Lee Flier Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 Geez, there are way too many to even list. Starting with Dr. Seuss, because I think his books teach everything you really need to know about life in the big picture. If you never read his stuff as a kid, it's not too late! And even if you did, stuff like "The Sneetches" is worth another read. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde was a biggie for me. What an amazing treatise on surface vs. substance. You can't sum it up much better than that. It affected me because a lot of people who were around me at the time I read it, were kind of at a crossroads between deciding to live life in depth or on the surface, and most of them chose the latter. The book really helped me to get through that. Like I said, too many books to list... maybe I'll post a couple more later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 Letters from the Earth -Mark Twain. Twain got kinda weird after his wife died and starting writing some really heavy stuff. Faith shaking stuff. There's a book of short stories and a story by that name. Also The Mysterious Stranger is included. Really REALLY makes you think. Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts. Supposedly she channels a dead soul. Very thought provoking. How could you make this stuff up? Atlas Shrugged -Ayn Rand Made me think about politics and the real world in a whole new way. The Stand -Stephen King. I don't know, this book just haunted me. It's like I'd been there and done that. Just too familiar in a spooky way. In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works -showed me Johnney L. could do more than write and perform great songs. There's a ton more, Craig got me into electronics too. I'll think and get back. -David http://www.garageband.com/artist/MichaelangelosMuse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanmass Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 The Sears Christmas Catalog (years 1971-1980) The Alchemist-Paulo Cohelo The Hobbit- JRR Tolkien Bored of the Rings- National Lampoon Split Infinity- Piers Anthony The Stone God Awakens - Phillip Jose Farmer Salems Lot - Stephen King Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Intheether Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 Victor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" is a book about his being in German prison camp. What he did to survive. Pretty profound. This was an amazing read. Logotherapy and mans "search for meaning"...very profound stuff indeed. Didn't change my life, but definitely stuck with me. Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) is my most life altering reading experience. Also Balancing Heaven and Earth by Jungian psychaitrist Robert Johnson. * Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nursers Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 Salem's Lot and It - Stephen King: great atmospherics. The World Inside - Robert Silverberg: if you like the concept of unlimited sex on tap, you'll love this book My voice will go with you - Milton Erikson: just an inspirational read. The Keyboard Chronicles Podcast Check out your fellow forumites in an Apple Music playlist Check out your fellow forumites in a Spotify playlist My Music: Stainless Fields Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gearmike Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 Man, I miss having time to read. I used to be able to devour a book. 350 -450 pages in a night. It wasn't uncommon for me to pick up a new novel at 6:00pm and finish it by sunrise. I love to read straight through like that. I once read this great book that was set in my neighborhood that took place in twentyfour hours. It was cool to read the book a little faster than in real time, and taking place on streets and in resteraunts that I've been in... Now...jeeze man I haven't read a book in three years. Seriously, what the f*ck with the candles? Where does this candle impulse come from, and in what other profession does it get expressed? -steve albini Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M Peasley Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 not in order of importance: LOTR and other Tolkein stuff: JRRT woke up my love of nature. His vision of nature is different than the semi-scientific, highly politicized environmentalism that usually passes for "love of nature" in our culture. Hard to describe: JRRT had a love of nature that transcended into his love of good and God (from his Catholicism). He loved nature like many artists love art. The Bible: a hard read, to be sure. IMHO, if you don't struggle with the Bible, you're not really reading it and dealing with all the different things it says. Regardless of religious affiliation. Like digging in a dangerous diamond mine. William Blake - another hard read, but pays off if you take the effort. Blake teaches me about the divine element behind creation - turns creation transparent. Blake makes me feel that intensity is a necessity - that desire without action results in a sort of death. I really believe his statement "sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire" - not meaning infanticide, but that a desire that just remains a desire (is "nursed") and hangs between fantasy and reality just become a cancer eventually. Either go for it or give it up - just don't live forever inbetween. Other stuff he said that asserts the primacy of revelation and imagination over reason have stayed with me ever since I read them. Like the quote, "what is now proved was once only imagined". What a strange genius - he seemed to have a direct line to something that I can only hear rumors of, like putting my ear up to a wall to hear what's on the other side. Twain - being a U.S. southerner, Twain hits home with me in a way that is both hilarious and painful. His ear for dialect is phenomenal. Twain is like one of the Old Testament prophets - society has to have voices that challenge and infuriate the status quo into some awareness of hypocrisy and absurdity. The trick is to remember you're not immune. Thoreau - Walden feed all my anti-establishment, pro-simplicity, anti-corporate feelings at an early age. He also had a lot of eastern flavor in this thinking, which sort of set me up for later appreciation of Zen. Lord of the Flies - William Golding had one huge lesson to teach: for all of us brought up on Emersonian self-reliance, and Rousseau-like faith that human nature is basically good, Golding shoved the undeniable truth in our faces about the reality of evil and of evil being one of the components of primal human nature. His novel Darkness Visible also pounds this home. I'd rather it was otherwise. CS Lewis - can't go much into his influence without rambling on way too long. I'll just limit what I say to this - he's like a mentor and almost an imaginary companion to me, although I only know him through his writings and the various biographies, etc. I don't agree with all he thought, and he had some offensive tendencies, some blind spots, to be sure. All the more human, then. But still so much smarter and responsive in feeling than me. Or at least as I imagine him. He is the most intensely imagined character from history and literature, bar none, to me. Almost to the point of an imaginary friend - but I'm too old and jaded for that. Darn. M Peasley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D. Gauss Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 well i also have a soft spot for most franz kafka.... -d. gauss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmplifierExperts Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.ampexperts.com - Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angelo Clematide Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 i read a lot of "MANUALS" since 25 years !!! YES, this changed my life dramatically!!! . -Peace, Love, and Potahhhhto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound Dog Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 Wealth Without Risk - Charles Givens I am not a Givens disciple. I know that his advice and methods have been highly criticized. But reading this book jump started a change in the way I look at my personal finances. Robinson Crusoe - Defoe As a child, it sparked my imagination for adventure. The Collapsing Universe - Asimov Had I read Hawking's Brief History of Time first it would probably have had the same effect: clarifying what lies beyond the point that atoms collapse and all the interesting possiblities of all that stuff. Fascinating. Beyond Good and Evil, The Antichrist - Nietzsche They both made me think really hard about the conditions in which I existed at the time. Yum, Yum! Eat em up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theblue1 Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form (I have the first paperback edition) always looked like it could have tranformitive powers... if I could just understand it... Seriously, though, while I don't understand all the implications (if anyone does, the afterword is pretty amazing in its range -- and I would be pretty hazy trying to use his logical grammar at this point) the book helped me see and begin to grasp some of the fundamental processes of extracting meaning from raw material of experience. It's not a forgotten book -- at least among theoretical mathmeticians and logicians, but it's been out of print since 1992. [Amazon has leads on used copies for $20 up (paper) and $60 up (hardcover).] _________________ Looking through some of the reader reviews at Amazon, though, I have to wonder if there might be some parallels between this book and its place in symbolic logic and that of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance's place 'in' Zen. At least a couple of reviws seem to suggest that if G. Spencer Brown had had a better grasp on other logical theoretician's work he might not have thought his own was quite so revolutionary. Still, he was a philosophy don at Oxford, a post grad student of Russel and Wittgenstein. Then again, he was also a practicing psychotherapist and pupil of R.D. Laing (which was how I got sucked in, if I recall correctly; Need I say I was also intrigued by John Lilly?)... so maybe we were all taking too much acid back then... bookmark these: news.google.com | m-w dictionary | wikipedia encyclopedia | Columbia Encyclopedia TK Major / one blue nine | myspace.com/onebluenine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLAblablah Posted July 2, 2005 Share Posted July 2, 2005 The Complete Far Side Volumes I & II - Gary Larson Barry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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