Posted by shar on August 20, 2000, at 2:41:33
In reply to Re: Favorite Self Help books, posted by Cam W. on August 20, 2000, at 0:28:18
Cam,
Those are some pretty good books. I read them all when I was in high school.HAH! Just kidding! I'm very impressed. Is War and Peace in there? Don't think I saw that one.
Shar
> I've always wanted to go through my books and pick out the one's that have given me the most insight into the human experience. In a pseudo-order of importance to me, they are:
>
> -Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre
> -Ethics - Baruch Spinoza
> -Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
> -Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of the Crowds - Charles Mackay
> -The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
> -On the Road - Jack Kerouac
> -Off the Road - Carolyn Cassady
> -Heaven and Hell - Aldous Huxley
> -Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saaveda
> -Music, the Brain, and Ecstacy - Robert Jourdain
> -Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre - Walter Kaufman
> -The History of Science in Western Civilizations, Vols I, II, and III (esp. II) - L. Pearce Williams & Henry John Steffens
> -The House of the Dead - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
> -The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
> -The Plague - Albert Camus
> -Symposium - Plato
> -A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawkings
> -On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life) - Charles Darwin
> -Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
> -The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
> -An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume
> -Candide - Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
> -The Divine Comedy - Dante Alghieri
> -Kaddish and Other Poems (1958 - 1960) - Allen Ginsberg
> -The Republic - Plato
> -Raise the Roof Beam, Carpenters - J.D. Salinger
> -The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test - Tom Wolfe
> -A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
>
> These books (as well as some others that don't mean as much to me) are on a separate book shelf in my office). Many, I have read several times (esp. Being and Nothingness). All give a different slant to the human condition, which I find has not changed in thousands of years. These books have shaped who I am. It's funny, I really didn't start tapping into my artsy side until I was about 30. I now find that my life would have been totally incomplete if I had stuck strictly to science.
>
> If anyone would like to debate the finer points of any of these books, I would love to. My take on some of them seems to differ from commentaries of many of the English majors. Also, if anyone knows of any books to complement these, I would greatly appreciate your imput.
>
> Jeez, I just looked over my list. I am a geek. - Cam
poster:shar
thread:87
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20000813/msgs/107.html