Books I liked

Poetry

Poets include (in random order):

  • Kae Tempest
  • Amanda Torroni
  • Koraly Dimitriadis
  • Gray Crosbie
  • k. y. robinson
  • Marianne Jones
  • Rebecca Tamás
  • Jenni Fagan
  • Kate Rhodes
  • Lorraine Mariner
  • Helen Hajnoczky
  • Sophie Hannah
  • Rudy Francisco
  • Zoë Skoulding

Non-fiction

  • Spycatcher, by Peter Wright
  • Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy, by Rob Dover
  • Quantum computing: from Alice to Bob, by Flarend, A., & Hilborn, B. (2022) – not finished this one but was hugely accessible leg-up into the lit
  • Glitch Feminism, by Legacy Russell
  • Class Counts, by Erik Olin Wright (free online here)
  • The State of Secrecy, by Richard Norton-Taylor
  • Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West, by Andrew Wilson
  • Thrive by Richard Layard and David Clark (interesting, but worth following up the cherry-picked efficacy claims with a search for meta-analyses)
  • Intimacies by Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips
  • The Mathematics of Love, by Hannah Fry
  • The Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape Our Lives, by Peter Callero
  • The Therapy Industry: the Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why it Doesn’t Work, by Paul Moloney
  • The Last of the Hippies, by Penny Rimbaud
  • The art of social theory by Richard Swedberg
  • Unspeakable Things by Laurie Penny
  • Power, Interest and Psychology, by David Smail
  • Monogamy, by Adam Phillips
  • Rewriting the Rules: An integrative guide to love, sex and relationships, by Meg-John Barker
  • Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail, by Richard Bentall
  • Stasiland, by Anna Funder
  • What’s Left, by Nick Cohen
  • Bash the Rich, by Ian Bone
  • The People’s Manifesto, by the People, channeled, by Mark Thomas
  • Emotion Focused Cognitive Therapy, by Mick Power (excellent)
  • GCHQ by Richard J. Aldrich
  • Anarchy in Action, by Colin Ward
  • Strangeland, by Tracey Emin
  • The Coming Insurrection, by The Invisible Committee (Review in New Statesman.)
  • The No Asshole Rule, by Robert Sutton
  • Why Not Socialism?, by G A Cohen
  • The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I have Known, by Craig Murray
  • The Art of Being, by Erich Fromm
  • In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, by Jean Baudrillard
  • Fragments: Cool Memories III 1990-1995, by Jean Baudrillard
  • Gut Feelings, by Gerd Gigerenzer
  • The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, by R. D. Laing (love this)
  • Simulations by Jean Baudrillard
  • Freedom Evolves, by Daniel Dennett (thought provoking – enjoyed!)
  • Why Do People Get Ill?, by Darian Leader and David Corfield
  • Self and Others, by R. D. Laing – Look out for the epistemic logic in the appendix
  • Knots by R. D. Laing
  • Why do women write more letters than they post?, by Darian Leader
  • Why People Die, by Suicide, by Thomas Joiner
  • The Robot’s Rebellion, by Keith Stanovich
  • Madness Explained, by Richard Bentall
  • The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet, by Benjamin Hoff
  • Mathematical Reasoning with Diagrams, by Mateja Jamnik
  • Philosophy: The Classics, by Nigel Warburton
  • Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks), by Marie McGinn (Editor)
  • Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein (bits of – skip the boring bits, especially most stuff before proposition 7.)
  • Language, Truth and Logic, by A.J. Ayer
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • The Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain De Botton
  • Essays and Aphorisms, by Arthur Schopenhauer
  • Blue & Brown Books, by Ludwig Wittgenstein

(Auto)Biographies

  • Reverse Cowgirl, by McKenzie Wark: “not a memoir but an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self”
  • The Spy and the Traitor, by Ben Macintrye (great story of Oleg Gordievsky)
  • Killing Time, by Paul Feyerabend
  • Bitter Experience Has Taught Me, by Nicholas Lezard
  • The Reason I Jump, by Naoki Higashida
  • Otto Gross: Freudian Psychoanalyst 1877-1920, by Martin Green
  • R. D. Laing: a life, by Adrian Laing
  • The Wing of Madness: the Life and Work of R.D. Laing, by Daniel Burston
  • Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic, by Anita Burdman Feferman and Solomon Feferman (Richard Montague, very interesting character, gets mentioned here)
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, by Ray Monk
  • Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges – also check out Andrew Hodges’ web page on Turing

Fiction (including plays)

  • At Risk, by Stella Rimington
  • The Human Factor, by Graham Greene
  • Call for the Dead, by John le Carré
  • All the king’s horses, by Michèle Bernstein
  • The Comfort of Strangers, by Ian McEwan
  • Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carré (don’t bother reading the ending – great apart from that)
  • On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (seat 9C may be found here) – loved
  • The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion
  • The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
  • Lightning Rods, by Helen DeWitt. Guardian review. DeWitt is a genius.
  • A Delicate Truth by John le Carré
  • The Investigation, by Philippe Claudel
  • Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan
  • Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, by John le Carré
  • Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov – loved this
  • Dead Poets Society, by N.H. Kleinbaum
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally Män som hatar kvinnor), by Stieg Larsson
  • Apples by Richard Milward
  • Exit Music, by Ian Rankin (lovely to read about familiar places – maybe even some characters – in Edinburgh)
  • Wetlands by Charlotte Roche (not all about body fluids)
  • A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
  • The Semantics of Murder, by Aifric Campbell
  • The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek
  • 4.48 Psychosis, by Sarah Kane
  • Friction by Joe Stretch (review in New Stateman; excellent book!)
  • Switch Bitch, by Roald Dalh (excellent!)
  • A selection, by Brecht, including Baal and In the Jungle of Cities
  • Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
  • Tsotsi, by Athol Fugard
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
  • Elizabeth Costello, by JM Coetzee
  • Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
  • The Big Glass, by Gabriel Josipovici
  • Fury, by Salman Rushdie
  • Youth, by J.M. Coetzee
  • The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts, by Douglas Adams
  • The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
  • Silence in October, by Jens Christian Grøndahl
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
  • The Happy Prince and Other Tales, by Oscar Wilde