1. Comment #157313 by nextstopearth on April 8, 2008 at 10:28 pm

I'll have to read these now.

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2. Comment #157315 by xdrive on April 8, 2008 at 10:34 pm

I'll be sure to pick these up, starting with The Demon Haunted World. The Sagan fanboy in me demands it!

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3. Comment #157316 by akado on April 8, 2008 at 10:35 pm

awesome
more books to read! XD
thanks for the reccommendations dawkins!

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4. Comment #157337 by stereoroid on April 9, 2008 at 12:04 am

I've only read one Wodehouse that I can remember, but it was a cracker: Love Among the Chickens. Ah, for the days when one could just pack up, go and live in the country, and try to raise chickens...

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5. Comment #157339 by Mr. Flibble on April 9, 2008 at 12:22 am

I am so pleased to see Demon Haunted world on this list. I was actually introduced to Dawkins through this book, as he has the first comment on the very first page on the "more praise for" section of the book. (In my copy anyways).

Still, Demon Haunted World took me a full 3 months to read. Not because it is long, but because it challenged, and debunked many things that I had previously believed.

As per this list, I will add all those other books to my reading list.

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6. Comment #157345 by RationalistHomeTchr on April 9, 2008 at 12:50 am

Demon Haunted world is the book I loan to Christians who plead with me to read some book that they love about Christianity. They'll press something like "The Case for Christ" into my hands and ask me to read it, as it explains what they believe so well, and why.

I always say "yes" and I always read the book in question, but no one has actually read Demon Haunted World, as I request, in return. They take the book, they read the first few pages, and then they start making excuses...and eventually hand the copy back with mumblings about not having the time to get through all of it.

On the other hand, I've also loaned out my copy of Demon Haunted World to freethinkers who have devoured it and much enjoyed it.

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7. Comment #157348 by yyuryyub on April 9, 2008 at 1:01 am

Anyone who hasn't read Wodehouse, go and do it this instant! Hilarious and as British as it is possible to be (at least from an Aussie perspective). 'Code of the Woosters' is a good one to start with.

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8. Comment #157349 by Azven on April 9, 2008 at 1:02 am

So pleased to see The Black Cloud on the lists. I still sometimes say 'Devil in the cloud' to mean something (ie, a computer program) behaving as if it's alive - a kind of ghost in the machine comment. And it's over 30 years since I read this!

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9. Comment #157351 by Azven on April 9, 2008 at 1:05 am

Oh and 'Last Chance to See' by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwadine contains some of DNA's funniest work. See the poison snake expert in the Komodo dragon section.

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10. Comment #157352 by moopet on April 9, 2008 at 1:08 am

I'm sure this is very similar to some sort of desert-island-books question that popped up last year? I remember commenting how surprised and pleased I was to find we both liked The Black Cloud.

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11. Comment #157383 by j.mills on April 9, 2008 at 3:00 am

"Last Chance To See" is all about endangered species. Odd to think Douglas Adams went extinct before any of them.

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12. Comment #157392 by Bowdinium on April 9, 2008 at 3:25 am

Excuse my pedantry but Tin Men is by Michael Frayn, not Frane

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13. Comment #157397 by hungarianelephant on April 9, 2008 at 3:34 am

I can't seem to get the links to work. However, I must say that I am disappointed by the omission of Mike Inkpen's classic work, Where, O Where, Is Kipper's Bear. A whimsical tour of the natural world and beyond ... the inherent urge to be with our loved ones ... and the finale reconciling these with technology, all in delicate and lilting verse, with not a word wasted. What better parable could there be for our times?

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14. Comment #157429 by Matt7895 on April 9, 2008 at 4:48 am

I haven't read anything by Carl Sagan. Demon Haunted World is on my to-buy list.

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15. Comment #157433 by evolvingalways on April 9, 2008 at 4:57 am

Read The Demon Haunted World after reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos and it changed my whole outlook on life from that time onward. Which was a good thing I might add.

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16. Comment #157452 by plastictowel on April 9, 2008 at 5:46 am

Creation is by EO WILSON, not Peter Atkins...

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17. Comment #157459 by keith on April 9, 2008 at 5:57 am

The books that inspired me most were 'The Little Prince', 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull', 'Steppenwolf' and '100 Years Of Solitude' (My joke list). As for my real list, books I read when I was very young inspired me more than any later ones could: 'Stig of the Dump' (6 years old), 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (10 years old) and 'Wuthering Heights' (young adult) were all inspirational.

Thereafter, Dostoyevski, Nabokov, Kafka, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Dan Dennett and Steven Pinker have really all been just footnotes and nice ways of passing the time.

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18. Comment #157476 by windweaver on April 9, 2008 at 6:29 am

I'm amazed that Richard is such a fan of Evelyn Waugh. Yes he was a very good writer, but he was also an outrageous snob, an uber Tory and a fanatical catholic.

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19. Comment #157482 by John Desclin on April 9, 2008 at 6:50 am

And, if my memory serves me well, I think that the essay on Darwin's illness was by 1960 Nobel prize holder Peter Medawar

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20. Comment #157501 by CambrianExplosion on April 9, 2008 at 7:39 am

plastictowel,

Both are correct - the Atkins book is from 1981, and he wrote a follow-up in 1992.

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21. Comment #157516 by Layla Nasreddin on April 9, 2008 at 8:13 am

Listening to that, I can understand why Richard likes Lalla to read books aloud to him! It is an intriguing collection of works, though notably light on the old English literature degree programme workhorses (I kid, I kid!). I really enjoyed Demon Haunted World back in high school (or was it early in college?) around the time it came out.

Why does everybody find A Brief History of Time to be such a challenging book? I didn't think it was anywhere near that difficult...but then I was reading astronomy books for pleasure in elementary school and found concepts such as the Big Bang, black holes, the so-called "twin paradox" and relativity effects on mass and length to be pretty much the neatest thing ever (as I would have put it then).

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22. Comment #157520 by al-rawandi on April 9, 2008 at 8:16 am

Layla,



I hope that isn't your photo up there.

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23. Comment #157528 by NormanDoering on April 9, 2008 at 8:30 am

The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle? I read that, it was old when I read it a long time ago, and I wasn't all that impressed. It pales when compared to science fiction like Blood Music by Greg Bear. And has Dawkins ever bothered to read William Gibson, especially Neuromancer?

Methinks Dawkins and I have very different tastes in Literature.

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24. Comment #157532 by clearmind on April 9, 2008 at 8:33 am

No need to struggle more.

Evolution is buried alive by Intelligence and graveyard has got the reading:

Sometimes people see what they need to see.
Sometimes people are unable to see and sometimes they DO NOT SEE.

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25. Comment #157539 by NormanDoering on April 9, 2008 at 8:39 am

clearmind wrote:

Sometimes people see what they need to see.
Sometimes people are unable to see and sometimes they DO NOT SEE.

Ohh! That reminds me... who here has been watching the new Battlestar Galactica on the sci-fi channel:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-frak-is-going-on-with-baltar.html

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26. Comment #157541 by ZekeCDN on April 9, 2008 at 8:40 am

I've read many wonderful books since, but as a young teenager Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values was particularly inspiring. He reassured me that it was OK to want to know how things really worked, even as those around me were content to see ghosts in their machines.

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27. Comment #157549 by Layla Nasreddin on April 9, 2008 at 8:51 am

#22 al-rawandi (great moniker!--one of the greatest heretics in the Islamic world ever):

It most definitely is a picture of me (not that there's any risk that I'll be identifiable from it!)--and it's a JOKE, based on the "mother of all burqas" analogy in The God Delusion. I had the picture and thought it would be hugely ironic and humourous. You know, ha-ha funny, "taking the piss," that kind of thing.

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28. Comment #157551 by al-rawandi on April 9, 2008 at 8:54 am

Layla,




I figured it was a joke. Since there aren't many Hijabis running about being atheists. And I am assuming you are an atheist, since you frequent this site, although I may be wrong.


You are the first person to recognize my monicker. Kitab al-Zumurrud was quite a work. Although in real life I am a California white boy, merely and admirer of Ibn al-Rawandi.

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29. Comment #157581 by Reg on April 9, 2008 at 9:42 am

The links provided don't work. Is anyone else having the same problem.

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30. Comment #157587 by RamziD on April 9, 2008 at 9:59 am

I'll attest, like others, that "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan is a must read.

Also, can't help but chuckle that at the beginning, Lala Ward was presented as "Mrs. Dawkins, Lala Ward". I wonder if the host was aware of his error and if Lala was insulted :)

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31. Comment #157619 by robotaholic on April 9, 2008 at 10:46 am

Lalla is totally my favorite narrator.- I can't get the links to work either...mabye it's because I use Opera and it's not supported sometimes...

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32. Comment #157684 by Carole on April 9, 2008 at 12:14 pm

I'm so pleased to see Last Chance on this list. It's my favourite of DNA's books too, though different to the writing style I fell in love with when reading Hitchhikers. I have it signed by both authors, so it's the book I plan to grab if I suddenly find my house is on fire. :)

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33. Comment #157841 by Alkal on April 9, 2008 at 3:40 pm

I share the Love for Wodehouse with RD...
Also Douglas Adams

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34. Comment #157844 by mdowe on April 9, 2008 at 3:45 pm

As I've mentioned in other threads, 'Last Chance to See' is right at the top of my best-book list. I think it is Douglas Adams' finest work. I guess Mark Carwaradine and Stephen Fry are working on a followup TV series:

http://www.markcarwardine.com/last.php

I'm still depressed that DNA isn't around to be involved ....

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35. Comment #157879 by cam9976 on April 9, 2008 at 4:51 pm

I've only read the Demon Haunted World and Black Cloud... guess I have some work to do.

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36. Comment #157904 by windfall on April 9, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Halfway through and enjoying it. Though the audio is SO faint! I'm trying to listen on headphones on the commute to work and it's murder. I can barely make out their voices. I know it's not my headphones either, because at the end of the first part, the BBC guy's voice blasts in at full volume.

I recently read Sagan's Varieties of the Scientific Experience and loved it. I'm looking forward to Demon Haunted World.

If I might humbly offer two of my own favorites: fiction - Dostoyevsky's The Brothers' Karamazov; non-fiction - Diamond's Guns Germs & Steel. Both books rocked my world in their own way.

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37. Comment #157908 by TomGoodfellow on April 9, 2008 at 5:57 pm

An interesting book for skeptics is "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" (1824) by James Hogg. It's a ruthless satire of religious fundamentalism dressed up as a Gothic potboiler, lots of fun if not the lightest read you'll ever have.

I would recommend Frayn's plays over "The Tin Men", especially "Copenhagen" in this scientifically literate forum.

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38. Comment #157912 by Haakon on April 9, 2008 at 6:14 pm

I think The Demon Haunted World is an essential introduction to critical thinking, and one of Carl Sagan's finest work. I have yet to read any of the other books on Professor Dawkins' list but I've almost picked up Last Chance to See several times, but there has been another book or the melancholy of the theme has put me off.

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39. Comment #157914 by Frankus1122 on April 9, 2008 at 6:19 pm

I was going to post one of my favourite writers and, in particular, a story I just reread last night when I came across this:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/mill1991/abc/004145.html
It is the Atheist Book Club.
Interesting.
My favourite writer is Jorge Luis Borges. The story I read last night is 'Three Versions of Judas'.
One of the posters at the above linked site says:
The three versions of Judas, by Sir Jorge Luis Borges, is Logic at its very best and thus challenge(s) the central belief of Christian theology and reveal(s) its incongruities.

In the story a theologian figures out that God could have chosen to become anyone as the 'Word'. The suffering of Jesus was brief; that of Judas is eternal. Therefore God as the Word was Judas.

As TomGoodfellow said of his choice: "lots of fun if not the lightest read you'll ever have." Very true of the work of Borges.

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40. Comment #157964 by Layla Nasreddin on April 9, 2008 at 10:15 pm

#28 al-rawandi wrote:

I figured it was a joke. Since there aren't many Hijabis running about being atheists. And I am assuming you are an atheist, since you frequent this site, although I may be wrong.

Well...that would be saying a bit too much, in my opinion. I suppose I would currently classify myself as "Confused Agnostic Muslim"...if that makes any sense. I posted a lengthy personal tale in the Forum, if you're interested (though why, I wouldn't know!)

Anyway, I've read your comments and have been quite impressed at your knowledge of Islam and much of the Islamic world!...which I figured would be the case, given your name.

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41. Comment #157999 by Foggerty on April 10, 2008 at 12:39 am

A quick note re the Kakapo (the endangered parrot from NZ).

Richard said he wasn't wasn't sure if Douglas' explanation that until recently they had "virtually" no predators was entirely satisfying.

Well, its true (unless my schooling and BBC docos have lied to me). Until humans came along, the only land mammals around here were bats. Everything else was birds, insects and reptiles. True, we get seals along the coasts, but they don't tend to pose much of a threat to the poor Kakapo.

The first people (Polynesian) to arrive here bought rats and dogs. The second lot (European) bought cats, goats, deer, possums, stoats, more rats and other species of birds. Everything pretty much went to hell in a hand basket from that point on as far as the native species were concerned. Wildlife on these Islands evolved not having to worry about eggs being stolen or predators such as stoats or people hunting them down.

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42. Comment #158019 by sheepscarer on April 10, 2008 at 1:43 am

I agree with the comment about Waugh's flawed character but this should not detract from the body of work. As a teenager I loved HG Wells' short science fiction stories and was alarmed to read of his eugenics background, however this does not alter the fact that the stories are hugely enjoyable. It does raise an interesting point though - do we censor the art because the artist is a monster? If Hitler had written a great literary novel, would it be lauded as such?

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43. Comment #158179 by Sargeist on April 10, 2008 at 7:19 am

Nice thought experiment, sheepscarer. I like these sorts of hypotheticals. I used to rather like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, until I discovered it was an attempt at getting children to believe in the Christ story. And that bit with father Christmas turning up! Argh! Now, the very idea of the book fills me with nausea.

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44. Comment #158183 by Sargeist on April 10, 2008 at 7:29 am

Layla,

My feeling about the Brief History of Time is that anyone who doesn't know any of the stuff in the book will find that they learn nothing from it, and anyone who knows some of the stuff in the book, will learn nothing from it.

I admit, though, that I did read it at college when it came out. And read the 2nd ed. of Selfish Gene, too. No prizes for guessing which one I got more out of... (ok, so I *was* doing physics courses at college, so maybe it was inevitable I would prefer Dawkins)

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45. Comment #158187 by j.mills on April 10, 2008 at 7:33 am

sheepscarer said:

If Hitler had written a great literary novel, would it be lauded as such?

Norman Spinrad's novel "The Iron Dream" is supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, in an alternate universe where he emigrated to the US and became a hack science-fiction writer instead of a dictator. A very eccentric and interesting book, with an essay about it tagged on, written by a fictional academic. (Thus Spinrad gets to satirise both Hitler and academia.)

(Mind you, if you only ever read one Norman Spinrad novel, make it "Russian Spring".)

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46. Comment #158230 by Caeruleum on April 10, 2008 at 8:38 am

Evelyn Waugh's books may not appeal but you should definitely read his grandson's book: God by Alexander Waugh, son of Auberon Waugh. Not a book to inspire you but it is a good laugh! Basically he reviews what we can learn about God from the bible and other scriptures (such as the Koran, Enoch's gospel etc.) and takes each extract to its logical but generaly absurd conclusion.

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47. Comment #158271 by mundusvultdecipi on April 10, 2008 at 9:18 am

Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark is a simply stunning work, imho it should be required reading for all first year undergraduates at university regardless of what course they are studying.

Also I found The Sceptical Feminist by Janet Radcliffe Richards very useful, it does not deal with religion but is a fantastic example of how rigorous, critical thinking can be usefully employed to shed light on divisive and thorny social issues.

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48. Comment #158328 by alan baylis on April 10, 2008 at 10:52 am

24. Comment #157532

Wooter, (nothing can induce me to address you as clearmind)

This is just more wishful thinking from you, as usual.

You really need help for this epistemophobia of yours. Then, after, you should read and understand some good science books, including some of those mentioned above. "The Demon Haunted World" is a must for you.

Perhaps after this, even the intelligent theists may allow you into their ranks! As a grizzled old atheist, even I have to concede that there are many of these, (compartmentalization by them not withstanding). As a start, try googling Prof. Ken Miller who is a practicing Roman Catholic. There is a lot of good stuff featuring him on youtube.

It is obvious that you have an overwhelming psychological need for religious belief; but Wooter, read some proper science books! There is really no need to be COMPLETELY deluded!

Regards,
Alan.

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49. Comment #158364 by Scep on April 10, 2008 at 11:52 am

#24
"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe". Carl Sagan

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50. Comment #158369 by Scep on April 10, 2008 at 11:56 am

I bought "The Demon Haunted World" for my wife for Easter. Hopefully we will have more to talk about in the future. She likes angels and candles. Maybe she can read that wonderful book under candlelight and end up agreeing with Sam Harris and me:

"We simply do not call people 'non-astrologers. All we need are words like 'reason' and 'evidence' and 'common sense' and 'bullshit' to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion."

That includes the religion of New Age and its spoon bending Guru Deepak Chopra. The man who called Richard Dawkins a bigot, because of a disagreement about the origin of consciousness.

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