The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity is Near" explores the concept of technological singularity, where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, leading to rapid and transformative changes in society.
The Heart's Invisible Furies: A Novel by John Boyne
Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
Book Of Longing by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen wrote the poems in Book of Longing—his first book of poetry in more than twenty years after 1984's Book of Mercy—during his five-year stay at a Zen monastery on Southern California's Mount Baldy, and in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. This dazzling collection is enhanced by the author's playful and provocative drawings, which interact in exciting, unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and often darkly humorous.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Timeless wisdom on life's fundamental aspects, as a prophet shares profound insights on love, marriage, work, freedom, and more with a group of people before departing on a journey.
Welcome To The MonkeyHouse by Kurt Vonnegut
A collection of short stories that satirically explores themes of human nature, society, and morality, often with dark humor and surreal elements.
Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett
Follows two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, as they engage in aimless conversation and wait endlessly for the arrival of someone named Godot, exploring themes of existentialism, absurdity, and the human condition.
Flowers Of Evil (Oxford Classics) by Charles Baudelaire
The Flowers of Evil, which T.S. Eliot called the greatest example of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian love, its linking of sexuality and death, its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, you'll be transported to an era of the lost generation, where love and friendship are tested against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties. With exquisite prose and raw emotional depth, Hemingway paints a vivid portrait of a generation struggling to find meaning and purpose in a world forever changed by war. A tale of love, longing, and the unquenchable thirst for life, this novel is a must-read for anyone seeking the essence of the human spirit.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Practical strategies for building good habits, breaking bad ones, and mastering the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results, emphasizing the power of small changes and consistent action in achieving long-term success.
Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami
Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. A bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love.
Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but imprinted it in the imaginations of thousands of readers. Where I’m Calling From, his last collection, includes seven new works previously unpublished in book form. Together, these 37 stories give us a superb overview of Carver’s life work and show us why he was so widely imitated but never equaled.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.
The Lexus And The Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman
In this vivid portrait of the new business world, Thomas L. Friedman shows how technology, capital, and information are transforming the global marketplace, leveling old geographic and geopolitical boundaries. With bold reporting and acute analysis, Friedman dramatizes the conflict between globalizing forces and local cultures, and he shows why a balance between progress and the preservation of ancient traditions will ensure a better future for all. The Lexus and the Olive Tree is an indispensable look at power and big change in the age of globalization.
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen.
Collected Poems 1947-1997 (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Allen Ginsberg
A chief figure among the Beats, Ginsberg changed the course of American poetry, liberating it from closed academic forms with the creation of open, vocal, spontaneous, and energetic postmodern verse in the tradition of Whitman, Apollinaire, Hart Crane, Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Ginsberg’s raw tones and attitudes of spiritual liberation also helped catalyze a psychological revolution that has become a permanent part of our cultural heritage, profoundly influencing not only poetry and popular song and speech, but also our views of the world.
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." Those famous concluding lines of T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" have resonated with readers for nearly a century. As with "April is the cruelest month," from The Waste Land and "Do I dare disturb the universe?," from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot's words have permanently entered our cultural bloodstream. Through the poems in this volume, representing his first four published collections, Eliot reshaped modern literature with a daring and overpowering vision of a decaying civilization and the urgent need for spiritual renewal.
The Essential Enneagram: 25th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Personality Test and Self-Discovery Guide by David Daniels M.D.
A centuries-old psychological system with roots in sacred tradition, the Enneagram can be an invaluable guide in your journey toward self-understanding and self-development. In this book, Stanford University Medical School clinical professor of psychiatry David Daniels and counseling psychologist Virginia Price offer the only scientifically developed Enneagram test based upon extensive research combined with a self-discovery and personal-development guide.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Skeptics Guide To The Universe by Dr. Steven Novella
It is intimidating to realize that we live in a world overflowing with misinformation, bias, myths, deception, and flawed knowledge. There really are no ultimate authority figures-no one has the secret, and there is no place to look up the definitive answers to our questions (not even Google). Luckily, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella-along with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein-will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories-from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N- rays.
I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader by Samuel Beckett
Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of our time, Samuel Beckett has had a profound impact upon the literary landscape of the twentieth century. In this one-volume collection of his fiction, drama, poetry, and critical writings, we get an unsurpassed look at his work.
How Music Works by David Byrne
Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.
Behaveby Sapolsky
From the bestselling author of A Primate's Memoir and the forthcoming Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will comes a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do?
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.