Jostein Gaardner’s Sophie’s World is this fiction story about a young girl but it manages to cover SO much philosophy and it’s just a brilliant book.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her heart, her voice, her ideas, they resonate so strongly with my own. This beautiful epic tale follows the daughters of a missionary into the African jungles. Also check out her novel The Bean Trees, a raw and real story of a young woman and the child falls in her lap.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky comes in second when it comes to characterization, dialogue, and intense themes. My favorite is The Brothers Karamazov.

Tom Wolfe is another just absolute favorite. The research he puts in to his fiction is impressive, his ability to tell a tale from any perspective just so uncanny. My favorites are A Man in Full (I especially loved the character who embraced Stoic philosophy) and I Am Charlotte Simmons. (How he gets in the head of a teenage girl is nothing short of incredible.)

Then there are my 2 favorite novellas from high school, maybe favorites because of the dynamic between the brother and sister. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.

Then you’ve got my 2 favorite coming of age novels. I think I love To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (Betty Smith) so much because they deal with such serious cultural issues.The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is amazing too.

Other coming of age favorites include Born Again by Kelly Kerney, which details the deconstruction of faith of a girl who dares to read Darwin, and Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’neill- just this gritty, gripping story of a 13 year old girl in survival mode.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers’ is set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. This book is SO beautiful.

Another truly beautiful book about misfits coming together is Kent Haruf’s Plainsong.

Moving on to my beautiful Black lady writers of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond, pick up any novel at all by Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, but definitely don’t miss The Color Purple or Beloved, and please don’t deprive yourself the opportunity of experiencing Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

I fell in love with political satire and light sci-fi of the dystopian writers: Orwell, Vonnegut, Bradbury.

Candide by Voltaire blew my mind.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a profound favorite. Published in 1899, it is a shocking and controversial book with a protagonist so relatable and yet turbulent it almost scared me. Beautifully written, too

Authors I read during research for my book (in alphabetical order):

1. AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Check out Infidel (2008) and The Caged Virgin (2006).

What’s even worse than evangelical purity culture? Purity culture in Islam.

2. BETH BARR

The Making of Biblical Womanhood (2021)

How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

3. MARC BEKOFF

The Emotional Lives of Animals (2008)

Morality must extend beyond our species.

4. JEREMY BENTHAM

An Introduction to the Principles and Morals of Legislation (1789)

Oh boy did this guy know what was up!

5. JAMES BOYCE

Born Bad (2016)

That silly concept of “original sin” and its role in making the Western World

6. JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Check out The Power of Myth (1991) and Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949)

So much of what we think we know about Jesus Christ is borrowed material from other myths.

7. RICHARD CARRIER

Check out On the Historicity of Jesus (2023) and join the scholarly debate.

Did Jesus ever live at all?

Also a must-read, Carrier’s Sense and Goodness Without God (2005)

8. HARVEY FOX

Fire From Heaven (2001)

Pentecostal spirituality in the twenty-first century

9. JERRY COYNE

Why Evolution Is True (2009)

My first clue I’d been fed lies: science!!

10. GIORGIO de SANTILLANA

Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time

More clues: the stories in the Bible ARENT NEW

A New Science of Religion (2012)

What makes people believe in gods anyway?

12. RICHARD DAWKINS

The God Delusion (2016)

13. BART D. EHRMAN

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005)

Jesus, interrupted : revealing the hidden contradictions in the Bible (and why we don’t know about them (2009)

This guy knows Jesus.

14. RIANE EISLER

The chalice and the blade: Our history, our future (1988)

Because women aren’t an afterthought made from a rib

15. JAMIE LEE FINCH

You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity (2019)

Jamie’s story is a lot like mine

16. FRANCIS FITZGERALD

The Evangelicals : the struggle to shape America. (2017)

They’ve got a hell of an agenda

17. JAMES GEORGE FRAZER

The golden bough; a study in magic and religion (2014)

Because religion didn’t start with yours

18. PHILLIP GREVEN

Spare the child: The religious roots of punishment and the psychological impact of physical abuse (1990)

Because corporal punishment is child abuse

19. SAM HARRIS

The End of Faith (2004)

The Moral Landscape (2012)

Sam’s my MAN

20. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

God is Not Great: How religion poisons everything (2007)

Gotta love how blunt he is.

Mortality (2012)

21. DAVID HUME

Dialogues and Natural History of Religion (1779)

Said it best way back when

22. DIANNA T KENNY

God, Freud and religion: the origins of faith, fear and fundamentalism (2015)

More on how the hell people can believe this shit

23. LISA KEMMERER

Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice (2011)

Because animals aren’t here for humans any more than women are here for men

24. LINDA KAY KLEIN

Pure: inside the Evangelical movement that shamed a generation of young women and how I broke free (2018)

I did too!

25. JEAN-YVES LELOUP

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

26. Elaine Pagels

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

27. ROBERT PRICE

The Reason Driven Life (2009)

The Case Against the Case for Christ (2014)

Love how he refutes Lee Strobel’s apologist book point by point

28 DARREL RAY

The God Virus (2009)

Because it’s a sickness

29. CHARLES RYRIE

Dispensationalism (2007)

End Times prophecy

30 CARL SAGAN

Childhood Favs from the 80’s

The first full size novel I read was in maybe second grade: B is for Betsy

I LOVED the abridged, illustrated classic novels:

Little Women I related so much to fiery writer Jo March.

Black Beauty I fell in love with horses.

The Invisible Man by HG Wells was an absolute favorite. I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo andThe Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson over and over.

I won’t list them all but I read them all and I loved them all.

The Ramona series by Beverly Cleary was a favorite around third grade.

The Cricket in Times Square Oh how I loved this beautiful book! And others by George Selden.

The Borrowers!! The tiny people! Adored the series.

I read the whole Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder by fifth grade.

Tween Series I Adored

The Gymnasts! Oh my I was obsessed with this series! Also The Sweet Valley Twins, The Fabulous Five, The Babysitter’s Club, The Nancy Drew Mysteries, and The Saddle Club.

I also read a ton of Judy Blume.

Teen Books From the 90’s I Loved

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang and everything else by Joyce Carol Oates

The Face on the Milk Carton and everything else by Caroline B. Cooney

My favorite series was hands down Sweet Valley High.

I loved Number the Stars and The Giver by Lois Lowry

V.C. Andrews Orphans series, Ruby series and Dollanganger series were repeatedly read

The Black Stallion I never knew this book was written before my parents were born. Oh I loved this beautiful book!

THE SEVEN PATHS by Anasazi Foundation 

People have moved away from Mother Earth, bringing heartache, pain, and other maladies of the modern age. The “self-help” movement claims to offer peace and fulfillment to individuals, but this solitary approach takes us only so far. Ultimately, it is in communion with our fellow beings and the natural world that we are made whole. We need to leave the path of Me and follow the path of We.

This poetic, evocative story presents the meditations of an ancient Anasazi tribesman who rejects his family and sets off on a journey through the desert. He walks seven paths, each teaching a lesson symbolized by an element of the natural world: light, wind, water, stone, plants, animals, and, finally, the unity of all beings with the Creator. The Seven Paths reveals a source of wisdom, restoration, and renewal familiar to native people but lost to the rest of us, seven elements among nature that combine to mend human hearts.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Written in Greek by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher, without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.

The Reason Driven Life by Robert Price

Pastor Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life” has been both a commercially successful best seller and a widely influential book in the Christian community. As a rejoinder to the fundamentalist assumptions of Warren’s book, Robert Price, a biblical scholar, a member of the Jesus Seminar, and a former liberal Baptist pastor, offers this witty, thoughtful, and detailed critique. Following the concise forty-chapter structure of Warren’s book, Price’s point-counterpoint approach emphasizes the importance of reason in understanding life’s realities as opposed to Warren’s devotional perspective. Price, who was once a born-again Christian in his youth, is in a unique position to offer an appreciation of the wisdom that Warren shares while at the same time challenging many of his main ideas. Ultimately, the reason-driven life offers a healthier, alternative approach to wisdom and motivation, says Price, than the simplistic answers and feel-good emotionalism at the heart of Warren’s prescription for life.

What the Buddha Taught

This indispensable volume is a lucid and faithful account of the Buddha’s teachings. “For years,” says the Journal of the Buddhist Society, “the newcomer to Buddhism has lacked a simple and reliable introduction to the complexities of the subject. Dr. Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught fills the need as only could be done by one having a firm grasp of the vast material to be sifted. It is a model of what a book should be that is addressed first of all to ‘the educated and intelligent reader.’ Authoritative and clear, logical and sober, this study is as comprehensive as it is masterly.”

Man’s Search for Meaning

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man’s Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead’, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life passionate, chaotic and free.

Eating Animals

Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them. Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was recognized as one of the greatest minds of our time and a figure of inspiration after defying his ALS diagnosis at age twenty-one. He is known for both his breakthroughs in theoretical physics as well as his ability to make complex concepts accessible for all, and was beloved for his mischievous sense of humor. At the time of his death, Hawking was working on a final project: a book compiling his answers to the “big” questions that he was so often posed–questions that ranged beyond his academic field.

Within these pages, he provides his personal views on our biggest challenges as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next. Each section will be introduced by a leading thinker offering his or her own insight into Professor Hawking’s contribution to our understanding.

Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver

Sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive, Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.

In her essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us, out of one of history’s darker moments, an extended love song to the world we still have.

Whether she is contemplating the Grand Canyon, her vegetable garden, motherhood, genetic engineering, or the future of a nation founded on the best of all human impulses, these essays are grounded in the author’s belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth’s remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers may lie in both those places.

Sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive, Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.