There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it, the other that you can boast about it. [Bertrand Russell]

I hesitated for a long time before making a selection of this kind. These are by no means the only books I've enjoyed or found to be important and the list could easily have been longer, particularly the fiction. So I'm sure about the value of the books I've included but there could certainly have been more of them. The selection probably says as much about me as it does about the books, but, anyway, here it is. They are grouped vaguely by category but there is some overlapping.

For a different kind of selection, see my selected reading lists.

Fiction

• At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)
• Replay (Ken Grimwood)
• The Medusa Frequency (Russell Hoban)
• Almost anything by Russell Hoban or George Macdonald Fraser.

Brain and Mind

• Descartes' Error (Antonio Damasio)
• Right Hand, Left Hand (Chris McManus)
• The Symbolic Species (Terrence Deacon)

Evolution

• The Prehistory of the Mind (Steven Mithen)
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond)
• Trilobite! (Richard Fortey)

Cosmology

• The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene)
• The End of Time (Julian Barbour)
• The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene)
• The Goldilocks Enigma (Paul Davies)
• The Life Of The Cosmos (Lee Smolin)

Miscellaneous

• Ecstasy (Marghanita Laski)
• Freedom and Belief (Galen Strawson)
• Reasons and Persons (Derek Parfit)
• Style (F.L.Lucas)