50 Book Recommendations

hey guys it's cosmic skeptic and it's come to the end of the year and it's been about three years since I lasted a book recommendations video and it's one of the most requested videos that I ever get and I always say that I'll get round to it but it actually does take a lot of time to try and compile everything that I've read and put it into a form of recommended books cuz I don't want to include everything that I've read if I don't think it's useful or I didn't enjoy it but I thought that the end of the year would be a good time to do it and focus mainly on books that I've read in the previous year in 2019 but also maybe throw in a few things that I think have been really important in my reading since my last video if you haven't seen the original video I'll link it in the description it was kind of a basic book introduction things like The God Delusion God is not great if you're kind of new to atheism and science enthusiasm and that kind of stuff it was kind of stuff I was reading getting into that that those kinds of topics but over the past few years especially since going to university I've been really trying to expand my reading on all areas like philosophy and science and even fiction now would you believe it and I thought that I'd make this video just giving you some recommendations and talking about some of the things that I've been reading and if you support me on patreon then look out for a bookshelf tour that I'm gonna film quite soon it's something that some of you have asked for over on patreon and I wanted to make some content as a kind of thanks to my patrons my supporters over there but I didn't want to make any private content I didn't want to make like a normal video and make it only for patrons because I never want anything to be behind a paywall but I think they're just showing you around the books that I've got here in the recording space the books that I've got at home and the books that I take to university would be quite interesting it won't be recommendations but just showing you the books that I own including a bunch of signed books and special books and first prints and old books so if you're interested in that then you can support me on patreon if you want to see the video but also consider supporting me on patreon if you like the content anyway it's really what keeps the channel going but yeah as a thanks look out for that because that's gonna be held to film as well given just how many books I own but to kick things off I want to address the elephant in the room first which is that obviously over the past year I've been talking a lot about animal ethics it's something that I never spoke about in the past not really anyway except for an odd mention or maybe an odd video but over the past year of course I became a vegan which I consider to be one of the biggest life changes that ever in my entire life and philosophically speaking there is a lot of literature that we can be reading especially because I know that a lot of my viewers are perhaps people who are interested in philosophy and willing to read those kinds of books but maybe haven't engaged with specifically animal ethics before now if you've been watching my channel the tool you'll know that the first book on the list is going to be animal liberation by Peter Singer this is essentially the book that made me go vegan I'd say that if you don't read the whole thing it's not that big of a book but it is quite dense the first chapter it's only 20 pages long is kind of a philosophical case for the equal moral consideration of animals and that's what really got me the rest is kind of a expose of factory farming and animal testing and things like that but the first chapter is a really important one for me in fact a bunch of people that I know personally I said to them that I'll buy them the book some friends of mine I've offered to this to a few people and I said I'll buy the book for you if only you promise to read just the first chapter is only about 20 pages something like five or six people have taken me up on the offer and I bought them the book and they read the chapter and every single one of them every single one of them went vegan or is trying veganism without fail this book just works absolutely wonders but don't be scared to read it you'll feel a lot better after you have done and since we're talking about Peter Singer he's got a wealth of books that you can read if you want to read some short essays that he's written ethics in the real world is quite good it's just kind of a practical ethics a few pages maybe one or two pages per essay you've got titles like does anything matter are we ready for a morality pill cultural bias against whaling consider the turkey thoughts for Thanksgiving so you know just specific things some a lot on animal ethics again but also other other issues too Peter Singer is also the author of practical ethics which is essentially a textbook for students of ethics it's on most ethics courses I believe it certainly as my university when you do the practical ethics module again just a great overview if you're into practical ethics it's been a little while since I've read it but I also remember enjoying the expanding circle ethics and sociobiology by by Peter Singer again and this is a book about evolutionary explanations for altruistic behavior right it makes sense when you think about natural selection for organisms to be nice perhaps to our family members because they share some of our genes right but why would we be nice to people of different races why would be we be nice to people who come from different areas of the world for instance and indeed why would we be nice to non-human animals it seems like it's an odd evolutionary logic there but saying or explains so it makes it at least a strong case for how we can explain that evolutionarily interestingly Richard Dawkins disagrees with the view which you can hear about when I spoke to Richard Dawkins on the cosmic skeptic podcast we briefly mentioned the expanding circle by Peter Singer but that's the book we were talking about say I've been reading a lot of animal rights literature more broadly and it's not just Peter saying over leave it or not if you want something a bit more hardcore let's say then animal rights the abolitionist approach by Gary France Sione and Anna Charlton is quite good it's very short essentially making what might be called an extremist case for for a vegan lifestyle you know they argue against having pets they argue against any kind of exploitation of animals no matter what the circumstances are so it's interesting to read even if just to see how much you disagree with the kind of extremist version of the view but if you want something on the other end of the spectrum eating animals should we stop by Jonathan Safran Foer I think is how you say it it's the guy that wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close he wrote this book about factory farming and farming on kind of backyard farms and this kind of thing he did a lot of research and went and visited a lot of these places and it's a lot more mild it doesn't kind of snot in your face saying you need to go vegan and stop eating animals it's it does ultimately conclude that factory farming at least is awful but it kind of left the author at the end of the book with it with a newfound respect for backyard farming and things like that so you kind of got an extreme book over here for veganism in a little more relaxed book over here as well but both are really good to read if you want a book that's a bit more matter-of-fact just kind of facts and points about the animal industry there's a good book called why we love dogs eat pigs and where cows buy Melanie joy it's called an introduction to carnism it essentially tries to identify an ideology a tacit ideology that she calls carnism that is kind of within our media within the way we eat within the way we talk within our language but also just tells you all about the conditions on factory farms and in animal testing and this kind of thing so it's worth reading that as well if you're more of a fan of shorter essays then there's a good collection you can read called in defense of animals it's edited by Peter Singer but the essays aren't written by him as a collection of all kinds of philosophers talking on everything from the basic kind of points about animal equality through to factory farming and animal testing also justifications for different methods animal rights advocacy and how far we should be able to go in terms of that kind of advocacy so again if your issue want to read something that's a bit more broken up then that might be the book for you now moving on to philosophy more broadly in the past year one of the most recent books that I've been reading I haven't finished it yet is David Bennett s book on antinatalism it's called better never to have been especially after talking about veganism a lot of people have asked me to talk about antinatalism if you're not familiar it's the view that it's immoral to have children it's an interesting book I want to make a video on it that's that's one of the reasons why I'm reading the book because I had some misunderstandings about what the theory actually entailed what it actually said it's kind of compelling and interesting not overwhelmingly compelling it's like you can see the point he's making but it's a really interesting application of the idea that we should minimize unnecessary suffering if that's something you believe as I do David Bennett who tries to kind of take that to a logical extension he sees it because the way to of course minimize unnecessary suffering is to not allow that suffering to take place at all by not allowing anybody to have any children but it's not quite as simple as it might seem on face value so I'd recommend giving it a read but it's a bit more kind of niche it might not be up everybody Street but look out for a video on that hopefully sometime in the future when I finished the book if I feel like I've got enough to say on the topic also I believe published this year may be at the tail end of last year ac Grayling's book the history of philosophy he's kind of styling himself after Bertrand Russell's history of Western philosophy it's very comprehensive it does just what it says on the tin has a few pages on all the kind of key thinkers throughout history and one of the things that it does that not a lot of Western books on the history of philosophy does is tries to also incorporate Eastern philosophy at the end although AC grayling recognizes that he's not an expert on Eastern philosophy but he still makes an attempt to include it as part of his history if you want to kind of learn about thinkers rather than necessarily ideas and you want to go through the history that way then I'd really recommend it and you don't need to read it of course all the way through if you just want to have it as kind of a reference book if someone mentions a philosopher and you wanted you to have a brief overview of what they think then it's a fantastic place to go and it's obviously brand new so it includes modern philosophy as well from like the 20th century cetera yeah really recommend picking that up even if just having it as a reference book on a shelf somewhere I've also been recently digging into the essays of George Orwell again you can buy them in a collection I'm sure there are loads of versions that you can buy online but George Orwell was obviously one of the most important political commentators of the 20th century and although he's renowned for his fiction I also wrote a ton of essays and all of them are interesting not always particularly convincing sometimes a little bit troubling actually I found but again just really interesting to read and worth having in your mental catalog but I'll also add that when it comes to political philosophy the reason I'm not really making any recommendations now is because I'm gonna be doing a module on political philosophy its theory of politics as a part of philosophy at university I don't know exactly when I'm doing it but I feel like after I've done that module it's probably gonna be a better time for me to recommend political theory and especially an order in which to read it so perhaps after I've done the actual paper at university I'll make some more recommendations but for now I think I'll leave political philosophy there one thing that I've been trying to do more this year as well is reading memoirs I was always a bit skeptical of reading them I enjoyed when I was younger reading for instance ayaan Hirsi Ali 'z when I heard about her story and thought it was relevant to criticizing Islam and things but I was always worried to just read a memoir just to learn about a person but it is of course an enriching thing to do I I'm very you might be able to tell from the recommendations that I'm making when I read I tend to do it because I think it's going to be useful a lot of people think I like reading by the way everyone seems to think that I'm really into reading I I hate reading I like having read I see it like going to the gym it's like mental exercise right I don't actually enjoy the process of reading unless I'm reading like a fun book I guess but I don't do that too regularly so that's one of the things I deal with memoirs often times I'm not actually enjoying and I just want to get to know a person so I read some of Malcolm X's biography again that wasn't this year that was a while ago and I remember that being of course it's a classic and it's worth picking up I also read a memoir called trans I can't remember there was a tagline to it and I can't remember who it was by but I'll have a picture just here I didn't actually like reading it too much I didn't think it was written particularly well came across as a little bit pretentious points but it was really interesting to get inside the experiences inside the mind of somebody who is not accepted by society for the fact that they're transgender you can really kind of feel the feel the pain of the book but it's also quite optimistic in many ways I think it's probably worth reading another memoir that I read this year sorry to be so depressing was William Styron's darkness visible I say depressing I mean this book this memoir is about depression it kind of put depression on the map right when Styron was writing not many people really knew what it was or we're taking it very seriously and this book helped a lot of people you've probably already heard of it but I finally got around to reading it and it's actually not a depressing book in the sense that it kind of is a story of his escape from suicide I suppose so if depression is something that you are struggling with or have struggled with or if you're just interested in learning about it which I think everybody should because I think that everybody knows somebody at least who's been through it or is going through it then this book can really help kind of elucidate what these people are feeling because the thing about depression as far as I understand from Styron at least this is his view that it's always just impossible to put into words what the feeling is actually like I think that's something we can all relate to having those feelings that just are ineffable we just can't seem to find the words but Styron being such an excellent writer manages it better than most people would be able to so it's definitely a recommended book for that kind of reading I'm always also dipping into and rereading the memoirs and writings of Christopher Hitchens I've been really enjoying reading the earlier parts of hitch 20 to his memoir that he wrote nearing the end of his life reading about the paths when he was young and studying at Oxford because now being at that University and getting to go to the places and recognizing places that he mentions in the book it's quite an eerie and and bizarre but really interesting experience like frequenting the pub where he met James Fenton for the first time it's just things like that that are really interesting to live out but as well as hitch 22 which is kind of the obvious memoir to read of Hitchens one of my favorite books I think that's my favorite book he ever read is letters to a young contrarian again it's the kind of book that I tend to dip in and out of rather than sit and read all the way through but that book is just I don't know if it's like objectively good so to speak I wouldn't recommend it to air buddy but if you're into debate and arguing and into Hitchens kind of way of thinking and way of going about the world then led us to a young contrarian feels like it's written to you feels like it's written as a kind of rallying cry être to carry on the kind of thinking and kind of argumentative prowess that he that he paved the way for so I'd recommend those two to start with now if you saw my previous book recommendations video three years ago and you may remember that I recommended mortality by Christopher Hitchens which was the last book that he ever wrote he wrote it as he was dying of esophageal cancer and the interesting thing about that book of course is that you get to be inside of the mind of somebody who's dying right something will of course all get to experience but at the time I don't think will be particularly interested in engaging with the philosophy around what it's like to die and that's where we turn to literature and there are some really interesting insights you can get from that kind of book another book that I've read I don't think it was this year maybe last year was a book called when breath becomes air it was a best-seller so you may have heard of it but it was written by a doctor who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and again it was just a fantastic insight of what it's like it said just have that completely world crushing realization that everything you have is going to be coming to an end it's a hell of a ride it's it's not easy reading of course it's quite emotionally heavy especially at the end but I think it's worth reading just to kind of sober ourselves to the realities of life and existence on this planet and there are lots of other kind of depressive classic works that you can read about death and suicide particularly I mean the classic text on suicidality would be Albert Camus Smith of Sisyphus of course I kind of can't not mention this if I'm talking about the subject I didn't find it particularly compelling but it's quite optimistic might be a good place to start with that kind of stuff you can also read Arthur Schopenhauer's essays there's a collection you can get called essays and pessimism I think that's the one that I read anyway it's a hell of a read he has an essay on suicide that's why I mention it and again it's very kind of forthright it's quite striking in that like if you read a lot of if you try and look at philosophy of suicide today especially if you do it online if you type in a philosophical question like is life worth living something like that then you're not gonna get very far because you're just going to be bombarded with phone numbers and go here if you need help that kind of thing but I reading something like shopping how's essays it's just totally naked and sober and just tells you what he thinks without any kind of without any kind of warning but the collection itself is also very interested because a lot of it is very lucid and very it can be quite upsetting it can be because it's like powerfully argued but in a very as it says on the 10 a very pessimistic manner but there's also kind of in the middle of this of this quite brilliant collection of essays is an essay that he wrote called of women and it's just one of the most sexist misogynistic things you could possibly read in the English language to the extent in fact that in my version of essays and pessimism in the editors introduction it says at the end by the way the essay on women isn't a joke he wasn't joking he wasn't doing satire like he was actually being deadly serious because it's it's just that bad so if you want to if you want to get a kick out of something then that that's a good thing you can read but the essays surrounding it in that collection are also very very good by the way when I say that something is good when I'm talking about philosophy I don't necessarily mean that I agree with it that I subscribe to it that I think it's a good philosophy to follow I just mean that is it's good for engaging with with those kinds of topics so if you're interested in engaging with the philosophy of whether or not life is worth living which you may be if you read something like bennetto's book on antinatalism that kind of stuff if that's the kind of thing you're interested in then these books are good for that I'm not necessarily saying that they are good in their conclusions if you see what I'm saying in shop and how is si on suicide he also references David Humes essay on suicide which talks about some of the religious angles to suicide as well so if you want your kind of suicide literature recommendation from cosmic sceptic the myth of Sisyphus Arthur Schopenhauer is essay on suicide David Humes essay but I'd also recommend reading some of the modern literature that argues should we say to the contrary I remember reading map Hague's book reasons to stay alive that was it that was a good book he's got a lot of books on anxiety and depression and things like that which I think are quite interesting I've also been trying to read a bit more fiction as of late because as I say earlier I I don't tend to read for pleasure I tend to read because I think it's useful it's a useful thing to do and even with fiction sometimes I'm reading it not because I actually enjoy the process of reading it but because some of the kind of the morals you can get from the story some of the experiences you can feel that you've had from reading a great novel can be useful even if I'm not enjoying the process of actually reading it I just finished reading Lolita by Nabokov which is one of the most beautifully written things I've ever I've ever laid eyes upon it's also of course very disturbing but also hilariously funny I recommended it quickly became one of my favorite novels that I've ever read let alone just in this year earlier in the year I also read Martin a mice's the Rachel papers I wanted to read some of Martin Amis partly I guess on Christopher Hitchens is influence but the Rachel papers was the first novel he ever wrote so I thought I'd start there and again it was just hilarious I found you'll find yourself raising your eyebrows at one or two points during the plotline but the author's very self-aware about these things and it's it's quite entertaining to read for my degree for theology over the past year I also got to dip into some of the novels of Dostoevsky specifically The Brothers Karamazov I ended up writing an essay on that book for my first year exam it kind of goes without saying that these are great books that everyone should read but I just wanted to give them a mention because it's something that I have been reading this year and did find it as good as everybody says that they are but whilst people always understandably recommend Dostoyevsky's big great novels they often do so at the expense of some of the stuff that he wrote before my favorite being notes from the underground so if you're looking for something a little bit shorter it's about a hundred pages long I'd recommend that as a good starting point for Dostoevsky at least that's where I began to read his works and you can tell how loosely I read fiction with how erratic all of these books are but another book that springs to mind when I think about fiction is The Catcher in the Rye that's one that I read since the last video I made and again is probably one of my favorite novels I just really enjoyed it I can't quite put my finger on why but again I think it was quite funny I tend to have an appreciation for books where the author is is self-aware and ironic and kind of subtly humorous in an otherwise serious book let's say that's probably my favorite kind of fiction book so in fact if any of you have any recommendations for fiction books that you think I might enjoy based on the kind of books that I've been talking about here then feel free to leave some in the comments side I'd love to hear them or also on Goodreads I should have mentioned at the beginning I have a Goodreads account if you're interested in keeping up to date with what I'm reading when I'm reading it Goodreads comm forward slash cosmic skeptic if you're interested you can send me some requests there I'm sure I'm not really sure how it works but I'm sure there's a way to do it now of course I've been doing a lot of reading for my actual degree I study philosophy and theology and usually the stuff that I'm reading I like very specific essays they're very very specific to something that I'm studying at the time they're not particularly interesting general philosophical reading but there are some books that have either stuck out or have been reoccurring and so a useful reference books on the theology front one of the most important books that I read my first year of university was a book by Daniel Powell's called nine theories of religion which does do what it says on the tin it kind of takes nine really important key thinkers when it comes to the sociology of religion the psychology of religion explaining why people are religious essentially and goes through them all quite comprehensively but also quite briskly so if you're looking for a good introduction to the explanations of religion from people like Karl Marx from people like Emile Durkheim from people like Sigmund Freud then this is a really good book to start with I've also really enjoyed doing the science and religion paper that I'm still kind of halfway through at the moment at university I'm getting to read Galileo's works and they were interesting enough to make me make a video about it as you'll know if you're a subscriber made a video about Galileo's trial I'll link that in the description I'm also getting to read Charles Darwin not just kind of the Origin of Species but also some of his personal correspondence to see about his views on religion and how evolution and his theory of natural selection kind of played into a religion and what the response was at the time we did a bit of Stephen Jay Gould non-overlapping magisteria type stuff we also went back to Isaac Newton and kind of read a bunch of literature discussing whether or not he kind of removed the need for God as an explanation for the universe but again with these kinds of things when it comes to like reading Newton and Darwin and that kind of stuff so just be their correspondence and their big kind of magnum opus so you know reading about the principia mathematica reading the Origin of Species reading the correspondence that they wrote relevant to religion it's fairly easy stuff to find online you know I what I might do is upload my reading lists to my website I previously did that for some of the stuff that I did in first year I uploaded some of the reading lists that I got given I might try to update that in the future if that's something you want to see let me know I can post essentially what might you to send me they email me a bunch of reading each week for a particular topic so I can put that on my website perhaps with that permission if that's something that you want to see just thinking about it I remember that at the end of the last book recommendation video that I did I mentioned a few books that I wanted to read one of which being infidel by ayaan Hirsi Ali which I've already mentioned which I did of course read and I thought was fantastic just thought I'd update you on that front since I mentioned it in the last one I definitely would recommend that I think the other one I mentioned was sapiens by you've all know her re which was just fantastic I mean it's it's one of these books that everyone says is one of the kind of best books written in in recent years and I think it deserves the credit that it's getting and also the sequel to that homo Deus which I haven't read yet but I've heard is equally good and on the topic of books that I haven't read I had some requests on Twitter when I mentioned that I was going to make this video to talk about some of the books that I want to read that I've got kind of on my list that I haven't read yet so there are a few that spring to mind there's one book that was recommended to me quite a long time ago now by Steve Woodford rationality rules called justice by Michael Sandel I've seen one or two of the lectures that he's given I think if you type in Harvard University into YouTube he's his lecture is the first one that comes up I've heard that it's very good and I've got it on good authority since I trust Steve and his philosophical recommendations and I hope that you'll trust them too so I might see if I can find the time to read that if I get the chance it looks really interesting I also really want to read Dominion by Tom Holland this more or less comes with the recommendation of Justin Brierley whose show you may have seen on my channel he runs the Christian radio show unbelievable that I've been on a few times it's where I debated French Uruk but he recently had Tom Holland on debating I think AC grayling about the influence of Christianity in the development of Western culture essentially Tom Holland tries to make the case that Christianity has been absolutely crucial in shaping the values that we have in Western liberal democracies and I've heard that it's quite a compelling case so I want to give that a reading and see what I have to think about it I'm trying to think of books that have been actually kind of recommended in some way or another because I want to see on some kind of authority that I can recommend books that I haven't actually read yet I'm the last one that I can think of is comes from the recommendation of none other than Jordan Peterson who I saw speak in Oxford at the tail end of last year in October I think and he tends to just kind of talk from the top of his head and this event wasn't filmed so I don't know if he's mentioned this book anywhere else but he mentioned ordinary men I can't remember who was by but I believe this book is about soldiers guarding Nazi death camps and essentially kind of exploring the psychology of these individuals who as the title says are just ordinary people you know they're they're just people but somehow we're capable of committing these these atrocities that seems like a really interesting psychological investigation and as soon as he mentioned it I think I pulled my phone out in the and noted it down because for all that Jordan Peterson has to say his book recommendations tend to be pretty on point Oh Chris cook one asks an interesting question on Twitter which is if I've read any books in the past year specifically to try and challenge myself challenge my views I assume in relation to religion specifically and yeah of course I'm always trying to do that and there are again a few that kind of immediately spring to mind one that I'm currently reading again I haven't finished it is the case for Christ it was gifted to me by a friend who I met at university we had a conversation about Christianity late kind of night conversation type thing and then you know the next day or the day after I found in my little pigeonhole a copy of the case for Christ with a little note telling me to read it and I thought that was very a very kind thing to do so I've only just finally gotten around to reading it sorry Sam by the way if they're not having read it yeah and I appreciate you lending it to me I've actually been quite enjoying it it's written from a journalistic perspective Lee Strobel you may have seen the film was a man who worked for newspaper and his wife converted to Christianity and he essentially wanted to go and try and disprove the historicity of Jesus as a means of trying to prove to his wife that it just didn't make any sense but in doing so he ended up becoming convinced and eventually becoming a Christian so yeah it's been recommended by a few people and I think I got a kick out of the film so I thought I'd I try the book version 2 which alas is a little more serious but it's still quite enjoyable also of course been getting to read a lot of challenging literature by virtue of the degree that I'm doing so for instance on a paper studying the figure of Jesus I got to study the the church fathers and read like Augustine and Anselm and Athanasius and as you can see like I said before I ended up making videos on on these people I made a video just after I finished first year about atthenes yes and Anselm specifically but yeah I got to read these kind of classic theological texts to really try and understand the justifications for some of the doctrines of Christianity you know if in having conversations and doing reading at university that may not have kind of convinced me of Christianity of course but maybe of maybe maybe think that it's a bit more internally coherent you know I remember arguing about things like if there is a God you know would it be justifiable to punish people in hell for instance like eternal punishment can that be justified and I may not any longer be able to say this is immoral I might have to say that actually on your worldview understanding the way that you kind of ascribe a certain moral character or nature to your God this is actually this actually makes sense this is actually in keeping with this kind of version of a moral author or something so that's been really interesting but I had to read all sorts of theological texts from catherine of siena to Julian of Norwich to William Paley it's been more confessional rather than apologetic right it's not somebody sat trying to make an argument trying to have a debate it's just somebody talking about what they think which is maybe a healthier way to approach the debate surrounding religion but yeah thank you for watching if you've made it this far let me know some of your own book recommendations in the comments down below and if I think of any that are missing that really deserve inclusion then I'll probably put a pin comment or put them in the description or something but yeah let's let's get talking about some of the books that we've been reading this year special thanks as always to my patrons don't forget to subscribe if you're interested in the kind of content that I'm putting out and I will see you in the next one

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 262,146

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism

Id: 3C5z8SVzUb4

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020