Books

Books to Buy

Used:

i know that you know that I know - George Butte Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
What is the Name of this Book: Raymond Smullyan
Thought Contagion: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
Pellis - The Playful Brain
Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
Lorrie Moore - Self Help
La Modification - Michel Butor
Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
How Like a God - Rex Stout

Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
Nausea - Sartre
Seven, Zed, etc by Joanna Kavenna. See blog.
Building a second brain
how to solve it
Adam and Eve in Paradise - eca de queiros
The Bounds of Possibility - Philosophy book about categories
Nicola Barker - Tony Interrupter Happy, etc
On Growth and Form - D'Arcy Thompson
Alpha and Omega - Jane Ellen Harrison
the Whole is Simpler than its Parts - Willard Gibbs
Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz

Hardbacks:

Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

The Beginning Comes After the End - Rebecca Solnit
Being and Time Annotated or paraphrased ?
Capitalism: A Global History-Sven Beckert
Violent Saviors: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
The master of contradictions: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: A Planetary Experiment
the moebius book - Catherine Lacey
Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
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)
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
Consolations - David Whyte

Books to Read

[1]Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

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
Understanding Media - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
The Practice of Not Thinking: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

Books Read

2026 (week 24)

25. Once Upon a Prime:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
24. Short Stories in German for Beginners - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
21. We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's - Dick Swaab
20. Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife - Francesca Wade
19. How the World Made the West - Josephine Quinn
18. Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning - Sigmund Freud
17. This is Your Mind on Plants: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
16. Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

15. Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning - John Parrington
14. The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
13. The Hidden Spring - Mark Solms
12. The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud
11. A Certain Lucas - Julio Cortazar
10. The Intentional Stance - Daniel Dennett
9. La Conquête de Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart 4) - Zola
8. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
6. Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
4. Le Ventre de Paris (Les Rougon-Macquart 3) - Zola
3. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
2. Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
1. The Secret Life of the Periodic Table - Dr Ben Still

2025

55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
54. How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
53. Who Killed Father Christmas? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
52. Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction - Peter Atkins
51. The Scheme of Things - Allen Wheelis
50. La Fortune des Rougon (Les Rougon-Macquart 1) - Zola
49. Cause for Alarm - Eric Ambler
48. The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
47. Everything is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
46. The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts
45. La Curée (Les Rougon-Macquart 2) - Zola
44. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
43. La Bête Humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart 17) - Zola (re-read)
42. The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky
41. Le Père Goriot - Honore Balzac
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

Challenging Books (per ChatGPT)

That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by what makes them hard:

1. Language & Style Difficulties

James Joyce – Finnegans Wake (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
William Gaddis – The Recognitions (1955) and JR (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
Samuel Beckett – The Unnamable (1953) Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

2. Length & Scope

Marcel Proust – In Search of Lost Time (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest (1996) ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
Norman Mailer – Harlot’s Ghost (1991) or Ancient Evenings (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

3. Experimental Structure

Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G.H. (1964) A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
Julio Cortázar – Hopscotch (1963) Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth

Hermann Broch – The Sleepwalkers (1931–32) Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities (1930–43) Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
Thomas Mann – Joseph and His Brothers (1933–43) Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

5. Dense Intertextuality

James Joyce – Ulysses (1922) Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
Roberto Bolaño – 2666 (2004) Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
José Lezama Lima – Paradiso (1966) Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

6. Postmodern Labyrinths

Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves (2000) Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
Viktor Pelevin – The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2004) (or Generation “P”) Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”:

Finnegans Wake (Joyce)
The Recognitions (Gaddis)
The Man Without Qualities (Musil)
Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon)
In Search of Lost Time (Proust)