September 29, 2006

• picking only 5 will be difficult...
• Brothers Karamazov Revolution at the Gates Negative Dialectics One Dimensional Man Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture
• Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte Black Light, Elizabeth Hand The Left-Handed Spirit, Ruth Nichols This is NOT a definitive list!! this is really hard. I hate you Fes....my soul can only be described by 15 or 20 books....ak!
• Medusa: I agree :) But those are the rules. Perhaps we can add this addendum: in addition to the aforementioned five, choose one that is so completely unlike you that people would be astounded to know you own and have read it. Glamma: Holy jebus!
• Doestoyevski was the last fiction I read. appendum the rogue book: Filth - Irvine Welsh (I actually enjoy all of his books)
• Five off the top of my head: Brave New World, Aldous Huxley Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut Choteau Creek: A Sioux Reminiscence, Joseph Iron Eye Dudley The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures And I agree with what Medusa said!! Fun post though, Fes! And your five?
• Don't know if they're me, but I really like them, so... and I know I will think of ten more 'me' the second I click 'Post', anyway The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs, Daniel Odier Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco Neuromancer, William Gibson El Llano en llamas, Juan Rulfo Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
• (Curse you, glamma! BK was the subject of my thesis, and now I can't use it!) Allright, I'm going to kick myself later, but here goes: Death of a Lady's Man, Leonard Cohen Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard For my Brother Jesus, Irving Layton Chuang Tzu Tintin in Tibet, Herge Addendum: Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval Europe, Fr. Michael Sheehan (The key being "...and have read it.")
• And a couple people have raised their brows when realizing I enjoyed Coupland's 'Hey Nostradamus!' and 'Eleanor Rigby', don't know why.
• Just five? What is this, some kind of desert-island library shit. Five books don't define who I am; 5000 are only a rough approximation. Egads!! You bastart!!
• I'm not sure that the anti-me can be defined by a book. I am too much of a bookworm!
• This better not be desert-island shit. In that case, I'd like to exchange the collected works of Plato for one of my slimmer volumes.
• Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler Burmese Days, George Orwell The Quitter, Harvey Pekar & Dean Haspiel (Any AS, really) Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut Joe, Larry Brown
• Well if this is gonna be a desert island thing I am opting for porn.
• Here's a rather random selection of favorites: Foucault's Pendulum Umberto Eco A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole The Mismeasure of Man Stephen Jay Gould Collected Stories Isaac Bashevis Singer American Pastoral Phillip Roth
• NOT a desert island post! five books - and ONLY five - that are an x-ray of your soul. One book that is your anti-soul. My five are pending until I get get a look at my library
• Boo! Hiss! If you don't know the contenders off by heart...
• Most of my "library" is long gone, given up when I moved in order to make room for other things, or left behind when I was divorced, imprisoned in my ex-wife's house, if she hasn't burned them by now. But some books always live within you.. 1. Winnie the Pooh... gentle kindness, and a connection to having read it a million times to my two sons, one now gone from me, and the other grown and moved 2,000 miles away. 2. Anything by Isaac Asimov, who took a 10 year old boy into the future over and over again. 3. The Hobbit, which, when read back in the early seventies, opened my imagination. 4. The Body, by Stephen King (only a short story, but it should count), which is the only book I've ever read that painted such a vivid picture of my youth and growing up in the 50's and 60's. 5. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by Dalai Lama, which, at the age of 58, gives me hope in a sometimes terrible world. a sincere thank you to these authors, and the many , many more that have shaped my life.
• It's hard to separate the x-ray from the favorites, but here goes: Space Time and Beyond - Bob Toben 1984 - George Orwell Microserfs - Douglas Coupland Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis Niine Stories - J. D. Salinger And the surprising book: The Koran
• X-ray = someone who knows you well would hear your titles and say, "Yeah, that's on the money, that's them."
• many have been surprised I own a bible, but its occassionally handy for reference...
• someone who knows you well would hear your titles and say, "Yeah, that's on the money, that's them." Most of my friends are drug laden drunken degenerates. I don't even think they know I can read.
• "many have been surprised I own a bible, but its occassionally handy for reference..." No Bibles in our Catholic house. That might lead to questions.
• I have ridiculously low levels of self-knowledge, so I don;t fell qualified to choose which books best represent me. I'll just list the last 5 books I've read, not counting the Harelquins in the bathroom: Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, The Sorceress of the Strand William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom! Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
• 1. Unpopular Essays - Bertrand Russell. (Also his History of Western Philosophy) A humanist kicks butt. Lucid entertainment for down-to-earth thinkers. 2. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame. Some books you can read and love no matter how old you are. I read this when i was ten and again just a few years ago. Magic. 3. The Whole Earth Catalog - Stewart Brand. The encyclopedia of the possible. Out of print but still the best book for finding a life. 4. Ulysses - James Joyce. I don't understand half of this book, but the half i do understand is wonderful. 5. Visual Explanations - Edward Tufte. This is about graphics, their use and abuse but more to the point, Tufte's books are art works in themselves.
• SB I used to be a huge Russell fan, I read both of those. Yeah his History of Western Philosophy is pretty comprehensive.
• John McPhee - Annals of the Former World Stephen King - The Stand J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings Ehrlich & Mannheimer - The Carpenter's Manifesto and an unabridged dictionary
• "Five is the rule because... because... because I only asked for five, dammit! And it's my FPP! You people and your questions." ;) (I don't see any other reason why five should be the "rule" except that some of us would be encouraged to post our entire libraries if it were not. I think, for example, that this would be more representative if I were giving ten titles, but maybe not that much more representative.) Random five: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges Grapefruit - Yoko Ono The Annotated Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll et al. The Anti-me: Teach Yourself Visually: Perl In a week, these selections would probably be different. I think some Tolkien would probably make the list, maybe along with some Sherlock Holmes. Some people never accumulate or cease to accumulate a personal library after a certain point, though. I used to buy several books per week; now I live in a superior library system and buy only a few books per year. Somewhere in the interim I had to move at least 35 boxes of books across the country, and wondered, in unpacking them, why I even owned a lot of them. I have already gotten rid of the things you might think were not really much like me. What I have out of the library that is most representative of me: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I also own. (But am too paranoid about keeping my own 1st printing copy in good condition to cart it around with me & actually read it.) Least representative? Maybe Going Sane by Adam Phillips (kind of dry, philosophical musings on the concept of "sanity"), or Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (more because it's drecky than because of plot or setting).
• Most books come and go without lasting effect, but a few have changed me by having read them, and thus are partly to blame for the person I am: Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Kapra Walden and Other Writings - Henry David Thoreau Only four...I guess I have yet to discover my fifth life altering read.
• Walden His Master's Voice Where the Sidewalk Ends Grendel Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider There are several personal favorites in there. I had one or two more, but I think that most of my friends -- the literate ones -- would say that these most accurate me. [By the way, we did something similar to this a while back. But that's not a complaint; I love this sort of thing.]
• I don't see any other reason why five should be the "rule" except that some of us would be encouraged to post our entire libraries if it were not. This is precisely why. And the five are not (necessarily) your *favorite* books, either! That's been done to death. What I want to see is the five books from your library that best exhibit who you are.
• I dunno, I just gave away all my books. I gue- *pop* [NO CARRIER]
• Man, when I think 'me', 'books' and 'x-ray' I think 'Cobaltnine's Impending Emergency Room Visit', given the current rate of book acquisition. 1. I think the collection of pre-WW2 medical manuals I own is probably a sign of some pathology. If I had to choose one of them, I'd choose the 'Book of Knowledge', which is this massive (5 inch thick or so) manual of how to deal with most mild to moderate illnesses and injuries. In 1920. 2. Stephenson's 'The Big U'. This only became true after I started teaching at a Big U; it was a favorite before but oh god, so true, since then. 3. Hall's 'The Hidden Dimension' - Much public life is, well, if not 'goverened', reflective of this. Do I read it much? No. It's a bit boring and categorizing. Just like me. 4. There's a book of poems written by a British woman pretending to be a man pretending to translate some ancient poems in the vein of Rumi et al. I cannot think of the name. Damn, I'll have to post it when I go home and find it. 5. Cop-out, a bit, but the religious text for the religion I adhere to, which I'm not going to mention for googleable reasons. 0. The anti-book award almost goes to 'Fear and Loathing', but only on a superficial, drug-related level. I'll have to go through my shelves. I feel like it should be a book I like but am ashamed to admit, or something. I do possess a copy of that damn DaVinci code, as Mr Cobalt can attest, because he heard me going 'No! That's CRAP! And have you heard the word 'semiotics' recently!' about every 20 pages.
• Y'know it seems like the classy thing to do would be to hyperlink these books to information about them. *cough*
• *
• Kramers Ergot vol. 2 Dave Hickey Air Guitar Edward Schilebecklx(sp) The Eucharist Thomas Waugh Out/Lines Gay Graphix before Stonewall Heartbraks by the Number Bill Friscks Warren
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Kundera The Magus - John Fowles (hmmm) Tristram Shandy - Sterne Complete Poems - T. S. Eliot Waterland - Graham Swift
• Going with the whole x-ray of the soul thing: The Names by Don DeLillo Purple America by Rick Moody The Moviegoer by Walker Percy Independence Day by Richard Ford A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
• Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll The Moral Animal- Robert Wright Metamagical Themas- Douglas Hofstader The Awakening of Intelligence- Jiddu Krishnamurti The Mathematical Basis for the Arts- Joseph Shillinger what do I win?
• Cats at Work by Guy Powers A photography book of, well, cats at work. It blew my mind at the beginning of my prim & proper office career that some people worked with their pets. To this day, I wish my cat could come to work with me. I still pore over this book, jealously. The Stand by Stephen King Mentioned already - but lots of details about the chaos following a pandemic have remained a big part of my biggest nightmare. Skye O'Malley by Bertrice Skye I now own most of what she's written (maybe 20 books?). I don't know why. Maybe someone else can tell me why I can't stop reading historical romances from the Elizabethan age. Things My Girlfriend & I Have Argued About by Mil Millington I wish I could write teh funny like this guy, but he was the one who inspired me to (finally) GMOFB. And maybe we'll all have book deals one day. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje The first book I really struggled to read for pleasure. Although it wasn't my favorite, I'm kind of proud I didn't give up on it. Definitely an excellent story, and the non-linear telling of it challenged me in a way I (finally) appreciated.
• Mickey, you mean its not pictures of cats on construction sites with little hard hats, and cats giving power point presentations at the office in little suits, and cats directing traffic in little cop hats, and cats in doctor coats examining other cats??? /disappointed
• (books that have affected or especially impressed me. i'm not trying to avoid doubles.) an beal bocht (the poor mouth): flann o'brien. my introduction to o'brien and a wonderful satire for anyone who has been obliged to read what passes for literature in secondary school irish class. sandman: fables & reflections, neil gaiman and various artists. the best of a series that i love. foucault's pendulum, umberto eco. i'm a fan of conspiracy theories; i'm a fan of eco. the twain has met and say no more just enjoy it. masks of the illuminati: robert anton wilson. the first wilson i read and an encouragement to read much much more. the secret history: donna tartt. convinced me that there are worthwhile novelists out there, despite the impression you might get most of the time. the ragged trousered philantropists: robert tressell. you wonder why unions are necessary? this explains why. counting for beginners. okay, this has been on my shelf for a while, but i'm planning to read it soon.
• medusa, you need a copy of why cats paint, if you don't already have one. related: the museum of non primate art: monpa
• Nope. Never. Can't be done. Sue me.
• I'm surprised nobody's mentioned LibraryThing yet. Found it through languagehat. Check out his library. Da-yumn. Makes my library feel a little inadequate. Even if I know I'm not done entering titles.
• Me on a bookshelf: Shakespeare, Complete Works Alexandre Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires Goethe, Faust Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry Berke Breathed, Bloom County compilation and my anti-book: Dan Anderson and Maggie Berman, Sex Tips for Straight Women From A Gay Man.
• SB I used to be a huge Russell fan, I read both of those. Yeah his History of Western Philosophy is pretty comprehensive. Aye, Glama, Russell was the one who proved to me that philosophy could be a complete blast. Metamagical Themas- Douglas Hofstader Kamus, I was this close to putting that one on my list!
• Kinda late in the day, but irregardnonetheless: The Map that Changed the World, Simon Winchester California Geology, Deborah Harden Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins Red Dragon, Thomas Harris Alive, Piers Paul Read Now, if you want a list of books on my shelf that I still need to read, that's another story. I usually throw away everything after I read it. My bookshelves are intended only for storage of future readings.
• Off the one shelf that I can see from here: Somhairle MacGill-Eain O Choille Gu Bearradh (His collected poems) 于建嵘 岳村政治——转型期中国乡村社会政治结构的变迁 (Traditions of peasant resistance in rural Hunan) Christopher Hill Milton and the English Revolution (Especially for the influences of the radical religious underground) Orhan Pamuk Snow (best novel I've read in a long while) José Peirats Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (A frank review by the one-time historiographer of the CNT)
• Sylvia Plath, Ariel (yay, angsty teen years!) Harvey Pekar, American Splendor Anthology (ah, Cleveland, how you never cease to exceed my expectations) Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories (the northern Michigan ones make me homesick with the descriptions of the landscape) Dawn Powell, A Time to Be Born (I love every book written by this woman, but this was the first one to hook me in) Rothman and Greenland, Modern Epidemiology (this book rules my life currently) the anti-me: The Bad Girl's Guide to Getting What You Want (it was a gift) ps: Abs, I'm currently reading Snow! It is indeed great.
• *rubs hands together Because I am a souless being, I am writing EVERY book title down that you people are posting. I will be reading these books and I will steal your SOULS!
• GramMa, you don't need to do all that work. Just send the link to the MJTF.
• Baudelaire, Paris Spleen Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (except for the disastrous final chapter) Barthes, Œuvres complètes Patrick Süskind, Perfume Manuel Puig, The Buenos Aires Affair or something
• Ok, after some thought, this is as close to an x-ray as you're likely to get out of 5 books: Charlie Brown's Second Super Book of Questions and Answers: About the Earth and Space ... from Plants to Planets! - Charles M. Schulz If you want to distill me to one book, this would probably be it. Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book - Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris Introducing Kafka - David Zane Mairowitz, illustrated by Robert Crumb Real Frank Zappa Book - Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Anti-book: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte My sister in law was somewhat aghast when she found out that I like this book.
• Five are not enough but here goes anyway. The Story of English. McComb, Cran, MacNeil Freedom In Exile. The Dalai Lama The Occult. Colin Wilson History of Western Philosphy. Bertrand Russell The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Bullock & Stallybrass
• forgot the anti-me. Hamlet. Shakespeare. absolutely loathe the spoiled brat!
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• Only five?
• Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Zen and the Art Of Mortorcycle Maintenance --Robert M. Pirsing Moby-Dick, or the Whale --Herman Melville The Bhagavad-Gita --Unknown The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy --Douglas Adams Through A Glass Darkly five..not..enough
• Because I am a sponge, not a prism, I must cheat: http:/www.webnesia.com/booksread.htm
• Master & Margarita - Bulgakov Der Steppenwolf - Hesse La Nausee - Sartre G0del Escher Bach - Hofstadter De ontdekking van de hemel - Mulisch What does it mean? It means I'm pretentious..
• kilgates Master & Margarita is an amazing book. Is it safe to asssume you read We by Zamyatan as well?
• Yay- another Hofstader entry. Seriously, that dude in those two books mentioned, provided me with enough food for thought to make me permanently diabetic.
• There's a Godel Escher Bach sitting on the shelf right now. I intend to read it when I have lots of time without distractions, like when I'm incarcerated.
• nunia, read it now, it is good. Especially the story bits in between (^_^) Last 5 books I read: Night Watch (Pratchett) Hexwood (Jones) A Civil Campaign (Bujold) The Last Continent (Pratchett) Men At Arms (Pratchett) My shelves are filled mainly with three writers (the rest of my older books are packed in boxes somewhere else): Terry Pratchett (he takes up two and a half shelves all by himself), Diana Wynne Jones and Lois McMaster Bujold.
• Vertex - I know it's late, but oh, I agonized over putting Moby Dick on my list. I'm rereading it now, and while it's a perennial favorite, I couldn't justify it being 'of me.'
• OK, here's mine: Lawrence Sanders, "McNally's Gamble." This is one of several novels by Sanders featuring Palm Beach "discrete inquirer" Archie McNally - a vain, shallow, lecherous, feckless peacock of a man. And yet, he evinces an Victorian sense of fair play, justice and the willingness to try and set things aright in the world. Julius Caesar, "Caesar's Gallic Wars." Published in 1896, this small volume is the oldest book I own, and, within, is the straight-told tales of an ancient man who's life, while legend, was filled with the same cares, frustrations, dreams and foibles as ours. L. Rust Hills, "How To Do Things Right." The subtitle is The Revelations of a Fussy Man. Book Three, Chapter Three, page 210: "History and Theory of the Mercy F**k." There is wisdom here. Iain Banks, "The Business." The all-too-surreal trials and tribulations of the modern corproate samurai. Phineas Mollod and Jason Tesauro, "The Modern Gentleman." A guidebook for the neo-Victorian in an era owned by shitbirds. And the odd man: Sartre, "Being and Nothingness."
• 5 books which best exhibit who I am: The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll The History of the Peloponnesian War My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell On the Art of Horsemanship by Xenophon And I expect the fifth will only be published posthumously. ;]
• Bees, we want that fifth book PRE-humously. ...please...?
• Ye may, but I don't!
• is that going to be the scandalous tell-all biography that reveals the shocking secrets "behind the beehive"?????
• I'll just skip to the part where he hits rock-bottom, and then to the part where he's writing poetry on his own terms.
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell That is a heart-warming story. My ultra-cool grade 6 teacher introduced us to Durrell with a reading of da Bafut Beagles and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
• Huh. To encapsulate myself, using only my library? I would like to choose only the Great Books I have read, but that wouldn't be fair or honest. Guess I'd have to go with the following: On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin. My science side. The book that changed the world. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. My secret D&D playing, sword and sorcery side. Sci-fi fantasy is still one of my favorite genres. East of Eden, John Steinbeck. Or Grapes of Wrath... both great books, both ones I have read several times, both books I get more out of every time I read them. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway. He is at his best when he writes of war. The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling. Animals that talk, poems and songs, epic battles, the loneliness of being human in a world that can neither accept you for whom you are, nor allow you to become who you might. My Anti-Book? Take your pick. I have a vast collection of Louis L'Amour paperbacks. (I can't help it, they're just fun junk food for the mind!)