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ReadingFebruary 15, 2024
Socrates Johnson's Reading List
Discover what books have been shaping my literary journey over the past couple years and what's currently on my To Be Read pile.
The Books That Shape The Work
Every writer is first a reader. The books listed here represent years of deliberate study—the works that have shaped my thinking and continue to inform The SuperUnknowN. This isn't a comprehensive catalog of everything I've read, but rather a focused record of the texts that matter most: the Russian masters who demonstrate what fiction can achieve when it takes ideas seriously, and the philosophical works that ask the questions worth answering.
A Note on DNF
Books marked DNF (Did Not Finish) fall into two categories. For non-fiction and philosophy, it usually means I read specific chapters for research rather than cover to cover—these are reference works I return to when particular questions arise. For fiction, it means the book didn't hold my attention at that time, though that doesn't close the door permanently. Some of my favorite books required multiple attempts before the right moment arrived.
2022
Fiction
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
First Love by Ivan Turgenev
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
1984 by George Orwell
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov DNF
Short Stories
The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
The Bet by Anton Chekhov
The Woman with the Dog by Anton Chekhov
The Duel by Anton Chekhov
Death of a Government Clerk by Anton Chekhov
The Student by Anton Chekhov
Joy by Anton Chekhov
A Blunder by Anton Chekhov
The Lottery Ticket by Anton Chekhov
Non-Fiction
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins
12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson
The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell
The Dhammapada by Buddha
Tribe by Sebastian Junger
2023
Fiction
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky DNF
The Iliad by Homer
Heart of the Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Animal Farm by George Orwell
In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway DNF
In The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn DNF
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche DNF
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Utopia by Thomas More DNF
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Short Stories
Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov
Non-Fiction
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday
Select Letters by Seneca DNF
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Meditations by René Descartes DNF
Think by Simon Blackburn
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
The Book of Ichigo Ichie by Héctor García
Ikigai by Héctor García
The Five Dialogues by Plato
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
Kant in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern
Aristotle for Everyone by Mortimer J. Adler
The Republic by Plato
Discourses by Epictetus
Wabi Sabi by Nobel Suzuki DNF
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Aristotle's Way by Edith Hall
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker DNF
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell DNF
The Histories by Herodotus DNF
St. Augustine by Robert O'Connell
Socrates by Prof. Thomas C. Brickhouse
Chinese Philosophy by Crispin Sartwell
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell DNF
The White Pill by Michael Malice DNF
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
The War on the West by Douglas Murray
Tribe by Sebastian Junger
The Hermeneutics of the Subject by Michel Foucault DNF
2024
Fiction
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Odyssey by Homer
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Dune by Frank Herbert
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Plague by Albert Camus
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Short Stories, Plays and Poems
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Bet by Anton Chekhov
Joy by Anton Chekhov
Death of a Government Clerk by Anton Chekhov
Fat and Skinny by Anton Chekhov
Non-Fiction
The Brief History of the Greek Myths by Stephen P. Kershaw
The God Equation by Michio Kaku
Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder
Grain Brain by David Perlmutter
Intellectuals in Society by Thomas Sowell
The Simulation Hypothesis by Rizwan Virk
Simulacra and Simulation: Understanding Our World of Copies by A.S. Aurelius
Reality + by David Chalmers
The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton
Free Will by Mark Balaguer
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
Quantum Physics for Beginners by John Stoddard
Troubled by Rob Henderson
2025
Fiction
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Dostoevsky in Love by Alex Christofi
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Apology by Xenophon
Memorabilia by Xenophon
The Republic by Plato
11/22/63 by Stephen King
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang
Short Stories
Cinderella by the Brothers Grimm
Non-Fiction
Quantum Entanglement by Jed Brody
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi
Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
7 Rules of Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Warriors and Worriers by Joyce F. Benenson
The Republic and the Laws by Cicero
The Gang of Three by Neil Burton
How Fiction Works by James Wood
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
2026
Fiction
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Currently Reading & TBR
Currently Reading
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Gang of Three by Neil Burton
Planning to Finish
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
The Terminal List by Jack Carr
What's Next
The reading continues. Philosophy and fiction remain inseparable in my work, and the books that shape The SuperUnknowN are the same ones that challenge how I think about consciousness, identity, and what it means to be human. Check back here—this list will continue to grow.