Some books that have impacted me in profound and enduring ways:
(besides the Bible; it will disturb someone either way, whether I include it or not)
- The Politics of Jesus, A Pacifist Way of Knowing, and others (John Howard Yoder) (see Cosmik Debris)
- The Left Hand of Darkness and others (Ursula K. Le Guin)
- The Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel)
- The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint Exupéry)
- Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
- The Dark Tower Series, and related stories (Stephen King)
- The Social Construction of Reality (Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann)
- The Titan Trilogy (John Varley)
- Modernity on Endless Trial (Leszek Kolakowski)
- The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
- The Sociological Tradition and The Quest for Community (Robert Nisbet)
- The World of Pooh (A. A. Milne)
- Totality and Infinity and others (Emmanuel Levinas)
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, and others (Robert A. Heinlein)
- Phenomenology of Perception and others (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)
- The Hyperion/Endymion Series ( Dan Simmons)
- The Politics of Friendship (Jacques Derrida)
- The Sneetches and Other Stories (Dr. Seuss)
- The Great Divorce and The Last Battle (C. S. Lewis)
- Tao Te Ching (favorite translation: Stephen Mitchell)
- Systematic Theology and God The Problem (Gordon D. Kaufman)
- Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Richard Rorty)
- The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
- Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Peter L. Berger)
- The Missing Piece and others (Shel Silverstein)
- The God of Faith and Reason (Robert Sokolowski)
- Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth (William James)
- World in Fragments and The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cornelius Castoriadis)
- The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom)
- Basic Writings (Martin Heidegger)
- The Sandman series (Neil Gaiman)
Some Other authors I love to read, but wouldn’t single out particular books at this point:
(This doesn’t include poets. My poetry page includes a list of poets I love to read.)
- George Santayana
- Judith Butler
- Georg Simmel
- George Herbert Mead
- Emile Durkheim
- José Ortega y Gasset
- Michel Foucault
- Joel Best
- Russell Kirk
- Bruno Latour
- John Dewey
- Sigmund Freud
- John D. Caputo
- Wendell Berry
- Josiah Royce
- Giorgio Agamben
- Michael Polanyi