Books Worth Reading

I attend a men's breakfast. This morning we were discussing what kinds of books we like to read. I mentioned a few that I had read over the years and was asked if I could make some suggestions. Here is a list of books selected in the topics of "Reformed Disciplines" and "The History of Math and Science." These two topics fascinate me and form a large part of my 'recreational reading'. I've linked the titles to amazon.ca

So, here is a rather eclectic stack, in no particular order. Four of them are books on exercising the spiritual life from a Reformed viewpoint. Six are history of math and science, and one is an historical anthology from the ancients to the present. One, the last, sort of defies categories. Perhaps we could call it "narrative philosophy."

1. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Dana Sobel

A brilliant little book about how one man overcame all sorts of adversity and set backs and developed a reliable measure of Longitude in the great age of sail.

2. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Donald Whitney

A lovely book on personal training for godliness.

3. The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number. Mario Livio

An historical review of the non repeating number 1.6180339887... a number as interesting as (maybe more fascinating than) Pi. (The last chapter is entitled, "Is God a Mathematician?")

4. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (revised). Richard Foster

An examination of the Spiritual Disciplines from 3 view points: inward, outward, corporate. This book delves into the topic from a "too mystical" point of view. Reader beware.

5. Reformed Spirituality. Howard Rice

Chapter one begins with a full quote of Q&A 1 of the HC. This book is a self conscious look at the spiritual life from a Reformed perspective.

6. Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem: Simon Singh

350 years ago Fermat claimed in a margin note that he had solved this problem: There are no whole number solutions for the equation (x to the n) + (y to the n) = (z to the n) for n greater than 2. This book traces the chain of events from Pythagoras to Andrew Wiles who solved the problem in the mid 1990s.

7. Spiritual Disciplines within the Church: Participating Fully in the Body of Christ: Donald Whitney

A discussion defending the place of the church in a christian life and the Christian's place in the life of the Church.

8. Chaos: Making a New Science. James Gleick

A lucid and clear analysis of a new branch of mathematics which affects all of our lives.

9. The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the universe from Heraclitus to Hawking. ed. D.R. Danielson

A readers anthology of short (85) readings in a book of 550 pages covering the history of cosmology from the ancients and arcane to the most contemporary writers. This book is an eclectic collection of philosophy, science, religion, literature, poetry, even sermons.

10. Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea. Charles Seife

A book which recounts the history of the number Zero and all its philosophical and religious ramifications. (Is there in God's created world the possibility for the "existence" of nothing?)

11. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert Persig

One of the most influential (non theological, though philosophical) books of my life.

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