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Sat 10 Sep, 2005 11:17 am
On life...........?
Whether fiction or Non fiction. Having read it how did it affect your way of life?
I read a book about an author who had tongue & throat Cancer. This made me give up the fags & Booze.
I also read "Another Rainbow" about two men kidnapped by Terrorists & realised my ails are nowhere near as bad as the five years these men were held captive.
Benacre.
Mirriam-Webster Dictionary.
illusions/richard bach
running from safety/richard bach
exodus/leon uris
summer of 42/herman raucher
platoon/dale a dye (see the film too - tom berenger is divine)
among non-indian books that is.
"The Great Gatsby"
"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
"Infinite Jest"
to preface this let me say, i'm not some fanboy, but the hitchhikers guide basically confirmed alot of what i suspected about life the universe and everything
Amigo wrote:1984 By George Orwell
You'd almost have to be dead to not be fundamentally altered by 1984. I believe that this book takes a lot of the credit for preventing Orwell's vision from coming true any more than it has.
An Essay on Morals, by Philip Wylie.
Dianetics, by L Ron Hubbard.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller.
Your Erroneous Zones
Pulling Your Own Strings
both books by Dr. Wayne Dyer
I forgot about Erroneous Zones. That one helped me a lot also.
Clockwork Orange
Western Intellectual Tradition
Social Construction of Reality
Johnny Got His Gun is the ultimate horror novel. Before rushing into any war, everyone should read it. The book is a worst-case scenario about a "wounded" (understatement) young man who could be any soldier in any war. This book is one reason I am so against Bush and his ridiculous hubris-driven war!
bermbits wrote:Johnny Got His Gun is the ultimate horror novel. Before rushing into any war, everyone should read it. The book is a worst-case scenario about a "wounded" (understatement) young man who could be any soldier in any war. This book is one reason I am so against Bush and his ridiculous hubris-driven war!
Ah yes, Dalton Trumbo, no wonder he was black listed by McCarthy.
There are bits and pieces by authors, instead of whole books, that can alter one also. I had read a number of articles and books by Bertrand Russell, Thoreau, and others, which is the only reason I can't list Johnny Got His Gun as a book that made a great change in my life.
BBB
The Yellow Pages.
BBB
On life, perhaps not so much, but on politics, yes.
When I was 16 or so and going through my "I'm out to save the world" phase, I was leaning very heavily socialist and extolling the evils of capitalism.
I managed to get my hands on a copy of We The Living (Ayn Rand's semi-autobiographical novel on life in Soviet Russia), and it completely changed my outlook on politics. It revealed to me just how flawed the communist system was, due to the presence of a factor that really wasn't accounted for--human corruption.
Anyway, I recommend it.
in social history:
T.H.Marshall Citizenship and Social Class
K. Polanyi The Great Transformation
life in general:
Milan Simecka: Restoration of Order
Vaclav Havel Power of Powerless
...more were influential (Saroyan's Tracy's Tiger...), but i don't think any single book changed my life...
dagmaraka wrote:Vaclav Havel Power of Powerless
That's a great one. Good call.
Dianetics!? Edgar!? Have I entered a parallel universe!? I would love to hear more about this.
I'm still a bit numb from that so I can't think of a lot right now expect for "Stiff, The Curious Life of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach.
I had always held a more Freudian view of things,but Dianetics actually got me to thinking in L Ron Hubbard's terms. In the early to mid 70s I read quite a few books by Hubbard and his followers. While I am not a Scientologist, there are elements of thir thought I find interesting. Understand, I haven't read the literature in 25 or 30 years, so I am not that sharp on it today.
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