I am always looking for something new to read. However, most of what I find recommended in newspaper book reviews (for example) I find shallow and desultory.
I would like some recommendations from atheists. I'd like to know which books have changed you, spoken deeply to you, made you who you are and contributed to your atheism. My own list would include the following:
Shakespear, The Merchant of Venice (Not a book but a play I read long before I saw it performed. I was struck by the injustices it exposed)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (The shallowness she dwelt on, the very human concerns of her 18th Century English society, the beautiful language)
Cormak McCarthy, The Road (Very recent and to be read slowly (this is hard - I read it on a one and a half hour flight) and capable of being read again and again )
Patick White,Flaws in the Glass, an autobiography of Australia's (gay and only) Nobel laureat for literature - I loved how he disparaged the Austalian establishment. And his The Tree of Man, a novel about the nobility and grandure of ordinary people carving out a life in the Austalian bush in the early days of setlement in this country. White helped me see what is is to be just human, 'All to Human', to love and hate appropriately.
Jean Paul Satre, Huis Clos. (Another play - I majored in French in my first BA and have never recovered. Its message is that 'Hell is other people' and that what you do in this life is all you'll ever do; your history will be complete , no hope of revision)
Samuel Becket, The End (Probably the greatest and most gut wrenching short story ever written - I should also add Waiting for Godot, another play)
Erwin Schroedinger, What is Life. (He anticipated later developments in biological/genetic science as well as being instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics)
Don Cupit, The Sea of Faith (This put a lot of my former reading in perspective for me)
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (Another persuasive perspective put-er)
Richard Dawkins, The selfish Gene and The God Delusion (the first a revelation, the second a confirmation - both books were consciousness raisers)
Christopher Hitchins, God Is Not Great (Hitch is a great plomemicist - he can sock it to a Mother Teressa or a Pope as well as he can give it to your average ethnic cleanser)
This list is by no means complete nor does it reflect the chronological order in which the works were read. They are just readings that spring immediately to mind. And I am not saying that the above list is better than anyone else's or that it should be read. Indeed, I suspect I have missed a lot in my reading life. So, I would like your recommendations, your lists of what has affected you deeply, changed the way you see the world, helped make you an atheist
Thanks
Rob
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