Here are 100 books that Sophie's World fans have personally recommended if you like
Sophie's World.
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I’ve been drawn to thought-provoking novels from my early days as a reader, and especially later when my own work took shape. My books tend to deal with life’s big topics––love, loss, creativity, self-discovery, aging, forgiveness, what it means to be a good man, and the climate crisis––so I tend to gravitate to ambitious novels focused on how we humans might evolve in a healthy way. My characters do have flaws, many of them, but in the end, they are resilient and figure out a way to take a step forward. All of the books I mentioned are similar in scope and approach.
The Moviegoer was the first novel I read which had little plot and a great deal of meaning. Basically, it’s about one man’s search for meaning in a world which values shallowness and consumerism above all else. It’s as relevant today as it was when written and the prose is amazing!
Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy’s debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man’s search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape.
Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty,…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’ve been a journalist and writer my entire adult life. I’m a mid-30s mother of two who accidentally had my mind blown by ChatGPT a year ago. I felt this burning need to try and express what I was feeling and learning as I discovered this new thing. As I used it more and thought and thought about it, I started questioning my own humanity. I felt alone and alienated, consumed by my thoughts.
Writing Human Again didn’t feel like a choice. My hope is that other people will find some comfort, a renewed appreciation for critical thinking, and perhaps a dash of inspiration and self-improvement along the way.
Why is it that looking at the past, reading our history, studying ancient ruins, makes me feel better about facing today’s world?
I think about connection, a feeling that, despite having lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, there are still shared goals and commonalities between myself and them.
Harari is one of those rare authors who can distill enormous amounts of information into a single sentence and hold your attention at the same time. Early in the book, Harari explains that as humans evolved to walk upright, the narrowing of the pelvis and hips made childbirth more treacherous. His line for this: “Women paid extra.”As a mother myself, when I read that line, it felt so modern, so lived-in, like the same line could describe my own feelings today.
Books like Sapiens aren’t really about the biology of humans, but about finding our humanity within a scientific exploration.…
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the…
I read a lot of fiction, both out of love and as my job. One of my biggest frustrations is that it’s so hard to find novels that are both thought-provoking and fun to read. Books that are page-turners often leave me feeling icky, like I’ve mowed down a big, greasy mess of french fries, and I have regrets. Books that are intellectually stimulating are like a bowl of kale that I nibble at and find easy to put down. When I find a novel that is both propulsive and thoughtful, that is my holy grail, and all of the books on this list hit that sweet spot for me.
This book is an intensely philosophical novel that tackles big subjects, like the nature of love, the limits and desirability of freedom, the expression of sexuality, and the very nature of human existence, while at the same time being immersive and easy to read. The main characters, Tomas and Tereza, are full of love for each other but fail to truly connect because of their personal frailties, which I believe is true of all of us at one time or another.
There are concepts from this novel that have become part of my own philosophy, in particular, that responsibility gives meaning to life.
'A cult figure.' Guardian 'A dark and brilliant achievement.' Ian McEwan 'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent 'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John Banville
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I am a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander who always felt ‘other’ growing up. When I was little, I hated being asked ‘where are you from?’ because I wanted to be seen as ‘just’ a New Zealander. This frustration shaped a lot of my race and identity journey, and I started reading books about other people’s personal experiences because it made me feel seen. These books also helped me recognize the richness and humanity behind my family’s story. I hope this beautiful list of books will resonate with your experiences or give you insight into a new corner of the world.
Ocean Vuong writes in a poetic prose that transforms memories into fragments that linger in your mind. His choice to write this book as fictionalized letters to his mother was deeply beautiful and heart-wrenching. This is a book that took me on a journey through the Vietnam War, my first queer experiences, and the journey of finding out what it means to become American.
Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction!
Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.
"A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently…
Learning to live and work sustainably is the greatest challenge of our times. In an age of global climate change, natural resource depletion, plummeting biodiversity, and “failing states” that can no longer meet their people’s basic needs, the only way we can rescue civilization and preserve the natural environment is to live sustainably. Notwithstanding common misperceptions, sustainability is not simply about preservation. Rather, sustainability requires both preservation and change. To be effective in our conservation efforts, we must become ever more creative and adaptive. Practicing sustainability entails managing the scale and speed of change so we can preserve our core values and relationships, both in nature and society.
Daniel Quinn’s award-winning novel illuminates the historical roots of our consumer culture from the perspective of a gorilla who teaches a human the lessons of sustainability.
Before he died, Daniel would meet with my students to discuss sustainability and the lessons of Ishmael. His wisdom comes through clearly in this well-told tale of how Homo sapiens become a species of unsustainable “takers” and what the consequences are of a global consumer culture.
One of the most beloved and bestselling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.
“A thoughtful, fearlessly low-key novel about the role of our species on the planet . . . laid out for us with an originality and a clarity that few would deny.”—The New York Times Book Review
Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.
It was just a three-line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of…
My core curiosity has been trying to understand the way the world is. Like all defenseless children, early on I trusted parents and elder others for that – for nearly half a century before I had the courage to question their comprehensive dogmas. I’ve been fortunate to have a wonderful education and to have traveled most of the globe, both of which assailed my assumptions. After a mid-life crisis/near-death experience, I decided to start over in understanding the world we live in. Before I died, I wanted to leave a science-based alternative to the world’s scriptures that open-minded parents could read to their children. My motto now is “In Truth We Trust.”
After Bryson and Harari, Greene gives us a wonderful, focused, science-oriented summary of cosmology and particle physics written for the layperson. While relatively easy to understand, he deals with the huge issues of where our universe came from and what it’s made of. I love the way these three authors strive from different vantage points to educate us and introduce us to the most fundamental questions of human life.
Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away layers of mystery to reveal a universe that consists of eleven dimensions, where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter-from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas-is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy. The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
Mahmoud Elsayed has always been interested in finding rational answers to the big existential questions. This could clearly be noticed in his writings and philosophy. He has also worked in various and somehow diverse fields of engineering and science which allowed him to smoothly, flexibly, and knowledgeably jump from a field of expertise to another in order to make his philosophical arguments comprehensive.
Our daily routine and the full of distractions life of the 21st-century human often draft us away and divert us from the fact that we live in a completely weird and bizarre reality. Steve Hagan digs deeper into this concept and presents amusing and mind-blowing notions about our perception and the things that we made out of it (philosophy and science).
The bestselling author of Buddhism Plain and Simple ponders what we truly know about reality.
Why the World Doesn’t Seem to Make Sense is an eminently down-to-earth, practical, and non-technical response to the urgent questions posed by contemporary science and philosophy. This revised and updated edition of How the World Can Be the Way It Is includes new scientific understanding and clarification of some of its more complex ideas. Steve Hagen aims for an intelligent general audience not necessarily familiar with modern or classical physics, philosophy, or formal logic.
Hagen takes us on a journey that examines our most basic…
Mahmoud Elsayed has always been interested in finding rational answers to the big existential questions. This could clearly be noticed in his writings and philosophy. He has also worked in various and somehow diverse fields of engineering and science which allowed him to smoothly, flexibly, and knowledgeably jump from a field of expertise to another in order to make his philosophical arguments comprehensive.
Whether you are religious or not, whether you like it or not, religions and God/Gods have been a part of the human civilizations as far as we started documenting, writing, and recording history and perhaps even as far as we existed. To understand the part that religion played in our history and how it had and still could have a significant effect on how we perceive the world and reality in general, it may be crucial to understand the history of religions and how they originated. Raza Aslan gives a wonderful presentation on that in this book.
"Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary." (Huffington Post)
In God, Reza Aslan sheds new light on mankind's relationship with the divine and challenges our perspective on faith and the birth of religion.
From the origins of spiritual thought to the concept of an active, engaged, divine presence that underlies all creation, Aslan examines how the idea of god arose in human evolution, was gradually personalized, endowed with human traits and emotions, and eventually transformed into a single Divine Personality: the God known today by such names as Yahweh, Father, and Allah.
I am fascinated by humanity’s search for meaning. That is what I am exploring as I read philosophy and as I write my biographies of extraordinary individuals. Sue Prideaux has written award-winning books on Edvard Munch and his painting The Scream, the playwright August Strindberg, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. She acted as consultant to Sotheby’s when they sold The Scream for a record-breaking $120 million.
Nietzsche said; “Today’s philosophers enjoy the divine principle of incomprehensibility.” This clearly written book takes the opposite tack. If you’re terrified of philosophy, this is the book for you. A great book to get the kids interested in the subject.
For readers of E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, an equally irresistible volume that brings history's greatest philosophers to life
"A primer in human existence: philosophy has rarely seemed so lucid, so important, so worth doing and so easy to enter into. . . . A wonderful introduction for anyone who's ever felt curious about almost anything."-Sarah Bakewell, author of How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
While I am Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina and the author of ten books, I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. My parents were from rural Missouri. I never met a professor, a writer, or an artist growing up. I never seriously considered going to college. But I loved to read. When I went to college and discovered you could major in literature and ancient languages, my life changed. I am now at work on a book entitled Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero: Rhetoric and Philosophy Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which reflects on what Cicero can teach us about living in a post-truth age.
The Apologyis where Western philosophy begins. Socrates is on trial for his life. The charge is impiety and corrupting the youth. His real crime, however, was teaching the young men of Athens to waylay their elders with difficult and impertinent questions. His message to these young men? Know yourself, know the limits of your knowledge, and do not care more for your possessions than you do for your soul and excellence. For Socrates’ unyielding commitment to live in accord with these principles, he gave his life. This is his defense speech.
The Apology of Socrates, by Plato, is the dialogue that presents the speech of legal self-defence, which Socrates presented at his trial for impiety and corruption, in 399 BC.
★ Specifically: The Apology of Socrates is a defence against the charges of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the same gods as the city, but in other gods which are novel” to Athens.
★ The Apology of Socrates is the dialogue that depicts the trial, written by Plato who details the final days of the philosopher great Socrates.
★ This book has been carefully adapted into modern English to…
