Ten Hard Books I Want to Read (But It’s Fine If You Don’t)

Just happened on this by chance and now I own five new books. I love books that make me think. I will be 78 in 4 months and books like this keep me young. Also enjoyed your presentation with the comments on why you're interested.

Fantastic video . Thank you for all your efforts on making this video

Enjoyed your video. I never thought it would inspire videos from readers who love to read philosophy. I have been meaning to read Vollman for sometime. Thank you for the reminder.

Wonderful! video. And I thought I was a bookaholic! I have read the Kolakowski (when it was 3 separate volumes), the Popper, and I have read pretty much all Gould- except for the one you showed. The Watson looks interesting. Right now my “fat book” is Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy, but at somewhat less than 500 pages it may pale by comparison with some of your planned volumes. Thanks for the inspiration.

great video! You mentioned a lot of unknown jobs that i didn´t knew anything about of before, i expected the usual "finnegan´s wake" "gravity´s rainbow" "ulysses", but that last book with the three columns was just full madness, looks more obscure and hard even that finnegan´s.

what a great and unique list, thanks for sharing. I have to read the Orlando Figes pronto.

Respectfully requesting a tour of that bookshelf behind you. I just now found your channel. New sub. Wishing you the best of success.

This was a great video. I love your enthusiasm for analyzing how the authors play with words, format, etc in addition to the content. I share that with you for sure.

Interesting choices. I seemed to notice a book on your shelves behind and thought: "I bet this guy is from Montreal." The Sheppard book "HA!" strengthened my suspicion. It is a wonderful book about Hubert Aquin (hence the initials HA!), one of Québec's most important writer. I did my Masters thesis on the influence of Joyce in Aquin's writing. Very interesting stuff indeed.

Oh, maybe I will do this too!! I agree that it is fun to just hear what other bookish people want to read, and I like the idea of choosing books that one thinks will be challenging! (There are so many in my case!) Yes, I want to read Vollman, not sure where to start. Ha! sounds amazing!! The Whisperers sounds fascinating too! I have a box set of Arno Schmidt’s stories and another novel, maybe one day I’ll try Zettel’s Traum. (Bottom’s Dream).

Fantastic video!!

Very interesting list, thanks! I’m 63, and have not read as much as I would like. I’m mostly through with collecting my “retirement library”, which includes Darwin’s Beagle, Origins, and Descent books, as well as Dawkins’ Selfish Gene. If and when I make it through that series, your suggestion of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Gould) seems like a great next step. Thanks! As an aside, my parents had the Durant books, as well as the Great Books series, and the Encyclopedia Brittanica. I wish I would have started reading those long ago, but the font size and line spacing really put me off. It wasn’t the density of the ideas, but the literal density of the text, that drove me away. Anyway, I’ve subscribed and appreciate your suggestions.

Youtube suggested this video to me and I am quite impressed that I found another book lover that is reading meaningful books and I can tell is well read.

When I was a kid, I read Chekhov' The Bet, and the desire stayed with me since. It is a pity that most book lovers don't have all the time to read. Thank you for the suggestions - added a few to my list.

I just finished the 1,100 page The Tale of Genji. I am ready for your list. Parfit, Volman, just stunning.

Lovely to hear someone speak so intelligently about some books with serious depth. I’m curious about Government House, and you’re the second person to mention it. You might be interested in ‘Buddhist Phenomenology’ by Daniel Lusthaus.

Nice shout out to On what matters. If I remember correctly, volume three was the one he “died working on”, but it was largely complete before he died. Even though I disagree with him largely, I think it’s one of the best written works of philosophy I’ve read, and a great source of strong arguments for me to argue against.

Some fun books. I used to read a lot more non-narrative philosophy, but for the past decade or so I've been more interested in real life problems that require concepts of chaos and complexity, and systems thinking rather than the stripped down philosophical approaches that ignore the messiness of reality. I thought about doing a response video on this thread, more in response to Steve Donoghue's response probably, but I am already doing a 24 tomes in 2024 project this year, using a random number generator to pick from my list of 24 hard/big books that I plan to finish this year. Maybe I'll do a list more along the lines of these response videos next year when it won't be competing with an existing reading project.

This is a great video idea. Might make one similar! Thanks for the idea :)

Thank you for including Dr. McGilchrist 's Matter with Things. It is long and expensive. But Dr. McGilchrist has a series of YouTube conversations which go over the book chapter by chapter which may be a good way to begin with them. Thank you for the nice characterization of Stephen Jay Gould. Agree with you entirely.