I read God's Debris by Scott Adams as one of my personal goals for last quarter and tonight finished up its sequel, The Religion War.
Adams is best known as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and all the various books that it has spawned. It's interesting to see him out of his usual element and authoring two novels dealing with philosophy, religion, and the relationship between them.
God's Debris is the story of an average Joe deliveryman who, on a routine package drop-off, encounters the smartest man on Earth (known only as the Avatar) and is imparted with a new philosophy of the universe. It reads much like a Socratic dialog, as a lengthy question-and-answer session, but far less annoying. Where Socrates would always respond to someone with a smart-assed, "I don't know what the correct answer is, but I know yours is wrong," the character in Adams' work does offer what he sees as the correct answers, according to his understanding of the universe.
The Religion War then applies this philosophy in a not-too-distant future where the world is split in two -- half of it controlled by Christian extremists and the other half by Muslim extremists, both so convinced of their own religion's superiority that the planet stands on the doorstep of a World War III. The Avatar takes it upon himself to bring about a truce between both sides, and thus his new story begins.
Neither book is especially long, and each presents its own interesting journey (one more a mental journey than the other) that I found fun to follow along. As one who enjoys philosophy in general but is disenchanted with all the "great" thinkers of history who won't just write what they mean, I'm glad that I picked up both of these.