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ok 5 life changing books, lets hear them

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carpetspaghetti:
ok 5 books, why they're this important and who they're by so others can search if interested

1. things fall apart (chinue achebe) simply genious, well written and a fantastic insight into the destruction of africas cultural heritage, beats the start of roots into a cocked hat.

2. go tell it on the mountain (james baldwin) brilliant religous commentry wrapped in a coming of age/ historical family novel. 

3. the life of pi (yann martel) martel managed to capture my idea of the perfect religous attitude in this book, surreal brilliance.

4. brave new world (aldous huxley) huxley manages to show a perfect utopia, and the invert it into a dystopia so well, shows happiness isn't freedom.
 
5. a day in the life of ivan denisovich ( aleksandr solzhenitsyn) one of the primary reasons i now study russian history.

Valrus:

--- Quote from: carpetspaghetti on 04 Feb 2007, 16:07 ---3. the life of pi (yann martel) martel managed to capture my idea of the perfect religous attitude

--- End quote ---

The perfect religious attitude involves contempt for agnostics, apparently.

Other than that, this book was okay.

My list:

5. Faith of the Fallen, by Terry Goodkind, for helping me realize that a series that I had once loved a lot had turned to shit, and therefore that I must have developed actual taste in literature somewhere along the way.

4. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, for making a significant impression on me when I was a naive high schooler, bringing me (I like to imagine) perilously close to becoming a ridiculous Randroid before college knocked some sense into me, thereby forcing me to realize that I was a fucking idiot when I was younger.

3. Cryptonomicon, by Neil Stephenson, for making me excited about reading books again in a way that I hadn't been since I discovered the Internet.

2. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, by Paul Hoffman, for being a wonderful paean to mathematics and how it can inspire someone if they happen to be really weird in the first place.

1. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, for expanding my mind in basically every way that a novel can expand one's mind.

China Moon:

Critique of Pure Reason,
by Immanuel Kant

The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
by Loren Eiseley

Silent Spring,
by Rachel Carson

Remembrance of things past,
by Marcel Proust

Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand

 

Johnny C:
The Winter Of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck has other, better known novels, but this one is a personal favourite of mine as far as his works are concerned.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. A beautiful, flowing masterwork. I can't say enough about this book, so I won't even try, but it's probably my favourite novel.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Hilarious and moving, often simultaneously, while offering acerbic socio-political insight.

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. This was one of the first novels I read with a highly experimental leaning to it, and it succeeded for me because it was page after page of consistently brilliant writing. Calvino dizzyingly layers plots, styles and self-referential asides until the book overwhelms with its genius. Thankfully, Calvino is a master storyteller so he guides you with his hand in yours and his words on your lips.

The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Read this book and Davies' novels following the same characters. They're all great.

Scytale:
1. Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange

I had to read this in my Year 12 English class, last book I ever read for school and wow, what a powerful book, when I read the last chapter I had to go for a walk around my street to clear my head, nothing I've read has ever affected me like that. If you've only see the movie you're missing out, it avoids the enitre last chapter of the book (And there by the point that Burgess is trying to make). I think the character of Alex is one of the most interesting and well constructed characters I've ever read.

2. Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
3. Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death

I read these two within about a week of each other, in my first year of university, it was a pretty interesting time in my life and I was really struggling with a lot of things, my Grandfather had just passed away and I was going through a sort of identiy crisis I guess. More then anything these two books have done more to shape my personal beliefs then anything else I've ever read. These two books were what convinced me to stop going to Church.

4. Albert Camus - The Fall
5. John Paul Sartre - Nausea

I really love the French Existentialist movement and I think these are the two best books it produced, both superbly well written and incredibly thought provocing. For a while now my personal philosphy has sort of bordered between Nihilism, existentialism and absurdism, these books really speak to me.

Other honerable mentions goto "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenace", "Beyond Good and Evil", "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

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