Books

Books to Buy

• Alan Watts The Book: on the taboo against knowing who you are
• The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: A Planetary Experiment
• TonyInterrupter (and other books by) - Nicola Barker
• the moebius book - Catherine Lacey
• Gormenghast
• Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
• gertrude stein: an afterlife
• Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
• What is the Name of this Book: Raymond Smullyan
• On Growth and Form - D'Arcy Thompson
• Thought Contagion: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
• The Scheme of Things (and others) - Allen Wheelis
• L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
• The Hidden Spring - mark solms

• Eric Ambler - Cause for Alarm
• Alpha and Omega - https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1961341417
• the Whole is Simpler than its Parts - https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1961341158
• Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories
• Open Socrates - Agnes Callard
• Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
• A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
• How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology
• Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
• Grey Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery - not yet in paperback
• The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
• Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
• Consolations - David Whyte

Books to Read

• Reading to Learn - William Zinger
• Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

Currently Reading

• Atomic Habits - James Clear
• Die Montez-Juwelen - Sabine Vôhringer
• The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time - Keith Houston
• The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky
• Le Père Goriot - Honore Balzac

Books Read

2025 (week 40)

• 40. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
• 39. Le Colonel Chabert - Balzac
• 38. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett - James Knowlson (re-read)
• 37. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

• 36. Steps to an Ecology of Mind - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
• 35. Le Bilan de L'intelligence - Paul Valéry
• 34. Zero - Charles Seife
• 33. Alan Turing: The Enigma - Andrew Hodges
• 32. How to Do Things with Words - J L Austin
• 31. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society - Norbert Wiener
• 30. The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
• 29. Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI - John Brockman
• 28. A Little History of Philosophy - Nigel Warburton
• 27. All Fours - Miranda July
• 26. Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern - Douglas R Hofstadter
• 25. The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
• 24. Short Stories in German for Beginners - Olly Richards
• 23. On the Calculation of Volume: 2 - Solvej Balle
• 22. Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life - John Gribbin
• 21. Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott- Sabine Vöhringer
• 20. Maus - Art Spiegelman
• 19. On the Calculation of Volume: 1 - Solvej Balle
• 18. The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle
• 17. Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction - Richard Passingham
• 16. The Experience Machine - Andy Clark
• 15. Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory - Dr Charan Ranganath
• 14. From Bacteria to Bach and Back - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
• 13. The Village of Eight Graves - Seishi Yokomizo
• 12. Science: A History - Richard Crockett
• 11. Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World - John Gribbin
• 10.The Inugami Curse - Seishi Yokomizo
• 9. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
• 8. Four Ways of Thinking - David Sumpter
• 7. I've Been Thinking - Daniel Dennett
• 6. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy - Umberto Eco
• 5. I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche - Sue Prideaux
• 4. A Brief History of Intelligence - Max S. Bennett
• 3. Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco (re-read)
• 2. Kant and the Platypus - Umberto Eco
• 1. Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non - Antoine Sénanque

2024

• The Plot - Will Eisner
• The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
• The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
• When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
• The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
• The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
• Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
• Le Ton Beau de…
• The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
• Psychonauts -
• The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
• In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
• Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
• Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
• Triad - Tom Keve
• Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
• The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
• How Language Works - David Crystal
• The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
• The Song of the Cell - Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
• From Bacteria to Bach and Back - Daniel Dennett