Hey guys, I think it would be pretty cool if we started sharing non-music media with each other over the internets, kinda like how we do in the music forum, but with other stuff.
I have three offerings to kick things off.
Alan Watts - The Book (On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Really Are)
This is the one I want the most people to read. In fact, if there's one book that I'd want EVERYONE IN THE WORLD to read, it's this one. I read it at a time when my mind was itching for precisely the kind of ideas that Alan Watts here presents with utter clarity, perfect poise, and pinpoint efficiency. This book is a masterwork. In fact, there's a good chance that reading it will get you high. It is virtually guaranteed to change your life for the better, if you let it. Seriously, just get it and read it, you'll thank me for it later.
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?yiyavtxjmu3
Robert Anton Wilson - Prometheus Rising
This book is no less a masterpiece than the one above, but I think it'll find a much narrower (more fringe-y) audience. Personally, I think that anyone who has really delved into this book and put sincere effort into trying to figure out what RAW was getting at when he wrote it will be significantly better prepared for large areas of life. If everyone in the world thought like me, this book and the Alan Watts book would be the most important books ever written. Get it if you have any interest in human evolution and/or consciousness (including your own).
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?immmizjumng
Terence McKenna - Food of the Gods
This book is even more out-there than the Robert Anton Wilson one ... Terence McKenna was one of the most radically-minded thinkers of the past century (and, as such, one of the easiest to label "crackpot") and this book represents some of the interesting statements he had to make. It's a revisionist history of the relationship between human beings and drugs, and while some of the early sections in which he lays out his "Stoned Ape" theory (the thesis being that a symbiosis with psychedelic plants, specifically mushrooms, catalyzed human evolution and spurred the development of religious thought and ritual, spoken language, and many of the other social constructs that we see as both unique and universal to humanity) can be somewhat hard to swallow, there are also huge sections of the book regarding more recent areas of history that are extremely enlightening, and he makes some extremely compelling points. I think there are several people here who could find this book to be a really fun and rewarding read.
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?zmyzizymzwm