), & Wayne G. Hammond (Editor)

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

Kim Stanley Robinson


Icehenge
The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance
Escape From Kathmandu
A Short Sharp Shock
Antarctica
The Martians
The Years of Rice and Salt
Galileo’s Dream
2312
Shaman
Aurora
Green Earth
New York 2140
Red Moon

Three Californias (Orange County trilogy, Orange County triptych)
The Wild Shore
The Gold Coast
Pacific Edge

The Mars Trilogy
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars

Science in the Capital
Forty Signs of Rain
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting

Religion


Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew – Bart D. Ehrman
The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed – Bart D. Ehrman
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer – Bart D. Ehrman
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) – Bart D. Ehrman
Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are – Bart D. Ehrman
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth – Bart D. Ehrman
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee – Bart D. Ehrman
Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior – Bart D. Ehrman
The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World – Bart D. Ehrman
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity – Elaine Pagels
The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World’s Most Animated Family – Mark I. Pinsky
The Oxford History of the Biblical World – Michael D. Coogan (Editor)
The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion – Mircea Eliade
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief – Lawrence Wright

Science


Relativity: The Special and the General Theory – Albert Einstein
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter – Richard P. Feynman
The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe – Roger Penrose
The Nature of Space and Time – Stephen Hawking & Roger Penrose
The Grand Design – Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
An Introduction To Black Holes, Information and The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe – Leonard Susskind & James Lindesay
The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design – Leonard Susskind
The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics – Leonard Susskind
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics – Carlo Rovelli
The Order of Time – Carlo Rovelli
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself – Sean Carroll
The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality – Brian Greene
The Elegant Universe : Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory – Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos – Brian Greene
Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?) – Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw
The Origin of the Universe – John D. Barrow
The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe – Paul Davies
The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings – Martin Gardner
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes – Adam Rutherford
Climbing Mount Improbable – Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution – Richard Dawkins
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution – Richard Dawkins
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True – Richard Dawkins
The Origin of Humankind – Richard Leakey
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors – Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan
Great Essays in Science – Martin Gardner (Editor)

Ayn Rand

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
— http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html

Stephen Baxter


The Time Ships
Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice
The Massacre of Mankind: Sequel to The War of the Worlds

NASA Trilogy
Voyage
Titan
Moonseed

Manifold Trilogy
Manifold: Time
Manifold: Space
Manifold: Origin

Time’s Tapestry
Emperor
Conqueror
Navigator
Weaver

Proxima / Ultima
Proxima
Ultima

The Long Earth
The Long Earth – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
The Long War – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
The Long Mars – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
The Long Utopia – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
The Long Cosmos – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter