Sunday School Reading List - What Are You Reading?
What Are You Reading?
Since Penn's sponsor is audiblepodcast.com, I thought this would be a great topic. Besides, it would tick off Adam, who has said loudly that he doesn't read. I listen to both Carolla's and Penn's podcasts - 'religiously'.
Right now, I'm reading Mark Steyn's After America. Steyn's writing style is that loose, sarcastic, topical and witty style that is very popular with the bombasts of the right and left.
Like Steyn, his book is very right leaning. Like many books of this kind, It has many footnotes for a great deal of the points, seemingly to apply credulity to his unique point of view. Steyn advances the premise that America is headed toward inevitable decline in world influence, and in global power. Steyn's journey, filled with an overabundance of sometimes unrelated tangents, takes us through the decline of America, into his imagined future Post-America, which is filled with immigrants, ineffectual and grotesquely bloated government, and is run by apologists to non-Christian religions. In general, I find this book to be a fairly entertaining rant from the perspective of an angry conservative white guy. You'd think that Steyn was in his mid-Seventies by the way he writes, but he is only in his mid-50's. If you want insight into how this particular demographic is thinking, Steyn's book is a pretty good read. If you want some reasoned argument about the actual subject matter, I'd suggest you pick something else.
-Bugcrusher
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Phister on -
These are not my current reads (listens?), but since this is our first crack at a reading (listening?) list, I might as well throw the lot out there. Please note that I am a bit of an audio book junkie. Here's some of my recommendations that are currently available on Audible:
Richard Feynman:
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: Selected Let...
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilli...
Neal deGrasse Tyson:
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
Philip K. Dick:
Blade Runner aka: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Minority Report and Other Stories (Unabridged Stories)
Chuck Palahnuik:
Neal Stephenson:
Orson Scott Card:
Ender's Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition
Neil Gaiman:
American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition (A Full Cast Production)
Max Brooks:
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Robert Howard:
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
Robert Anton Wilson:
Illuminatus! Part I: The Eye in the Pyramid
Illuminatus! Part II: The Golden Apple
Illuminatus! Part III: Leviathan
Steve Martin:
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
George Carlin:
George Carlin Reads to You: An Audio Collection Including Grammy Wi...
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Sir Winston Churchill:
The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster
The Second World War: The Grand Alliance
Triumph and Tragedy: Second World War 4
Laurence Bergreen:
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation ...
Leonard Susskind:
The Black Hole War: My Battle to Make the World Safe for Quantum Me...
Ok, I'm tired of copy/pasting. There's A LOT more that I may add later. I can't believe how many audio books I've bought over the years. Audible should buy me a fucking new house! lol
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Permalink Reply by Zachary Melvard on -
I am reading Not Taco Bell Material By Adam Carolla available now on amazon.com as well as God No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist Also available on Amazon.com.
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Permalink Reply by The Bugcrusher on -
Richard,
Great list. Glad to see Ender's Game on it.
Penn, thanks for the free Audible.COM credit!
I just started listening to Hitchen's God is Not Great over the weekend. Fascinating and powerful. We're poorer for his loss, what a great thinker.
-Bugcrusher
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B002V8KU2W&qid=133417...
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Permalink Reply by Skeptiateach on -
I am reading Lawrence Krause's book A Universe from Nothing, on Penn's recommendation. I saw Tinker, Tailor, Soildier, Spy in the theatres a couple of months ago so I bought a bunch of John le Carré's books. Currently on The Honourable Schoolboy. I stalled reading Olympus by Dan Simmons. I LOVED his Hyperion series but am finding this series slower going.
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Permalink Reply by V.C.M on -
Thank you for sharing, these are wonderful; I am always looking for new titles to add to my list. Though my own recent reads are a bit…high brow (I credit my recent research and pray it is not a symptom of some growing elitist world view), perhaps they might spark something for someone. Enjoy at your own risk…
- “Metaphors We Live By” George Lakoff
- “The Power of Myth” Joseph Campbell
- “Thus Spake Zarathustra” Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Poetics” By Aristotle
- “The Sacred Wood” T.S. Eliot
- Various transcripts of lectures by Carl Jung
In the past (and a far more casual reading list by far) I would definitely have to recommend…
- “13 Things That Don’t Make Sense” Michael Brooks
- “The Bible of Unspeakable Truths” Greg Gutfeld
- “The Devil in the White City” Erik Larson
- “The Universe in a Single Atom” His Holiness The Dalai Lama
- “Skywriting by Word of Mouth” John Lennon
And the next three coming up on my list…
- “Black Elk Speaks” John G. Neihardt
- “Why We Believe in God(s)” J. Anderson Thomson
- “Philosophy in the Flesh” George Lakoff
Cheers
V
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Permalink Reply by Joe Swam on -
A few that I've recently finished:
(Most recently) The audio version of Jonah Lehrer's "Imagine: How Creativity Works". I really liked it. It's full of great stories about innovation and the creative process. You could say it's full of 'creation stories' that you can believe in.
Sam Harris' latest "Free Will", which is short but very good. I mean really short. You can finish it in about an hour.
"A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss - I really enjoy Krauss' writing.
"Connectome" by Sebastian Seung - a great read about how wiring in the brain makes us who we are.
"Thinking: Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman - this is an amazing book. Penn mentions it in the first few podcasts. I can't recommend it enough.
"Mirroring People" by Marco Iacoboni - a book about the science behind mirror neurons and their role in empathy.
I'm leaving a bunch out so as not to bore you. These are some of the highlights from the first few months of this year. I'm currently reading "Moby Dick" (been awhile) and "Doubt: A History" by Jennifer Hecht.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Barber on -
Two newer more "mainstream" books I just enjoyed listening to are John Stossel "No They Can't" and Judge Napolitano's "Lies the Government Told You".
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Permalink Reply by Dannu on -
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
I, Lucifer - Glen DuncanAlong with many a textbook regarding health care, psychology and more.
Always looking for new reads.
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Permalink Reply by Nichelle Crocker on -
Lots of things mentioned that I loved. Richard, I was surprised your Neal Stephenson recommendations didn't include The Diamond Age, which was my favorite of his books until I read Anathem.
Speaking of Anathem, I second that. I thought the setting was interesting, where a group of scholars live inside a series of walled communities that are progressively more isolated from the outside world and each other. I liked the parallels between this secular community and a religious one. In this world, for instance, St. is an abbreviation not for saint, but for savant.
Currently I'm on a Mark Twain kick, now reading Roughing It which is a hilarious account of Twain's travels through the Wild West.
-Nichelle
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