Books

Science and understanding

  • Damrosch, Leo, Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake
  • Gamwell, Lynn, Mathematics + Art: A Cultural History
  • Glynn, Ian, An Anatomy of Thought: The Origin and Machinery of Mind
  • Greene, Brian, The Fabric of the Cosmos
  • Goodsell, David, The Machinery of Life
  • Hoffman, Donald, Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See
  • Huggett, Nick, Everywhere and Everywhere: Adventures in Physics and Philosophy
  • Kaler, James, The Ever-Changing Sky: A Guide to the Celestial Sphere
  • Krishnamurti, Jiddu, Freedom from the Known
  • Loori, John Daido, The Art of Just Sitting
  • Lycan, William, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction
  • March, Robert, Physics for Poets
  • Noë, Alva, Action in Perception
  • Rosenberg, Larry, Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
  • Smith, John Maynard, and Eors Szathmary, The Origins of Life: From the birth of life to the origins of language
  • Schutz, Bernard, Gravity from the Ground Up
  • Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations

Poems and poetry

  • Elizabeth Bishop, Poems
  • Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton, The Poetry of Zen
  • Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems
  • Tomas Tranströmer, The Great Enigma
  • Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology
  • Helen Vendler, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries
  • Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form

Fiction

  • Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
  • Paul Auster, Moon Palace
  • Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
  • Raymond Carver, Cathedral
  • Ted Chiang, Exhalation (short story)
  • Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irina Rey
  • E.L. Doctorow, Andrew’s Brain
  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
  • Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
  • George Eliot, Middlemarch
    — follow this with My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
  • Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse
  • Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (tetralogy and HBO series)
  • John Gardner, Mickelsson’s Ghosts
  • Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
  • John Irving, The Ciderhouse Rules
  • Kazuo Ishiguro,Never Let Me Go
  • Kazuo Ishiguro,Klara and the Sun
  • Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
  • Stephen King, Fairy Tale
  • Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity
  • Ian McEwan, Atonement
  • Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
  • Andrew Miller, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
  • Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider
  • Alistair Reynolds, Eversion
  • Jose Saramago, All the Names
  • George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
  • William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
  • J.R.R. Tolkein, Lord of the Rings
  • Sigrid Undset, Olav Audunsson (tetralogy, translated by Tiina Nunnally)
  • Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Mathematics and computer science

  • Abbott, Stephen, Understanding Analysis
  • Abelson, Hal, and Gerald Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (second edition)
  • Axler, Sheldon, Linear Algebra Done Right
  • Bird, Richard, and Jeremy Gibbons, Algorithm Design with Haskell
  • Feldman, David, Chaos and Dynamical Systems
  • Hernstein, Israel, Topics in Algebra
  • Hutton, Graham, Programming in Haskell (second edition)
  • Kaplansky, Irving, Set Theory and Metric Spaces
  • Moore, Cristopher, and Stephan Mertens, The Nature of Computation
  • Mumford, David, Caroline Series, and David Wright, Indra’s Pearls: The Vision of Felix Klein
  • Munkres, James, Topology (second edition)
  • Needham, Tristan, Visual Complex Analysis
  • Sipser, Michael, Introduction to the Theory of Computation (third edition)

still more to come…