10 books like Pensées

By Blaise Pascal, A.J. Krailsheimer,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like Pensées. Shepherd is a community of 8,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

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The Consolation of Philosophy

By Ancius Boethius, V.E. Watts (translator),

Book cover of The Consolation of Philosophy

Liam Milburn Author Of A Stoic breviary: Classical wisdom in daily practice

From the list on for building self-awareness that you might not expect.

Who am I?

Building upon many years of privately shared thoughts on the real benefits of Stoic Philosophy, Liam Milburn eventually published a selection of Stoic passages that had helped him to live well. They were accompanied by some of his own personal reflections.

Liam's book list on for building self-awareness that you might not expect

Discover why each book is one of Liam's favorite books.

Why did Liam love this book?

This was a fellow who tried to do everything right, and yet, in the end, his whole worldly life seemed to go wrong. A senator, a scholar, and an advisor to a king, he found himself trapped in the usual sort of political machinations, and so was sentenced to death. He wrote this book while awaiting his execution. Lady Philosophy speaks to him, and he learns how his character matters more than his circumstances. 

“By Love are peoples too kept bound together by a treaty which they may not break. Love binds with pure affection the sacred ties of wedlock, and speaks its bidding to all trusty friends. O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the Universe, by Love!"

The Consolation of Philosophy

By Ancius Boethius, V.E. Watts (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Consolation of Philosophy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. THE CONSOLATION was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy. Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. THE CONSOLATION was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and…


Meditations

By Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield (translator),

Book cover of Meditations: The Annotated Edition

Donald J. Robertson Author Of Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

From the list on modern books on Marcus Aurelius.

Who am I?

I am an author and cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist. I am one of the founders of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit organisation and the president and founder of the Plato’s Academy Centre in Athens, Greece. I’ve published six books on philosophy and psychotherapy, mostly focusing on the Stoic philosophy and its relationship with modern psychology and evidence-based psychotherapy.

Donald's book list on modern books on Marcus Aurelius

Discover why each book is one of Donald's favorite books.

Why did Donald love this book?

This is the most recent translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, at the time of writing but I’m mainly including it because of Robin Waterfield’s very thorough annotations, which are invaluable when it comes to understanding some of the more obscure passages. They provide historical and philosophical context that’s otherwise missing and make it much easier to appreciate what Marcus was trying to say.

Meditations

By Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Meditations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the sixteenth emperor of Rome -- and by far the most powerful and wealthy man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and deep reservoirs of personal insight. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems which have come to be called his Meditations. Never intended for publication, the work survived his death and has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the most important Stoic texts of all time. In often passionate language, the entries range from essays to one-line aphorisms, and from profundity to…


Dubliners

By James Joyce,

Book cover of Dubliners

David W. Berner Author Of The Islander

From the list on the essence of the Irishman’s melancholic emotions.

Who am I?

Dugan was my grandmother’s maiden name. Her family was from County Wexford, Ireland near Rosslare on the island’s east coast. In recent years I have extensively studied my Irish heritage and have discovered much about my family, and about the DNA running through my own Irish blood. The inquiry has revealed much about my love of storytelling, good conversation, and generally about the way I move through the world. As a writer of several books of personal narrative and fiction, I have tried to write books that capture a certain emotion, and now through my own ancestral discoveries, I understand how those emotions and familial ties are so tightly linked. 

David's book list on the essence of the Irishman’s melancholic emotions

Discover why each book is one of David's favorite books.

Why did David love this book?

What can one say about this classic? It is the quintessential story of old Dublin.

Published in 1914, the collection of fifteen short stories takes the reader on a journey through middle-class Ireland, touching on Irish nationalism and country pride, but also on the forces that were slowing changing Ireland at the time. The stories move chronologically from boyhood to manhood and culminate with what some critics say is the finest short story ever written, “The Dead.”

This story, like many others in Dubliners is both a meditation on everyday urban life and a study of human relationships, including how we live with our memories, our heritage, and how we find ways to manifest our personal emotions.

Dubliners

By James Joyce,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Dubliners as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A definitive edition of perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language

James Joyce's Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as "Araby," "Grace," and "The Dead," delve into the heart of the city of Joyce's birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners' speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound, and this edition is the definitive text, authorized by the Joyce estate and collated from…


The Complete Stories

By Flannery O'Connor,

Book cover of The Complete Stories

Thersa Matsuura Author Of The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales

From the list on a mix of wry humor and real horror.

Who am I?

I can’t remember a time I haven’t been drawn to and fascinated by the link between absurdity/humor and horror. Both genres involve setups and payoffs. The tension built up needs to be released in either a gasp or a laugh. In my own writing, I try to make myself giggle in joy at the ridiculousness of a situation and then recoil at the underlying horror that anchors it to the real world. It’s a balance I constantly try to reach and that I personally find is a joy to read.

Thersa's book list on a mix of wry humor and real horror

Discover why each book is one of Thersa's favorite books.

Why did Thersa love this book?

Southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor is an incredible storyteller with characters often described as grotesque and morally flawed. Having been raised in the South, I find her characters so real it is as if I know them or have met them personally.

I know she disliked any of her stories being labeled ‘horror’ and instead called them ‘hard’. But you have to admit that a lot that happens naturally in life is indeed ‘horror’, so I use the term as a high compliment to her. But that alone would be too much, so she tempers it with her sardonic wit and has me chuckling at all the characters in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” but the story itself hits in a very different way.

The Complete Stories

By Flannery O'Connor,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Complete Stories as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction.

There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death―is a…


Book cover of The Atheist Who Didn't Exist Or: the Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments

Roxane Lapa Author Of Answering The Atheist: Good Questions Deserve Straight Answers

From the list on Christian apologetics.

Who am I?

I’ve been a Christian for 30+ years, and have had many questions about the Bible and theology. In order to answer my own questions, I’ve consumed scores of apologetics books, articles, videos, and podcasts, as well as studied the Bible itself, with lexicons and commentaries.

Roxane's book list on Christian apologetics

Discover why each book is one of Roxane's favorite books.

Why did Roxane love this book?

Andy Bannister has written this book in response to popular one-liners by new atheists, particularly Dawkins. Tired retorts comparing God to Santa Claus and the tooth fairy are hilariously dealt with by the author's dry British humour. I had a good couple of chuckles in this book. I particularly loved his imaginary friend who claimed he stole the Venus di Milo's arm, and also how he sarcastically puts trademark symbols on the words 'Science' and 'Reason'. Still, I think he does a good job of preventing his teasing from becoming a poo-flinging contest. Such a talented writer - loved this book!

The Atheist Who Didn't Exist Or

By Andy Bannister,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Atheist Who Didn't Exist Or as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the last decade, atheism has leapt from obscurity to the front pages: producing best-selling books, making movies, and plastering adverts on the side of buses. There's an energy and a confidence to contemporary atheism: many people now assume that a godless scepticism is the default position, indeed the only position for anybody wishing to appear educated, contemporary, and urbane. Atheism is hip, religion is boring. Yet when one pokes at popular atheism, many of the arguments used to prop it up quickly unravel. The Atheist Who Didn't Exist is designed to expose some of the loose threads on the…


Book cover of Answering the Objections of Atheists, Agnostics, & Skeptics

Roxane Lapa Author Of Answering The Atheist: Good Questions Deserve Straight Answers

From the list on Christian apologetics.

Who am I?

I’ve been a Christian for 30+ years, and have had many questions about the Bible and theology. In order to answer my own questions, I’ve consumed scores of apologetics books, articles, videos, and podcasts, as well as studied the Bible itself, with lexicons and commentaries.

Roxane's book list on Christian apologetics

Discover why each book is one of Roxane's favorite books.

Why did Roxane love this book?

This is a book aimed at Christians and regards arguments that sceptics tend to raise.  This was a great book. It wasn’t an easy read, or particularly well ordered, but it had a lot of meat and a few amazing nuggets.

Answering the Objections of Atheists, Agnostics, & Skeptics

By Ron Rhodes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Answering the Objections of Atheists, Agnostics, & Skeptics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Many arguments from atheists, agnostics, and skeptics are difficult, or at least intimidating, for most Christians to answer. With clear reasoning and understandable language Ron Rhodes provides readers with the explanations and scriptural background they need to respond to common arguments against faith including:

There is no such thing as absolute truth. Genesis is a myth, not a scientific account. A loving God cannot exist--there is too much evil and suffering. If God created all things, how did He create Himself? Sin is an outdated concept.

With this resource, Christians will be able to confidently respond to logical arguments against…


The Reason for God

By Timothy Keller,

Book cover of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

John G. Stackhouse Jr. Author Of Can I Believe? Christianity for the Hesitant

From the list on why smart people believe in Christianity.

Who am I?

Ever since my ninth grade English teacher provoked me with religious questions I not only couldn’t answer, but had never even considered, I’ve been interrogating my Christian faith. Now, several decades later, with a PhD from the University of Chicago and a handful of books published by the Oxford University Press, I’m in a better position to answer those questions, and to recognize the good answers of others. I don’t think we ever get perfect answers to the Big Questions, but we can get answers adequate for trusting God, and that’s enough.

John's book list on why smart people believe in Christianity

Discover why each book is one of John's favorite books.

Why did John love this book?

Manhattan pastor Tim Keller is used to handling the toughest questions from the brightest people. This book compiles his answers to some of those, from “How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?” to the church’s responsibility for so much injustice. Keller reads widely and well, and he writes with a respectful seriousness without being ponderous or preachy.

The Reason for God

By Timothy Keller,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Reason for God as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times bestseller people can believe in-by "a pioneer of the new urban Christians" (Christianity Today) and the "C.S. Lewis for the 21st century" (Newsweek).

Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics, and even ardent believers, have about religion. Using literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and potent reasoning, Keller explains how the belief in a Christian God is, in fact, a sound and rational one. To true believers he offers a solid platform on which to stand their ground against the backlash to religion created by the…


Concluding Unscientific Postscript

By Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Lowrie (translator), Joseph Campbell (translator)

Book cover of Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Lee Braver Author Of Heidegger: Thinking of Being

From the list on everything you want to know on existentialism.

Who am I?

I’m a professor of philosophy because when I got to college, philosophy sounded like what Gandalf would study—the closest thing we have to the study of magic. It turns out, I wasn’t far from the mark. Philosophy shows you entire dimensions to the world that you never noticed because they exist at weird angles, and you have to change your way of thinking to see them. Entering them and seeing the world from those perspectives transforms everything. A great work of philosophy is like having the lights turn on in an annex of your mind you didn’t know was there, like an out-of-mind experience—or perhaps, an in-your-mind-for-the-first-time experience.

Lee's book list on everything you want to know on existentialism

Discover why each book is one of Lee's favorite books.

Why did Lee love this book?

How many bibliographical jokes have you ever heard, well, read? This book has jokes in its Table of Contents, its title, its sub-title—in the author attribution! And at the end, the Postscript to this Postscript takes the entire thing back—twice!—although, as Kierkegaard says, to write something and take it back is not the same as not writing it. He wants to affect the reader, not just pass along abstruse theories. Kierkegaard criticizes the basic mindset of philosophy that pretends to have a God’s-eye view of reality when really we’re forced to make decisions of crucial importance, in precarious circumstances, with limited information, never knowing if it was the right one, perpetually living out our lives suspended over 70,000 fathoms of water. 

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

By Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Lowrie (translator), Joseph Campbell (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Concluding Unscientific Postscript as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Philosophical Fragments the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus explored the question: What is required in order to go beyond Socratic recollection of eternal ideas already possessed by the learner? Written as an afterword to this work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript is on one level a philosophical jest, yet on another it is Climacus's characterization of the subjective thinker's relation to the truth of Christianity. At once ironic, humorous, and polemical, this work takes on the "unscientific" form of a mimical-pathetical-dialectical compilation of ideas. Whereas the movement in the earlier pseudonymous writings is away from the aesthetic, the movement in Postscript is…


Confronting Christianity

By Rebecca McLaughlin,

Book cover of Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion

Ben Kirby Author Of PreachersNSneakers: Authenticity in an Age of For-Profit Faith and (Wannabe) Celebrities

From the list on for the questioning Christian.

Who am I?

I’m the founder of PreachersNSneakers, a network of social media accounts and books of the same title, which looks to get others to question the state of the modern church and our obsession with wealth, entertainment and fame. Going through the process of curating the accounts and writing the book has helped me develop expertise on mega churches, celebrity pastors, social media and the prosperity gospel. My goal is to get all people to laugh, think and live more authentically.

Ben's book list on for the questioning Christian

Discover why each book is one of Ben's favorite books.

Why did Ben love this book?

This book invites questioning very established Christian ideas that many are afraid to bring up. On the opposite end, it provides a helpful resource to those looking to have tough conversations with friends about their faith. I loved this book because it helped me wrestle with my own questions about my faith and provide tools for helpful discourse with friends and family. Not exactly a light read, but immensely important.

Confronting Christianity

By Rebecca McLaughlin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Confronting Christianity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Addressing 12 controversial issues about Christianity-the Bible's teaching on gender and sexuality, the reality of heaven and hell, and more-this book shows how current psychological and scientific research actually aligns with teaching from the Bible.


The Case for Christ

By Lee Strobel,

Book cover of The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Stacy A. Padula Author Of The Right Person

From the list on inspiration books with Christian themes.

Who am I?

I was elated to be named “Top Inspirational Author of the Year” for 2022 by the International Association of Top Professionals. Inspiration is central to my career as a mentor, life coach, counselor, and author. I have possessed a deep interest in both Christianity and psychology since a young age. I have tied both topics in my own books, as I believe the knowledge I have gained has helped me find the joy, peace, and fulfillment I feel each day. This great sense of fulfillment and purpose is something I hope everyone can find in their lifetime, which motivates me to write about the power of faith in my books. 

Stacy's book list on inspiration books with Christian themes

Discover why each book is one of Stacy's favorite books.

Why did Stacy love this book?

The Case for Christ is a great reference book for historical facts that demonstrate proof of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I recommend this to skeptics and those who are looking to back up their Christian faith with real-life evidence and historical knowledge. This book is an asset to all libraries, churches, and Christian schools, as it provides irrefutable evidence that Jesus is who the Bible says He is. It is smart, thought-provoking, and life-changing. If someone is searching for something to believe in, they should read this book!

The Case for Christ

By Lee Strobel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Case for Christ as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Is there credible proof that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God? In The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and New York Times bestselling author, retraces his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith and builds a captivating case for Christ's divinity.

In this revised and updated edition of The Case for Christ, Strobel cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools such as Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis, asking hard-hitting questions--and taking a deeper look at the evidence from the fields of science, philosophy, and history.

In his comprehensive investigation, Strobel…


5 book lists we think you will like!

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