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