Book List

An Observer’s Book List

Philosophical Foundations

  1. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig
  2. "The Choice" by Og Mandino
  3. "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff
  4. "The Te of Piglet" by Benjamin Hoff
  5. "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
  6. "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield
  7. "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
  8. "Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
  9. "The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley
  10. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl
  11. “Ping: A Frog in Search of a New Pond” by Stuart Avery Gold



Consciousness Studies

  1. "The Nature of Consciousness" edited by Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere
  2. "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett
  3. "The Conscious Mind" by David Chalmers
  4. "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" by Sam Harris
  5. "The Mind's I" by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett
  6. "I Am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter
  7. "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter
  8. "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes
  9. "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley
  10. "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James



Pattern Recognition & Complexity

  1. "Thinking in Systems" by Donella H. Meadows
  2. "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick
  3. "The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor" by Alastair Clarke
  4. "The Web of Life" by Fritjof Capra
  5. "The Systems View of Life" by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi
  6. "The Hidden Connections" by Fritjof Capra
  7. "The Book of Why" by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
  8. "Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos" by Mitchell Waldrop
  9. "Scale" by Geoffrey West
  10. "Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order" by Steven Strogatz



Eastern Philosophy

  1. "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts
  2. "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts
  3. "Become What You Are" by Alan Watts
  4. "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts
  5. "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki
  6. "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
  7. "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" by Thich Nhat Hanh
  8. "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse
  9. "The I Ching" translated by Richard Wilhelm
  10. "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda



Environmental Philosophy

  1. "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold
  2. "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
  3. "The Hidden Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben
  4. "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  5. "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram
  6. "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey
  7. "The End of Nature" by Bill McKibben
  8. "My Story As Told By Water" by David James Duncan
  9. "The Practice of the Wild" by Gary Snyder
  10. "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard



Society & Culture Critique

  1. "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman
  2. "Technopoly" by Neil Postman
  3. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
  4. "Brave New World Revisited" by Aldous Huxley
  5. "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr
  6. "Bowling Alone" by Robert D. Putnam
  7. "Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord
  8. "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard
  9. "The Culture of Narcissism" by Christopher Lasch
  10. "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari



Technology & Consciousness

  1. "You Are Not a Gadget" by Jaron Lanier
  2. "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" by Jaron Lanier
  3. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff
  4. "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport
  5. "Reclaiming Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
  6. "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle
  7. "The Attention Merchants" by Tim Wu
  8. "Irresistible" by Adam Alter
  9. "Deep Work" by Cal Newport
  10. "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul



Physics & Reality

  1. "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra
  2. "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav
  3. "The Quantum and the Lotus" by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan
  4. "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot
  5. "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli
  6. "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" by Carlo Rovelli
  7. "Reality Is Not What It Seems" by Carlo Rovelli
  8. "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene
  9. "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene
  10. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn



Self-Reflection & Personal Development

  1. "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle
  2. "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle
  3. "Man and His Symbols" by Carl Jung
  4. "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" by Carl Jung
  5. "The Undiscovered Self" by Carl Jung
  6. "Awareness" by Anthony de Mello
  7. "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  8. "The Courage to Create" by Rollo May
  9. "Care of the Soul" by Thomas Moore
  10. "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck



Integration of Knowledge & Experience

  1. "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" by Edward O. Wilson
  2. "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist
  3. "The Geography of Thought" by Richard E. Nisbett
  4. "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker
  5. "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk
  6. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  7. "The Extended Mind" by Annie Murphy Paul
  8. "The Mind and the Brain" by Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley
  9. "The Immortalization Commission" by John Gray
  10. "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt



Additional Works for the Advanced Seeker

  1. "Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger
  2. "Phenomenology of Perception" by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
  3. "Ethics" by Baruch Spinoza
  4. "The Phenomenology of Spirit" by G.W.F. Hegel
  5. "I and Thou" by Martin Buber
  6. "Cosmopolitanism" by Kwame Anthony Appiah
  7. "The Diamond Cutter" by Geshe Michael Roach
  8. "The Book of Disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa
  9. "Ever-Present Origin" by Jean Gebser
  10. "The Myth of the Eternal Return" by Mircea Eliade