all my books in my appartment are in swedish

Any of the Tom Robbins books, my favourite being:

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

If you like easy reading I would recommend Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, or American Gods by the same author also. For something harder and somewhat drier I think the Lesser evil by Michael Ignatieff is great mind food.

And one of my favourite authors is Rafik Schami whose stories mostly play in the middle east (Damaskus), and who are something in between fiction and non-fiction, in a unexcited fairy rale kind of way. But I am not sure whether he was translated to English, and how that translation caught is style.

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom

Conversations With God, Neale Donald Walsch

Anything by PJ Tracy, Stephen King, Dan Brown.

Shameless spam: Amazon.com: Humor and Moroccan Culture: Books: Matthew Helmke

Now, a real set of suggestions...each of which I have read in the last year and found either enjoyable or enlightening.

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jalloun
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami
Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges by Marvine Howe
Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi

Well, it is a great book. But it is way too long and detailed for me! I've read the complete trilogy, but I used three(!!!) years on it, and since that, I haven't read anything but books about computers/programming etc.

Now I've just started reading the Harry Potter books, and they are way more "comfortable" to read, and hopefully, I will continue reading when I'm finished

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (not sure if I spelled the author's name correctly btw) Ayn Rand is a good author, as is Orwell and Tolstoy.

I like Russian authors...it's funny, though. I always hear a Russian accent in my head when I read their books.

I think you spelled his name correctly, btw. Congrats!

You didn't quote Ayn Rand from my post. She was Russian born.

I didn't know that. Wow.

I just finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (There's a synopsis at the wikipedia link), by Michael Chabon.

I think it's one of the best books I've read this year.

Conversations With God series by Neale Donald Walsch
A great spiritual (not religious) exploration. Regardless of what you believe to be the nature of the conversation, these books contain some of the most remarkable ideas and observations I've ever read (and I've read a lot).

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann
A view into past cultures and how they lived sustainably upon the Earth, a view of how our culture uses energy, and ideas for how we can change. When I read this book my thought was that every person living on the planet should read this book.

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
A great exploration of quantum mechanics, and an exploration of how holographic theory has been applied to parasciences. Contains some amazing historical accounts of psychic and telekinetic waves of the past, as well as modern experiments which defy conventional explanations. A very engaging read well-founded in modern science, but addressed to a general audience (you don't have to be a scientist to understand it).

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
A book to give you a new perspective on your mind. Stunning. Tolle is every master teacher who has ever lived, translated into modern language.

Food Revolution by John Robbins
How to eat well and a lot of scientific data that is hidden by our culture. This is quite an eye-opener. The older Diet For A New America is also excellent. I recommend both.

Communion by Whitley Strieber
He shares his account of being abducted by aliens. This is a scary book, and true IMO. If you follow into some of the later books, he drops some of his fear and things get even more interesting. The Communion Letters is also a good read. This is a compilation of some of the hundreds of thousands of letters he received from people who read Communion and had their own experiences to relate. Reading this gives you a sense of how truly odd contact experience is, and unlike the way it is portrayed in popular culture.

Far Journeys by Robert Monroe
He details his out-of-body experiences.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
If you never read this series, do it!

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
A great exploration of largely eastern mystical concepts, translated for westerners. Great insights abound.

Voice: also balance that out with a more skeptical look at these "sciences" as well

Amazon.com: How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age: Books: Theodore Schick,Lewis Vaughn

Zero by Charles Seife is really good. It's basically the history of the number zero. I know that sounds kinda lame, but it turned out to really be amazing. Another book by him that I loved was Alpha and Omega. It's about the origins of the universe and some theories on how it will end.

As for some fiction, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley was impressive. It's kinda long, but worth it in the end. There are four other books related to it: The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Ancestors of Avalon and Priestess of Avalon. Mists of Avalon is basically the legend of King Arthur told from the points of view of the women involved. It's a really interesting take on it.
Some other authors I love are Mercedes Lackey and Amy Tan.

Leo Tolstoys 'Resurrection' and Ayn Rands 'Atlas Shrugged' are two of the great books you can read..

Noam Chomsky: Understanding Power... a must for everyone IMO

Nothing wrong with that, but most people in this culture are imbalanced in the other direction. Skepticism has become an elaborate system of denial.

So I'll leave it to you to recommend those books. Also, the books I recommended do take a skeptical, careful look at these things, based in observation and analysis, not folklore.

Even Communion - the author merely relates what happened to him. He often doesn't know what to think himself, and sometimes questions whether he is hallucinating (and addresses that possibility with facts that contradict it). What I appreciate about that book is its candidness in the midst of the unknown. He shares his experience, and it is a remarkable one.

Mostly what I advise is open your mind to possibilities. These books don't tell you what to believe about what they present. What most people do is they decide in advance what to think about something, then avoid looking at anything which offers evidence (including witnesses) to the contrary. That's not skepticism, merely denial.

The truth is far more exciting than any fiction you will ever read.

okay here goes.

Any of Malcome Rose's books if you can get hold of them are pretty good.

David Baldacci is also quite good.

ANd for a classic: 1984 by George Orwell. Worringly accurate depeciation of modern society.

For anyone who enjoys novels about dystopian societies, I cannot recommend "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin enough. Especially for fans of Orwell or Huxley to see where many of their ideas stemmed from.

For those who've never heard of it, it's a novel about the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor", set in the 26th century. People have no names, only numbers and all work in unison with each other, sleep at the same time and eat at the same time. The buildings of OneState are glass, so no one has anything to hide. They are cut off from the irrationalities of the outside world, such as nature, by the Green Wall, a giant glass wall encompassing the whole of OneState.

The novel is written in the form of daily entries from the view of a male labelled D-503, a mathemetician and the creator of the INTEGRAL, a giant ship that is to spread the logic and reason of OneState and enforce it on the people of other planets.

He continues to document each day and his thoughts as he becomes infatuated with a woman known as I-330, who begins to make him question his absolute belief in OneState.

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Perhaps Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason would be a good companion to it for anyone who is intrigued by Zamyatin's novel.

I read constantly and here are some from my rather eclectic list

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck
The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson


"No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that which experience has given him no access." -Nietzche