Interesting Reading

Stan Tenen, The Alphabet That Changed the World

Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book

Emanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse and Nine Talmudic Readings

Aryeh Kaplan, Jewish Meditation

Tsvi Kolitz, The Teacher

Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son and Creation and the Persistence of Evil

Adin Steinsaltz, The Thirteen-Petalled Rose

Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire

Andre Neher, They Made Their Souls Anew

Anita Diamant, Saying Kaddish

Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

Ted Falcon, AJourney of Awakening, 49 Steps from Enslavement to Freedom

Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays

Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift

Traditional

Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto), Derech Hashem (The Way of God)

Pinhas Kehati, The Kehati Mishna

Adin Steinsaltz, The Talmud, Steinsaltz Edition

Aryeh Kaplan, The Living Torah

Kalman Kalonymus Shapira – The Piazetzner Rebbe, Chovat Hatalmidim (The Student’s Obligation), Bnei Machshava Tova (Concious Community) and Aish Kodesh (The Holy Fire).

Reb Chaim of Tshernowitz, Siduro Shel Shabbat

Reb Chaim of Tshernowitz, Be’er Mayim Chayim

Reb Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl, Maor Eynayim

Reb Mordechai Dov of Horneshteipel, Pela Yoetz

Rabbi Shloime Twerski, Malchut Shlomo

Reb Shalom Noah Brozovski of Slonim, Netivot Shalom

Jewish (non-religious i.e. novels, etc.)

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

Steve Stern, Wedding Jester , A Plague of Dreamers and Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven

Secular

M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

Richard Feynmann, The Feynmann Lectures in Physics

Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Connie Willis, Bellwether

Marlo Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under

Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, No Boundaries, A Theory of Everything

James Austin, Zen and the Brain

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection

I highly recommend traditional talmud study (the Kehati (Mishna) and the Steinsaltz (Gemara) are the best contemporary editions available in English) in order to develop a contemporary understanding of structures and reasoning styles of Jewish thought.  Studies of Tanach is also essential and I recommend The Living Bible, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s translation, as the best.  Nothing can substitute, however, for a living teacher.