Random Question of the Day

June 21, 2008 By Guest Contributor 42 Comments

Name a book you really want to read… but, for whatever reason, you just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Ok, that’s not quite a question. But you get the idea.

Filed Under: General 42 Comments
  • I like tea

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  • http://www.stoptheqtip.ca/ Aditya

    Just one? I have an entire shelf (plus a small stack) of non-fiction and a shelf of fiction that I’ve had sitting there for quite some time (upto two years for some!), but just haven’t gotten around to reading any of it. But, taking a quick look, I guess the one I’m most looking forward to is Steven Pinker’s “The Stuff of Thought.”

    Ironically, I only bought that one this week.

  • Ryan

    Guns, Germs, and Steel.

    /but I just bought it yesterday

  • http://www.skepchick.org writerdd

    The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. I just downloaded an audio book version to listen to on a long flight this weekend.

  • Jeff Satterley

    I just started this one, but I’ve been waiting a while and I finally have some time to start it, so I think it should still count: The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. His older stuff is awesome, and so far this book is right on par.

  • http://www.blueglowy.com Mike B

    2 Max Berry books – Syrup and Company. I LOVED Jennifer Government, and he got me to read Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan which I’m pretty sure I read faster than any other novel I’ve ever read.

    I have a tendency to just have those books slip my mind because he’s not as well known say a William Gibson or Robert Heinlein book which would jump out at me at the book store.

  • http://www.evolvedrational.com Evolved Rationalist

    Yours, because you still owe me a free (signed) copy. Tsk, tsk…

  • http://www.atheistrev.com vjack

    The 9/11 Commission Report. I just can’t bring myself to read it because I know it will make me too mad.

  • http://johnmoeller.wordpress.com/ John Moeller

    Wow, let’s see…

    How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

    And in no particular order, here’s some others:

    Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett
    An Essay concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
    Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume
    Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
    On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony

    And those are just the ones that I own. As for the ones that I don’t, I’d probably add the works of Philip K. Dick.

    And if you want me to read books, stop writing such a good blog. It’s distracting me. :-p

  • OllieGarkey

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    by Philip K. Dick

    I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
    by Harlan Ellison

    The African Wars
    The Alexandrian Wars
    The Civil Wars
    The Gallic Wars
    The Spanish Wars
    By Julius Cesar

    America: A Prophecy
    William Blake

  • http://www.primordial-blog.blogspot.com/ Brian Larnder

    Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin – I’m waiting until it comes out in paperback at half the price.

  • mike

    Demon-Haunted World is top on my list at the moment.

  • GERG

    The hebrew/christian bible and/or the koran.

    For what it really says, what it doesn’t say and to argue the point of why I never took the any mythology seriously in the first place. So I don’t get the “how do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it” comment.

    I can spend day and night reading Harry Potter 1-7 but I can’t get myself started on reading that archaic text for more than 10 minutes.

  • Andrew C.

    Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is a pretty good read. I read it senior year of high school for my Science & Ethics course.

    I’d like to finish Moby Dick, On The Road, and The Canterbury Tales.

  • Andrew C.

    Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is a pretty good read. I read it senior year of high school for my Science & Ethics course.

    I’d like to finish Moby Dick, On The Road, The Canterbury Tales, and The Crying of Lot 49

  • TolgaK

    World War Z

  • Brooke

    Like Aditya, I also have a shelf (or two) of books waiting to be read. Darn that Half Price Bookstore! The one I have had the longest and not yet read is Lord of the Rings. Last time I picked it up I came across some person I wasn’t familiar with and got caught up in the appendices for a few hours – I didn’t made it back to the story!

  • http://michaellucianojr.wordpress.com Michael Luciano, Jr.

    Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

    Michael

  • Verwegen

    Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I have 1430 crisp pages worth of this tome sitting on my book shelf. If there will be one book that I aspire to read – but never manage to complete – this will be the one.

  • Gav

    The Bible – Author Unknown

  • JohnB

    I want to finish Origin of Species and Descent of Man. I’ve started them both several times, but never actually got all the way through. But I bought a copy of From So Simple a Beginning, edited by E. O. Wilson, which contains those two plus The Voyage of the Beagle and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and dammit, this time for sure.

    To writer dd: I just finished The Voyage of the Beagle, and it’s a great adventure/travel book. I think you’ll like it a lot.

  • http://www.let-me-be-frank.blogspot.com smellincoffee

    “The Making of the Fittest” and “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Sean B. Carroll. To be fair, one of them hasn’t been released yet — but I still want to read it.

    http://www.seanbcarroll.com/

  • Bo

    C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

  • http://www.wordsfromtheway.com/between-the-trees Jake Meador

    Up until recently it was Anna Karenina, but I’m reading that now. So I guess I’d say either The Brothers Karamazov or The Hunchback of Notre Dame (I like my classics :) ).

  • Shaun Michael

    I bought “The Truth (With Jokes)” by Al Franken months ago, still haven’t found the time to open it up though.

  • http://gaytheist.wordpress.com Reed Braden

    The entire catalogue of repressed texts existent only in Vatican City archives.

  • http://http://rcd.typepad.com/ Robin Capper

    Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship

  • http://thatatheistguysblog.blogspot.com/ NYCatheist

    The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose.
    Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

  • http://tinyurl.com/rotht Danny

    Doubt: A History by Jennifer Hecht

    Too busy with life, and whenever I want to read, I end up choosing a smaller, thinner book. Talk about lazy!

  • Michael

    Well I’d say Demon Haunted world by Carl Sagan but i just started it. So I’ll go with Your inner Fish (forget who by).

  • http://blog.myspace.com/johnpritzlaff John Pritzlaff

    The Secular Conscience by Austin Dacey
    Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby
    The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
    The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens
    The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil

    Are just a few that come to mind right now.

  • philosophia

    If I had to pick one, I’d go with “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat” by John Gribbin. But there are quite a few others I could mention too, lol. So many books, so little time.

  • http://ajourneyman.wordpress.com/ Quester

    Zero: A Biography Of A Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife.

    It had actually slipped my mind that I wanted to read this until just now. Thanks for sparking my memory!

  • http://undiscoveredfuture.blogspot.com Rebecca

    The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
    A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
    Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

  • chancelikely

    Funny…. I just checked out Demon Haunted World and Selfish Gene from my local library.

  • Ngeli

    For me it’s Andrew Tanenbaum’s book “Operating Systems – Design and Implementation” and Jose Saramago’s – Evangelium according to Jesus Christi.

  • Lauren

    Anything by Stephen King.

  • Tom

    The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth

    The coolest and best supported theory on cosmic origins.

  • http://agersomnia.blogspot.com Agersomnia

    El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (or translated “The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha”).

    It is a looong but very fun book to read. I have a wonderful edition with comments and explanations of many old words and references. I’m still stuck at the prologue since some 2 years ago, though.

  • Corncob

    The full Thousand Nights and a Night. Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler. And the original versions of as many fairy tales as possible.

  • Robin

    I’m a big science fiction guy, but I’ve still not read Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I’ve even owned copies of it from time to time, but I’ve never actually picked it up and read it.

  • Roosta Man

    Some great suggestions in this thread. I enjoyed Foucault’s Pendulum by Eco as well as Gore Vidal’s Julian. I recommend Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and I am hoping to tackle Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine.