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Re: Welcome back... (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
A few of mine, without a particular timeframe...
Thanks for writing, and i'm glad you enjoyed my list. In terms of yours, 1984 is one of my absolute favorites (Cindy hasn't read it, so i'm going to read it to her after we finish Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking-Glass, which she also missed), and i'm quite familiar with Selfish Gene's ideas through other sources.
The rest of your books i don't know -- my big weakness as a reader is that non-contemporary stuff usually doesn't grab my attention. I'm a fan of Cory Doctorow, e.g., and know I ought to try E.L. but haven't yet.
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Aug 11 '09
2:33 pm PDT
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Re: you read Dianetics?! Seriously?? (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
I haven't read any of these books, except the Dr. Seuss one, so gosh I guess we're not soulmates after all!
Well... not yet, anyway.
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Aug 11 '09
2:30 pm PDT
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Welcome back... (Reply to this comment)
by asafono
I enjoyed your list, though most of the ones do not look familiar.
A few of mine, without a particular timeframe...
Fiction:
1984 by Orwell
Generation P by Pelevin
The Magus by Fowles
Promise at Dawn by Gary
Tin Drum by Grass
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Bellow
Foam of the Days by Vian
Ragtime by Doctorow
Doctor Fisher of Geneva by Greene
Non-fiction (omitting the authors)
The Selfish Gene - Dawkins
The Jewish Century - Slezkine
A Farewell to Alms - Clark
The Gulag Archipelago - Solzhenitzyn
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Jun 03 '09
8:11 am PDT
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think I found review (Reply to this comment)
by jankp
But you've read it back in 2003 and it wasn't a review of influential books through life...Maybe I should write another, but the thing is I grew up writing even more than reading. Hmm. Well this is the link:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3589709956
Jan
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Apr 25 '09
10:58 pm PDT
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you read Dianetics?! Seriously?? (Reply to this comment)
by jankp
Recently I checked the original out of the library because I'd learned that Hubbard was born in NE and thought it'd be interesting, but soon realized it wasn't worth my time. And The Stand same thing, couldn't make any sense of what I read. I haven't read any of these books, except the Dr. Seuss one, so gosh I guess we're not soulmates after all! Haha. Think I wrote an essay already on books that influenced me so I'll look it up for ya...
Jan
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Apr 25 '09
10:27 pm PDT
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Re: I (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
don't know if I can do 15, and I had to read constantly as an English major.
That could be the problem. I listed, what, at least a couple dozen books counting ties? Black Boy is the _only_ one i was assigned. Which i didn't realize until it was time to reply to your Comment.
stand out in mind to me... The Metamorphosis
I never read it - my formal literary education is quite poor, although a decent amount of what i read is recent stuff in a literary vein. But i saw a wonderfully strange theatrical performance of Metamorphosis when visiting the U. of West Virginia once. Some of the expressiveness was via modern dance, the characters had appropriate passages from the book tattooed on their arms, and Dead Kennedys songs were played during intermission. Sold me, anyway.
You'll probably enjoy Jason and I when we give our different takes on Hesse's Siddhartha soon. We plan on publishing our reviews around the same time, so that should be cute
As your matchmaker, i of course can be relied on to find it cute. And interesting, since Siddhartha i've actually read. The guy who recommended it to me lives happily as a philosophy professor now. Not surprising, i think.
cheers,
- Brian
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Apr 06 '09
6:03 pm PDT
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I (Reply to this comment)
by thewisefool
don't know if I can do 15, and I had to read constantly as an English major. :) However, a few which still stand out in mind to me are The Metamorphosis, Stephen Crane's Collected Poems, and The Overcoat (Gogol is an underrated writer).
You'll probably enjoy Jason and I when we give our different takes on Hesse's Siddhartha soon. We plan on publishing our reviews around the same time, so that should be cute (for us anyway - not sure if other Epinionaters will find it as cute as we do).
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Apr 05 '09
1:53 pm PDT
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Re: Does it mean (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
I have led a shallow life if I can't name 15 (excluding scripture, which is a given)?
First of all, Scripture does count and isn't a given. I've read the Bible, Dianetics, and large parts of the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad-Gita, and the closest to life change I got from any of them was confirmation that I wasn't going to be able to marry a devout Mormon. (Now that she's divorced from the guy she did marry, she lives in sin with her excommunicated boyfriend and sells sex toys at Tupperware-style parties, but that's years later.) The holy books may not be for me, but i certainly respect the ability to live by and find meaning in them.
Second, it's probably less about "shallow" than about "being less endlessly suggestible" or perhaps "having fewer corrections you needed to make in the first place", although it could be about "not having read the stuff on Voxpoptart's list".
Third, sharing books with your wife is awesome; i've been reading to Cindy (and now-and-then vice versa) for eight years now. Well, except for bathroom breaks.
Dune's an excellent, richly imaginative book; so is Where the Wild Things Are, although the movie bothers me less than the ad campaigns the characters were sold to. On the upside, the Wild Things-parody Simpsons episode was very good.
***
Incidentally, Andy, if you don't mind mainstream woman-with-piano pop, check out the recent album Albertine by Brooke Fraser. Not only is it very good, but for me the lyrics are more thoughtful, excellent, and moving the more explicitly Christian they get. And that's _me_ saying that. Which means you'll either feel more so or go "what the bloody heck?", but it's probably worth finding out which.
oh, sinner man, what you gonna hum to?,
- Brian
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Apr 05 '09
2:03 am PDT
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Re: ☼ (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
I thank you or Lance or the mysterious "another blogger"
All of us, i think; every cause has something that caused it, which is a cheat that makes these lists easier. Lance Mannion's a terrific writer, by the way: his site is well worth checking out. Once you have spare time, and yes, i know, ha ha ha to that.
it's difficult to recall even one book that's changed me or made me me. Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a recent one that's had an effect on me; it made me appreciate life and realize my problems are not so bad
Okay, so it's difficult to recall even _two_ books that changed you. And don't underestimate the importance of what you say Diving Bell taught you: some cliches are very wise, enough so that too many people never make sense of them.
Dawn always struck me as not a ballsy move, but a desperate-for-ideas ploy
Nonsense: if completely subverting the laws of causation was that desperate, some other show would've thought of it first. ("Last season was all a dream sequence" doesn't count, nor do all the shows where shlubby unappealing guys marry supermodels.) I thought it was a brilliant idea even before i'd had a chance to process that Michelle Trachtenburg is pretty, so i'm sure of this one.
this is the aging of the Dawn of Aquarius,
- Brian
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Apr 05 '09
1:46 am PDT
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Re: I'm inspired (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
I doubt that I could come up with 15 anything that made me what I am, but I'm going to spend some time thinking about it
Excellent! I hope you'll post what you come up with. At minimum i hope you can come up with 15 foods, say, that made you what you are, in the most literal way possible. Although i'm pretty sure Christina Ricci couldn't.
under construction and through the woods,
-Brian
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Apr 05 '09
1:37 am PDT
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Re: Welcome back, certainly: (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
You manage to make yor piece both prosaic and and moving
"Prosaic" comes from it being prose; "moving" is an illusion caused by the way our fluorescent lights keep flickering (the electrical outlet doesn't seem well-designed to handle them). But i thank you for the flattering confusion.
especially when you come to your young children.. . . more, More, MORE!
Spoken like a man who knows young children. Donovan, who isn't much for talking, learned the sign language for MORE a month or two ago, and has steadily broadened it from being a way to request more food, to also requesting more reading, to requesting the improbable: this week he's signed "more ants" in an effort to make the ant he squashed keep running, and "more hutch" to persuade Binzer the cat to get into his hutch in the cat gym and sit down. It's fun to watch him try, anyway.
more reply for the buck,
- Brian
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Apr 05 '09
1:35 am PDT
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Does it mean (Reply to this comment)
by panguitch
I have led a shallow life if I can't name 15 (excluding scripture, which is a given)?
Where the Wild Things Are: the book I taught myself to read with, which is reason enough. I still have a Wild Thing hanging from my rear view mirror. And the thought of them making a WTWTA movie causes me deep anxiety.
The Chronicles of Prydain: I may have already read The Hobbit when I was six and taught myself to use the Dwarvish rune alphabet, but by the end of The High King Lloyd Alexander was the first author to make me cry. There haven't been many since, perhaps only Robin Hobb and Orson Scott Card.
Lord of the Rings: I was still young enough to have a habit of gnawing on the corners of my books, something my brother didn't appreciate when they were really his books. But LotR not only inspired countless doodles while I sat in church, it shaped me in ways I'm still discovering. The only books I've reread more often are scripture.
Bulfinch's Mythology: I was nine years old and suddenly Thomas Bulfinch became my recreational reading of choice. Over and over again.
World Book Encyclopedia: It was the internet before there was an internet, and that's about how much time I spent poring over it. I'm not sure why my parents thought it was a good idea to tote along an entire encyclopedia when we moved to Hong Kong, but I'm glad they did.
Candide: In middle school I read a biography of Catherine the Great that made a point of her obsession with Voltaire. So I read Candide, which came during the period of extremes when I kept vacillating between romanticizing communism and fascism, and prized the smug condescension that Voltaire offered.
Dune: I was 14 or 15 when reading Dune resulted in a moment of awakening and I realized that my universe need not only be fantasy, but that science fiction was out there waiting for me too.
A Hero For Our Time: I was 21, had just returned from spending two years on a church mission, and reading Lermontov had a totally opposite effect on me than it would have if I had read it when I was still a teenager. Instead of admiring Pechorin I only felt relief that I no longer was him.
1984, Animal Farm, and Planet of the Apes: Some of the first books my wife and I read together, the start of one of my favorite ongoing courtship rituals. Few things bring people closer together than laughing at the hilarity (both intended and unintended) in books that other people treat seriously.
I'm not sure I can judge anything more recent than that.
-Andy
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Apr 03 '09
11:33 am PDT
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☼ (Reply to this comment)
by brendan2
Interesting thought; I thank you or Lance or the mysterious "another blogger" for bringing it to my attention. I am trying to come up with my own list, but it's difficult to recall even one book that's changed me or made me me. Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a recent one that's had an effect on me; it made me appreciate life and realize my problems are not so bad. Seriously, I know that sounds kinda corny and cliched, but it did.
Kudos, of course, on the Buffy and Queer as Folk mentions, though Dawn always struck me as not a ballsy move, but a desperate-for-ideas ploy. But I'm in agreement with you on the rest.
I am glad to hear you'd pass on the mint cheesecake brownie recipe yourself, as I was unsure whether or not I should be guarding it with my life. If so, I was gonna feed the brownies (baked by myself, of course, not you; I have no evidence your brownies have killed anyone, though perhaps that's cuz you make it so there are no survivors) to any offenders. Their deaths would be almost guaranteed.
~Liz
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Apr 02 '09
5:05 pm PDT
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I'm inspired (Reply to this comment)
by rmthunter
but it's going to take some thought. I doubt that I could come up with 15 anything that made me what I am, but I'm going to spend some time thinking about it.
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Apr 02 '09
10:34 am PDT
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Welcome back, certainly: (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
You manage to make yor piece both prosaic and and moving, especially when you come to your young children.
. . . more, More, MORE!
Alex
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Apr 02 '09
10:34 am PDT
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Re: Mine is records (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
Interesting entry, and obviously I'm happy to see Dresden Dolls, Little Earthquakes, and Veda's Spine there. I don't think i could honestly name 15 albums that changed my life in any serious way.... the Boomtown Rats' the Fine Art of Surfacing triggered my interest in rock music. Jethro Tull's Aqualung confirmed that interest, and introduced me to the band that's had the largest impact on my songwriting, which may or may not ever see the light of day but seems far more likely to now than it did a couple years ago. Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes wasn't quite my first favorite record by a woman, but it was my first favorite that was womanly, and then followed many more.
Jane Siberry's No Borders Here and the Speckless Sky felt like the nearest things to religious experiences that I've ever had, and while I don't remember why anymore, they did get me sign up for dancing class, which was a huge step in overcoming my physical shyness and tenseness. The Loud Family's Interbabe Concern, the Rheostatics' Introducing Happiness, and They Might Be Giants's John Henry all confirmed me in fandoms that would result in me meeting close friends and/or my wife. Veda's Spine taught me to respect slow, quiet intensity in music, which in turn taught me to listen to music while trying to sleep, which has saved many, many nights from insomnia.
Ben Krieger's Class Dismissed, particularly closing song "Mom and Dad Play Rock'n'Roll", may or may not be why I bought a drum set, but if it is, the astonishing discovery that I'm a talented drummer can be credited to it. Nine or ten records, depending whether Siberry is one entry. Well, who knew?
suggestibly,
- Brian
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Apr 02 '09
5:05 am PDT
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Mine is records (Reply to this comment)
by geminiph
Hi.
Welcome back. Cool review as always, nice to see the Buffy mention there as well. Oh I'm such a Joss geek. I've done a meme about life-changing records over at collectedsounds.com. Scroll down a bit and you'll see it.
Bests,
Anna
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Apr 02 '09
2:32 am PDT
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