ROBERT’S READING LIST
Reading has always been a very important part of my life- books are an easy-access, streamlined, self-contained way to explore different ideas, cultures, and worlds. At the beginning of 2018 I decided to keep track of every book I read, in order to have some way to quantify my progress and personal growth. If you’ve read or are thinking about reading any of these books, please reach out! I’d love to talk about them.
At the close of 2020, I came to the realization that a lot of the subject matter I'm drawn to doesn’t necessarily require the reading of full books, but rather a combination of full books, passages of books, academic papers, articles, and critical essays, among other things. I’ll continue to add to this list as I see fit, but even more so than before, the following is not an exhaustive list. Just as much as before, please reach out if you are engaging in similar subject matter, or have read the same or similar books! I love talking about them, as well as growing the number of books on my Amazon Wish List.
Currently Reading:
(numerous academic papers)
Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
2024
Everybody’s A Theologian: Intro to Systematic Theology by R.C. Sproul
Something To Do With Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace
Luke
The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
Mark
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio
Matthew
In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina by Michael Casey
Process-Relational Philosophy: An Intro to Alfred North Whitehead by C. Robert Mesle
Taking the Work Out of Networking by Karen Wickre
Numbers
Dune: Messiah by Frank Herbert
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
Never Finished by David Goggins
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
The Global Village by Marshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers
2023
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Principles of Neurotheology by Andrew B. Newberg
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD
Leviticus
Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman by Thomas Cheetham
Death’s End by Cixin Liu
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Black Ops: The Life of a Shadow Warrior by Ric Prado
Designated Protector by Hope and Amanda Abrom
On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Chimpanzee Politics by Franz de Waal
2022
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman M.D. and Michael Long
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Exodus
Why Materialism is Baloney by Bernardo Kastrup
2021
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Genesis
The Sufis by Idries Shah
The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Enkath Easwaran
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name by Brian C. Muraresku
The God Equation by Michio Kaku
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
The Wim Hof Method by Wim Hof
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire
What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
2020
Pendragon: The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale
The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle by C. G. Jung
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Red Notice by Bill Browder
The Fellowship: Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row by Damien Echols
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette
2019
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
Awareness by Anthony De Mello
The Book of the Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Dune by Frank Herbert
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell
The Second Mountain by David Brooks
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Insanity and Ideology by Thomas Szasz, M.D.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Laws of Media: The New Science by Marshall and Eric McLuhan
Origin by Dan Brown
Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey by Daryl Sharp
The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley
The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna
On Pathology and Therapy by C. G. Jung
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
On the Nature and Functioning of the Psyche by C. G. Jung
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli
What Doesn’t Kill Us by Scott Carney
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
2018
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough
Win Bigly by Scott Adams
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung
The Upanishads, translated by Enkath Easwaran
12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
Why I Am So Wise by Fredrich Neitzsche
What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
The Stranger by Albert Camus
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel
Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Surface Tensions by Nathan Roberts
The Undiscovered Self by C. G. Jung
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Our Final Invention (A.I. and the End of the Human Era) by James Barrat
Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut
Nine Algorithms That Changed The Future by John MacCormick
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
What Is The Bible by Rob Bell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo
What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell