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)
- 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