1. The Tall Book of Make-Believe / Werner & Williams
We had this when I was a kid. I tracked down a copy and love it dearly. When life gets to be too much I cling to this book. Garth Wiilliams is the best children's book illustrator ever.
2. The Odyssey / Homer
The Story of stories, a ripping yarn, and endless lessons about human frailty, hubris, and bravery. And the greatest love story ever told.
3. The Golden Apples of the Sun / Ray Bradbury
I loved Bradbury. I know: lush, overripe prose, too many adjectives and adverbs. But his imagination and intensity suited my boy hormones.
4. The Name of the Rose / Umberto Ecco
Good movie, far better book. Loved it for the heartbreaking sadness of religious hatred for laughter. See my last post, "Funny Matters." for how we can overcome this. A very good mystery. And Ecco nails it with his vivid re-creation of medieval life. His best book (and I have slogged thru everything else. Flame Queen and Platypus are good, too).
5. Dante's Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradisio
The ultimate subversion of religious inanity, done with breathtaking detail and a downright weird piety. Probably the best writing exercise ever conceived: "Imagine Hell. Now imagine Heaven."
Plus he put all his current, living enemies in various hellish punishments! Plus he rescued the pagans, a blasphemy of the highest order to fundies. Plus his poetry is ASTONISHING beyond all time and space. (try the Hollander translations for the poetry, but the Penguin annotations have the juiciest backstories)
6. You Can't Go Home Again / Thomas Wolfe
My candidate for Great American Novel (2nd: Grapes of Wrath). I know, similar to Bradbury: over the top florid lushness, and lacks the political & American milieu depths of Wrath. But Wolfe loved Life like no other writer, ever. He must have been in danger of spinning deliriously right off the planet.
Unlike most writers who are perfervid he had this singular talent that made him not just a brilliant cataloguer of observational detail, not just a great selector of tableaus/events/characters, but a supernatural artist of the Whole Moment, so that some scenes from this book live in me with more beauty and intensity than memories from my own life.
7. God Against The Gods / Jonathan Kirsch
A perfectly written, methodical exegesis of how and why paganism matters, and how it was systematically eradicated by venal, greedy, self-serving and dishonest Christian autocrats. Not a screed against religion or Christianity. Just good history and solid scholarship.
8. (all books) / James Ellroy
The prose stylist of our time. Intense, brutal, honest and brilliant, especially White Jazz. But read them in publication order. Trust me.
9. Among the Believers / V. S. Naipaul
The luckiest writer who ever lived: he spent more than a year traveling thru the Muslim world writing about Islam around the globe, went thru Iran just before the Shah was overthrown, then came back thru to see what changes were wrought.
ALL of his writing is accessible and literary and worth reading; this one opened my eyes and stays with me.
10. Citizen Soldiers / Stephen Ambrose
What we did. What those young men sacrificed and accomplished, to end fascism in the 40's, told in their own words. Required reading.
11. The End of Faith / Sam Harris
For all of its arguable flaws, this book gave voice to what I knew and know to be true: religion must change. Blind Belief must be set aside so that reality has a chance.
12. Reinventing Comics / Scott McCloud
Totally original presentation, as a comic, of very deep and transformative ideas.
13. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (et al) / Edward Tufte
The best book for visual designers, and for anyone who does not want to be fooled by graphic manipulation. And a call to arms for raising the bar in the US, teaching our children to expect more from themselves. Japanese newspapers run multi-vector (more than just two, that is, x by y) charts every day; Only a few American papers run any, and less than 5 per year.
We suck at training our kids to be smart. We celebrate stoopid on TV. Plus his books are printed on 12 color presses and are FULL of hilarious and fascinating examples.
14. The Consolations of Philosophy / Boethius
The masterpiece by a scholar who was condemned to death. His way of making sure he left behind all he had acquired, and framed with such an intense love of goodness and learning. Make sure you read the backstory first. Be warned, it will devastate you.
And you will wonder how a human being could be this literarily brave, to transform his own impending (and quite horrible) death into such an exquisite and methodical dialogue. Between an angel and a condemned man, no less. A gift to humanity.
15. Ethics (et al) / Spinoza
The book of books, by the thinker of thinkers. Tough sledding, so I suggest the Cambridge Spinoza Companion first, or "The Courtier and the Heretic" (Matthew Stewart), or "Betraying Spinoza" (Rebecca Goldstein)
Spinoza thought of God as so beautiful, so perfect that he did not need to exist. This sleight-of-mind was the ultimate undoing of Dogma and Religious Tyranny (and led directly to The Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence), but he himself was considered the most God-filled man most of his contemporaries, even his enemies, had ever met.
He lived simply, having abandoned family wealth for a life of freethinking. His ability to find a way for human thought to advance, to get past the debacle of In-or-Out on the question of belief, is a not just a towering intellectual achievement, but a gift of infinite love and beauty.
It doesn't matter that his diagrammatic sequences are disputable or revisable nowadays. His essential idea, that we live within a magnificence, a glory, a rare and spectacular reality -- one cheapened by polemic and "divine retribution" and theocracy -- has permanently separated the loving-spirited Believers who would be real Thinkers, too, from the dogmatic Believers who would glue us all, windless forever, to the rotten pole of a stiff, unyielding Righteousness.
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(Update, 03/27/10)
The History of Ancient Civilization / Susan Wise Bauer
The best single volume history ever written. She is unique: her writing is sly, concise; she is erudite and then some; she wears her scholarship lightly, and tells a ripping yearn; and she is the absolute master of the material.
But way beyond this: She invented a format that finally makes sense out of how humans emerged from anonymous villages and muddy strife to create the first everythings.
A big book, but each chapter is short. She ventures around the world, updating each civilization just a bit, a few centuries at most, a dynasty or clan or three. At the end of each chapter she shows a little milestone timeline that incorporates the last few chapters.
So you get it, at long last: who was first to do this n that, how many civilizations struggled with the same things again and again, how old is China, actually? who came first, Babylon or Assyria?
A dash of Suetonius with its insider gossip and wicked sidestories of nasty and naughty ancients, a healthy dollop of Livy but without a trace of tedium, and she re-plants Herodotus' flag: boundless curiosity, unabashed self-awareness about being learned.
In actual fact this book has, in influence and importance in my life, earned a spot around #3 in the list above. It is matchless.
//
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Comments
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Mothership: post away! I admire the work you did on that post. I mean, sheesh!
I don't know the Sam Harris book, but if blind belief is of interest, "The Religious Case Against Belief" by Carse was the best book on religion since I was introduced to Stanley Haurwas.
Will look into those two recommendations, thanks.
I am auto-didactical, one who has struggled to self educate my whole life. I had to give up hopes for my Bachelors at the end of my Junior year, because I became a single parent of a year old baby -- my oldest, Molly -- and could not manage to work full-time, school full-time, and do right by her.
The intention to finish my degree became a perennial for 33 years. It was always "soon". Some advantages? I learn what I want to learn, at my own pace, as deeply as I like, and make connections on my own. But I am essentially alone in it; no one in my family (they endure me) nor anyone I know well is at all interested in 2/3rds of these books, or the ideas in them.
I regret nothing about my children. I did right, and yet I wish i wish i wish I could return to formal learning, to study ancient Greek especially, and finally get that piece of paper. Not in this lifetime, I suspect.
For me, it's Joyce, Kafka, Shakespeare, Brecht and Goethe. "Faust" in my mind defines the new consciousness. Kant set the stage.
For "philosophy" (depending on how it is defined) it's Jung, unquestionably--a light in a dark dank tunnel, and his American disciple, Marion Woodman, who gave me a reason to hope when all else failed.
Don't get me started on poetry. It's not the oldest of the written arts for no reason.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Crazy about Brecht. Kafka, YES, and is brilliantly described in a bio-graphic-ography by R. Crumb, btw.
Kant? can't say, except in excerpts.
Jung is problematic for me, but his ideas and his influence are as important as you say and more so.
I always liked Spinoza, his idea that we are all "attributes" of god was very influential for me as was his complete deconstruction of the concept of time. One can see the beginnings of the concepts of Gaia and the Noosphere in Spinoza.
among books that changed my life: The Way of Zen / Alan Watts
me personally? i set this aside as "Isn't it pretty to think so?" There is no such thing as a world consciousness, or worldmind, until/unless someone can describe and test how the mechanism works. I don't believe in supernatural explanations for anything, ever. Nonetheless there is more to the interrelationships, eco-system-wise, than the rightwing "steward" types admit, and it helps to think a little anthropomorphically when it comes to protecting the planet.
Roy: I first read Watts on acid in 1969. It was so hard to keep the words on the page, so I switched to "zen flesh, zen bones" after about 15 minutes, which was lying nearby; much easier. Then we walked to Denny's for a 3 am breakfast, carrying oranges, and on the way home we got lost in the stockyards, or at least I think they were stockyards, there was some moo-ing, tho that might have been Dakota freaking us out. It might have just been the backyard.
Years later I read most of The Way of Zen and liked it.
I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I do notice that there are also almost no women writers in the famous portraits in barnes & noble (usually a forced nod to virginia woolf) either. Sometimes the invisibility thing does seem to be a real issue. (also of the published women writers I know their books run out of print much faster than the male writers I know....regardless of the equivalent quality of the writers.)
sorry, just an observation.
I agree with Grapes, Bradbury, Wolfe, and Dante. The rest I'll check out!
dolores: OK, this is an accurate observation. And if i were a woman I might take exception as you have, though yours is a gently said. I thought a long time about your remarks.
So:
#16: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).
I first read this at my Nana's insistence in the 5th grade, a gift form her bookshelf and the first one she let me borrow and take home. I read it again twice before I was 16. For all the usual reasons -- the humanity, plainly expressed, so powerful and life-chamging during those by-the-toe days, and for the child's perspective, still one of the best ever brought to life on paper -- but also because we were essentially a southern family in Kansas City and it just rang true and familiar.
#20 (all short stories) Patricia Highsmith
A unique writer of human murk, told with with sharp focus. Dementia walks around and orders lunch, in placid tones, in her works. Her subject matter is consistently original. And her voice, unlike her personal life was authoritative. If this were a list of writers who are resonant with my own style and who I want to emulate she would be #5. One particular story about a girl with scarlet fever in an apartment in Hell's Kitchen is unforgettable.
If Alice Seybold's "The Lovely Bones" had been written 50 years ago it would have made that list up there. As a father of 3 daughters I have yet to finish it; her evocation of that dead girl shreds me utterly. I moaned with horror within the first 10 page.
But therein lies the main issue: if i read it 50 years ago I wouldn't have been a father, and I would not have been so affected. This is a list of the 15 books that changed my life.
Over the last 50 years a change has occurred in western civilization that means great things for my 3 daughters, great respect and opportunity and challenge. But it cannot undo the long history of disenfranchisement for women writers, or their relegation to genre writing, or the diminishing of Voice and confidence and authority when they did write, rare exceptions noted (like Flannery O'Conner, Eudora Welty, George Eliot, among my favorites).
Women's studies programs attempted to correct this since 1972, but neither Gertrude Stein nor Woolf nor any among the long list of "enforced co-equals" are any better (or worse) than they simply are, for being turned into the new parallel canon. In 500 years a man like me will have more influences more life-changing writers to reveal, who happen to be women. I am certain of this.
(hey: technically, i just realized, about half the writers in my #1 collection are women!)
So here's a new list: women who make me a writer: I belong to a writing group that has had a 30 to 3 women to men ratio over the last 6 years, and under its leader, Kate Hymes, I found my Voice. Nina Shengold and Laura Shane Cunningham, are both accomplished novelists and good friends who got me started by producing my first play and encouraging my work. The majority of my favorites on OS are women writers.
And finally, because it pertains and is an opportunity to promote them: try this and this and this from my writing.
Sandra: I love that you love Tufte, too!
i was cruising new posts (followed Sandra here) and the line above caught me. i'll go ahead and favorite you right now, before i go read other stuff, just for your use of vocabularily exquisite words.
Thank you, Salon!
half: also LATE but cool. Love words. Thank you
mopd: I have been selling hot groat clusters in a village in the Vaucluse. (Thank you)
I listed You Can't Go Home Again, as well, altho mentioned only the emotional effect it had on me (altho I had enuf sense to avoid confessing my usual emotional overflow). Your concise and discerning description of Wolfe's accomplishment is the best I've come across in the scholarly studies of his work I've read, albeit a considerable while ago.
Damn you, tho, for you having persuaded me to read Boethius, of whom I hadn't known, and Spinoza, of whom I have, but for whom, alas, I'll probly settle for a Cliff Notes summary, as I'm having a helluva time slogging thru Moby-Dick. In fact, it took me multiple decades just to get past wondering why the hell Melville used a hyphen in the title - which still bothers me, truth be known.
Thanx overall for a marvelous presentation! (r)