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Top 25: The Best Books I Discovered In 2015
#1
Top 25: The Best Books I Discovered In 2015
Well, it's that time of the year my friends, and as I did so in 2014, I have once again decided to reflect upon the reading experiences that I found most delightful these past twelve months (including last December). First, a brief note on the following list.

In some instances on my list I have alloted an author a single spot though including more than one of his works (sorry, no female authors made the cut, for reasons which are entirely historical!). For example, at #22 I placed Aristophanes for Clouds, Wasps, and Peace. In this case, all three of his relatively short comedies comprised a single volume in the Loeb Classical Library series. For other authors, such as Plato or Lucian, instead of highlighting each of the separate titles included in a particular collection, I specified those that I found most memorable or enjoyable. This is in contrast to the list I compiled in 2014, in which Fyodor Dostoevsky took three separate spots.

If you’re a reader, I hope you will find my list suggestive, even if my area of interest is different from yours. For various reasons, I highly recommend them all!

25. Octavius (160-250) - Marcus Minicius Felix, Gerald H. Rendall (trans.)
24. The Way of Zen (1957) - Alan Watts
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism (190-210) - Sextus Empiricus, R. G. Bury (trans.)
22. Clouds/Wasps/Peace (422-416 B.C.E.) - Aristophanes, Jeffrey Henderson (translator)
21. The History (440 B.C.E.) - Herodotus, David Grene (trans.)
20. Parallel Lives (90-120) - Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), John Dryden (trans.)
19. The Fall (1956) - Albert Camus, Justin O’Brien (trans.)
18. The Aeneid (19 B.C.E.) - Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), W. F. Jackson Knight (trans.)
17. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) - Charles Dickens
16. Confessions (397-401) - Augustine of Hippo, Henry Chadwick (trans.)
15. At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea (1998) - Carl Zimmer
14. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (late 12th century) - Ibn Tufayl, Lenn Evan Goodman (trans.)
13. Metamorphoses (8 C.E.) - Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), Allen Mandelbaum (trans.)
12. Letters From A Stoic (64 C.E.) - Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Richard Mott Gummere (trans.)
11. Apology (197) - Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (Tertullian), T. R. Glover (trans.)
10. On Old Age/On Friendship/On Divination (44 B.C.E.) - Marcus Tullius Cicero (Cicero), W. A. Falconer (trans.)
9. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement (1969) - James B. Pritchard (editor)
8. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) - David Hume
7. The Consolation of Philosophy (523) - Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius (Boethius), Victor Watts (trans.)
6. The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius (1940) - Whitney J. Oates (editor)
5. The Peloponnesian War (411-396 B.C.E.) - Thucydides, Steven Lattimore (trans.)
4. Plato: Complete Works (399-360s B.C.E.) - Plato, John M. Cooper (editor)
Notable mentions: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Timaeus, The Republic, & The Epistles
3. On The Origin of Species/The Descent of Man (1859/1871) - Charles Darwin
2. Lucian: Volume V (160s-180s) - Lucian of Samosata, A. M. Harmon (trans.)
Notable mentions: The Passing of Peregrinus, Toxaris or Friendship, Lexiphanes, The Eunuch, The Mistaken Critic, & The Parliament of the Gods
1. The Iliad/The Odyssey (725-675 B.C.E.) - Homer, Robert Fagles (trans.)

Honorable mentions
The Guide of the Perplexed (1190) - Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), Shlomo Pines (trans.)
The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (1957) - G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, & M. Schofield
Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (2015) - Jerry A. Coyne
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#2
RE: Top 25: The Best Books I Discovered In 2015
Well I have made a discovery of a writer whose works I have devoured over the course of this year. He has written a series of witty funny and clever books some of which are free on kindle or 99p. They are the Ant and Cleo books by Dominic Green. He also wrote little planet and little star. I would place his writing somewhere between Douglas adams and terry Pratchett and I can think of no higher praise than that. (I am in no way affiliated to this man, just an evangelical fan).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saucerers-Gondol...inic+green

Check it out, its free.



You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.

Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.




 








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