Books

Books to Buy

• On the Calculation of Volume - Solvej Balle
• 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

• I've Been Thinking - Daniel Dennett
• Reading to Learn - William Zinger
• Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
• A Little History of Philosophy - Nigel Warburton

Books Read

2025

• Serendipities: Language and Lunacy - Umberto Eco
• I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche - Sue Prideaux
• A Brief History of Intelligence - Max S. Bennett
• Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco (re-read)
• Kant and the Platypus - Umberto Eco
• Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non - Antoine Sénanque

2024

• The Plot - Will Eisner
• The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
• The Nonjin Murders
• 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