reading list for prospective literature-maths joint students

Entries marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones I consider to be most important for interdisciplinary considerations. Many of these focus on intersections of mathematical logic or complex systems with literature and philosophy, and while those links are important, I need to point out that they aren't the only ones, and any bias here is a product of my own interests. I hope you find this useful!

Fiction

*Jorge Luis Borges. 1962. Labyrinths [or Fictions], with particular attention to themes of infinity, chaos, and bifurcations.
   The most mathematical fiction I've read so far, discusses more mathematical themes than all of the other fiction I've read combined. I believe that there is only one English translation, but if not, I've read the Penguin Modern Classics version.
   See these also: http://logicophilosophicus.org/guillermo-martinez/borges-and-mathematics.html
                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges_and_mathematics

Isaac Asimov. 1942-1993. Foundation series, with particular attention to themes of chaos
   The theme of 'psychohistory' runs throughout the books and constitutes a (fictional) method of super-accurate mathematical-sociological modelling based on hard determinism. Look into 'sociodynamics' and 'mathematical sociology' if this seems interesting.

Ursula LeGuin. 1974. The Dispossessed, with particular attention to themes of sequence and simultaneity.
   Excellent as a self-contained novel and primer on political philosophy from a radical perpective, this also borrows significant terminology and inspiration from physics and the philosophy of time travel.

I've also heard people saying that Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow are loaded with mathematical/physics themes, but to be honest I've not read them through yet to verify that because of the reputation they have as lit-boy canon. Will report back once I have a spare few months to get through them. Pynchon's other novels are good and DFW's essays are (sometimes) interesting but don't feel the need to read either if they aren't interesting from the first few pages.


Theory

David Berry. 2014. Critical Theory and the Digital
   A good overview of some applications of critical theory to the study of the internet. Fairly accessible.

Laboria Cuboniks. 2015. Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation [Available online at http://www.laboriacuboniks.net]
   A very short manifesto on feminist ethics and praxis on the internet. Relatively inaccessible, contains a lot of neologisms and/or highly specialised theoretical language.

Jodi Dean. 2011. Blog Theory [Available online from people reposting it, easily findable from a pdf search]
   A Marxist-psychoanalytical approach to the media theory of blogs and related social media. A little outdated but provides some insights on how, and in what ways, social media tends to trap its users in cycles of production that's well justified. Reading Marshall McLuhan's 'The Medium is the Massage' (sometimes published under 'Message' instead) might be a prerequisite, alongside some understanding of the functions of psychoanalytic theory and Marxist theory, but it'll make some sense regardless. Slightly inaccessible beyond the first chapter, but the first chapter covers quite a lot.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. [1980] 1994. A Thousand Plateaus [Available online at https://libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf - libcom and marxists.org are very good free resources for theory btw]
   This is fast approaching meme theory status if it isn't already, but worth a look through if anything, even if none of it makes sense. In general, French post-structural theory like this is difficult to get through but I find it very rewarding if I try not to "get" the exact perfect intention of the author or of every paragraph while reading. Probably the least accessible text on this list, but interesting links between literary theory and dynamical systems and chaos, and various other mathematical-biological concepts.

Mark Fisher. 1999. Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction
   An entertaining series of essays marrying genre fiction and post-structuralist theory. Incorporates Deleuze-Guattari in a way that is actually quite accessible. Fisher's other work is also very very good.

Patricia Lockwood. 2013. Lecture at the launch of UPenn’s ‘Twit Crit’ blog. Available online at https://media.sas.upenn.edu/watch/144691
   Discusses dril! Great introduction to the poetics of Twitter and memes. Very accessible.

Larry McCaffery. 1982. The Metafictional Muse
   It's been a while since I've read this, so the essays included might be hit-and-miss, but altogether I remember it being a great primer on postmodern/electronic literature and how to write about metafiction. Can't remember how accessible it is

*Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner. 2017. The Ambivalent Internet
   The most comprehensive interdisciplinary (mostly sociological) analysis of meme theory I have yet to come across. I read it halfway through my dissertation planning and had to rework the entire working idea around the insights gleaned from this book. Can't recommend it, or Whitney Phillips' report on journalistic ethics and memes, 'The Oxygen of Amplification' [Available online at https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FULLREPORT_Oxygen_of_Amplification_DS.pdf]


Maths - I have listed the difficulty level 1-4 depending on the year of study I would recommend reaching before looking at these

John Fraleigh. 2003 7th ed. First Course in Abstract Algebra (2-3)
   Good introduction to abstract algebra, with its conceptual leaps from early university and high school mathematics. I found doing this course and a real analysis course prepared me for further study in pure maths and mathematical logic better than any others, because they shift the focus of "doing maths" from algorithms ("do x,y,z steps to solve this kind of integral") and towards rigour ("using only these axioms, what can be proved? What intuitive-seeming things are not necessarily true here?").

Allen Hatcher. 2002. Algebraic Topology (4) [Available online at http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/AT/AT.pdf]
   Requires good knowledge of point-set topology and the first two years of an undergraduate course. The first third of this book is, in itself, a detailed undergraduate course on algebraic topology, and touches on aspects of Galois theory and Category theory.

James Stewart. 2016 8th ed. Calculus (1-2)
   Nice introduction to university calculus. Will prepare you for most calculus encounters at uni with the Multivariate Calculus addition, which is part of some additions, but the normal version is good too. Very accessible.

*Steven Strogatz. 2018 2nd ed. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (2-3)
   Very comprehensive, insightful, and well-communicated appraisal of dynamical systems which you only really need first year calculus to make a start on, though preferably also second-year calculus to get through it all. One of the few maths textbooks that's even somewhat readable in the conventional sense, studying this field also revealed links between post-structuralism and nonlinear dynamics (see Deleuze and Guattari) and also informs much of mathematical sociology.

I don't know of a good one personally, but I would absolutely recommend doing some early research on Real Analysis *well ahead of classes starting on it*, because it tends to be a big conceptual leap for a lot of students (including me) that a lot of them don't make on the first try (also including me). Same goes for abstract algebra - see Fraleigh. I also recommend looking into the work of Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, and Gaston Julia/Benoit Mandelbrot, if only because I find them particularly interesting. One final note: 3blue1brown and Numberphile are great communicators of maths on youtube, and they deserve the attention of everyone with even a passing interest in the field.


Computer Science
David MacKay. 2003 9th ed. Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms [Available online at http://web.cs.iastate.edu/~honavar/infotheorybook.pdf]
   I haven't had the chance to read through all of this yet, but it (and information theory on the whole) seems very promising, especially with regard to applications of maths/statistics/computer science/linguistics to machine learning.

*Douglas Hofstader. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
   I've been reading this for months because every time I finish a page, I have to spend half an hour staring into the distance because I get distracted by its sheer cleverness, and all of the interdiscipinary ideas it presents. A must read, if somewhat inaccessible at times. Some knowledge of propositional logic, number theory, and the foundations of computer science go a long way here but aren't strictly necessary.