10 Books You Recommend

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notdoer

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As a companion to the "What books are you reading right now?" thread, I thought it might be interesting to hear from members on their "top ten" reads. I took the tack of listing what has been most influential to me. Not necessarily recommended reading for anyone else. So please let us know the disposition of your list. I'll kick this off and see if other members wish to participate.

I new to the forum, so please let me know if this thread is problematic...

1. "Steppenwolf" by Herman Hesse
2. "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
3. "Islands in the Stream" by Ernest Hemingway
4. "The Teachings of Don Juan" by Carlos Castaneda
5. "1984" by George Orwell
6. "Synchronicity" by Carl Yung
7. "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" by Albert Einstein
8. "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler
9. "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
10. "Romeo and Juliet" by William Skakespeare

Notes:
1. IMO, Steppenwolf is a great piece of literature by a brilliant author who was one of the first to bring Eastern thought to the West. This book explores so many ideas.
2. East of Eden is one of the major novels of the past century. It is so good. My attempts to honor it would be inadequate. Highly recommended reading.
3. Island in the Stream is one of the major works of Hemingway. I love the Carribean motif, the WWII action on the high seas, and Ernesto's by then extraordinary story telling craft. His attention to detail and knowledge really resonate with me.
4. The Teachings really refers to Carlos's entire body of work. I love the Mexican dessert motif, shamanism, master and apprentice, and the philosophical implications of the story.
5. 1984 should be required reading for everyone, IMO. There is a key set of lessons and warnings that should be heeded.
6. Synchronicity is a cornerstone of Jungian psychology. For me it is yet another example of how amazing the human experience can be. Jung was another pioneer associated with integrating East and West.
7. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies is Albert Einstein explaining how the electron gives rise to the magnetic field through action at a distance. This single paper lays the foundation for much of modern physics. A must read for physicists and electrical engineers.
8. Chandler wrote some great private detective stories set in LA featuring Philip Marlowe. Recommended reading.
9. Kurt Vonnegut wrote some insightful and highly imaginative stories. Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the best.
10. Romeo and Juliet offers noteworthy insight into what everyone seeks...
 
Those all seem like very good things to have read. Bravo!

I have, I think, another opinion about Romeo & J... I think it's about the fact that good statecraft cannot be swayed by tears..so to say...by cold calculation rather than hope and love. The Prince blames at length himself for the entire fubar...by winking at your discord...lost a brace of kinsmen... and we might say the juxtaposition of nature (the compulsions of youth...) with the intellect and blunt political facts, with realpolitik ... and I myself am left wondering if the two Fathers did not each wink at the affair, secretly hoping to set aside the feud by means of marriage 'tween the (mustabeen obvious to the old men and women) affair.

I'd add The Confidence Man (Melville) The bifurcations and contradictions we see in the US to-day are the offspring of the contrasts...as the Devil rides a steamboat... Yes, nobody reads it. It's more significant than Moby-Dick, though in the same genre. The canonical standards of the universities do seem to have, ah, declined. That people can see into the future does not mean that they can change it, but Melville and his cohort tried.

I've been reading an annotated Moveable Feast... https://gertrudesteinsite.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/ernest-hemingway-a-moveable-feast.pdf From which I take considerable nostalgic pleasure. Remembering when Papa blew himself away... And I saw Paris in 1960, so some of the images are bittersweet. Do check it out, Ms Karen Nicolas has put up a good text. Done some job o work.
Best!
 
40north said:
Those all seem like very good things to have read. Bravo!

I have, I think, another opinion about Romeo & J... I think it's about the fact that good statecraft cannot be swayed by tears..so to say...by cold calculation rather than hope and love. The Prince blames at length himself for the entire fubar...by winking at your discord...lost a brace of kinsmen... and we might say the juxtaposition of nature (the compulsions of youth...) with the intellect and blunt political facts, with realpolitik ... and I myself am left wondering if the two Fathers did not each wink at the affair, secretly hoping to set aside the feud by means of marriage 'tween the (mustabeen obvious to the old men and women) affair.

I'd add The Confidence Man (Melville) The bifurcations and contradictions we see in the US to-day are the offspring of the contrasts...as the Devil rides a steamboat... Yes, nobody reads it. It's more significant than Moby-Dick, though in the same genre. The canonical standards of the universities do seem to have, ah, declined. That people can see into the future does not mean that they can change it, but Melville and his cohort tried.

I've been reading an annotated Moveable Feast... https://gertrudesteinsite.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/ernest-hemingway-a-moveable-feast.pdf From which I take considerable nostalgic pleasure. Remembering when Papa blew himself away... And I saw Paris in 1960, so some of the images are bittersweet. Do check it out, Ms Karen Nicolas has put up a good text. Done some job o work.
Best!
Click to expand...
Me thinks yours is a well considered response. I agree that Romeo and Juliet is much deeper than simply that thing we all seek. But then that thing is many splendored, effecting everyone it touches in some fashion, differently too, in character and degree. That thing is the most powerful force known to man.

Down the Mississippi to Gulf of Mexico. The Devil playing our differences like a disharmonious fiddle. Once our strength, contrasts may turn to dischord and our undoing.

I read a Moveable Feast many moons ago. Going to insert it in front of my reading list. It will have different meaning now especially since spending time in Paris.
 
As a child in the '50's, my parents sprung for The World Book Encyclopedia and kept it in my room. I would sit for hours starting out with a subject in mind but being delightfully distracted by something that would catch my eye along the way. ADHD? Probably, but I learned about Icarus and Daedalus before I was eight.

Books seem to have come to me in a few ways, mandate, happpenstance and subject interest.
Regarding mandate, we had required reading in high school that included "Brave New World" by Huxley and "1984" by Wells. These were hand in hand for that year. In English Lit class our instructor brought in a 33 RPM LP of Romeo and Juliet. We would read along to ourselves as the vinyl spun the audio but the topper of the class was the instructor sometimes pantomiming a scene or getting our attention to listen closely. It was the icing on the cake for further adventures in Shakespeare and leading to works by Chaucer. Honorable mention to Homer and Tacitus.

As a youngster I read Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" of course, but ventured no further in his works. One day, by happenstance, I was driving down an alley after a rain and saw a hardback off to the side of a puddle. Stopping out of curiosity I picked it up and found it was a copy of "Roughing It". The book opened a new door for me to Twain's humor which left me seeking more.
Another happenstance was Castaneda, suggested by a dear friend as we would discuss the curiosities of human existence. I'll say that the first three volumes are in my library.

I've always been fascinated by the natural world and Euell Gibbons piqued my curiosity for foraging. I could name, thanks to that encyclopedia, just about every life form that walked, flew, slithered or swam but knew very little about the ones outside the door that make up the most of this world but don't have the ability to flee a fire. So starting with Euell I took a deep dive. I still have "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" which contains a purple thumbprint of elderberry juice placed there accidentally by one of the hippie chicks of our then "household" making up some jam after a forage (thinking she wandered off to join an Ashram in the mid seventies, we moved back to the land). Honorable mention to Virgil Vogel and his "Native American Medicines" and also Grace Firth's "A Natural Year", they both sit well worn.

Being a history buff and living in the Old Nothest Territory I came across Alan Eckert and his Americana series. Good novel type reading inspired by the history and the events of the areas, drawn from first person accounts. Tons of footnotes.

Solzhenitsyn' "Gulag Archipelago" was the last thing I've read. Better late than never.
Thinking I may put Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" on my Christmas list. Thanks Norm!

Speaking of Christmas brings me full circle to the one book my Godmother gave me as a child, which I still read.

Nice to meet y'all.
 
notdoer said:
Me thinks yours is a well considered response. I agree that Romeo and Juliet is much deeper than simply that thing we all seek. But then that thing is many splendored, effecting everyone it touches in some fashion, differently too, in character and degree. That thing is the most powerful force known to man.

Down the Mississippi to Gulf of Mexico. The Devil playing our differences like a disharmonious fiddle. Once our strength, contrasts may turn to dischord and our undoing.

I read a Moveable Feast many moons ago. Going to insert it in front of my reading list. It will have different meaning now especially since spending time in Paris.
Click to expand...


Earlier this year the Iowa legislature passed a law to remove from all schools any book containing references to descriptions of sex. Ironically George Orwell's "1984" made the list of nearly 400 at one high school.

"1984" is a cautionary tale about censorship in a totalitarian government. By Jackson Walker / Crisis in the Classroom
 
nj1639 said:
As a child in the '50's, my parents sprung for The World Book Encyclopedia and kept it in my room. I would sit for hours starting out with a subject in mind but being delightfully distracted by something that would catch my eye along the way. ADHD? Probably, but I learned about Icarus and Daedalus before I was eight.

Books seem to have come to me in a few ways, mandate, happpenstance and subject interest.
Regarding mandate, we had required reading in high school that included "Brave New World" by Huxley and "1984" by Wells. These were hand in hand for that year. In English Lit class our instructor brought in a 33 RPM LP of Romeo and Juliet. We would read along to ourselves as the vinyl spun the audio but the topper of the class was the instructor sometimes pantomiming a scene or getting our attention to listen closely. It was the icing on the cake for further adventures in Shakespeare and leading to works by Chaucer. Honorable mention to Homer and Tacitus.

As a youngster I read Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" of course, but ventured no further in his works. One day, by happenstance, I was driving down an alley after a rain and saw a hardback off to the side of a puddle. Stopping out of curiosity I picked it up and found it was a copy of "Roughing It". The book opened a new door for me to Twain's humor which left me seeking more.
Another happenstance was Castaneda, suggested by a dear friend as we would discuss the curiosities of human existence. I'll say that the first three volumes are in my library.

I've always been fascinated by the natural world and Euell Gibbons piqued my curiosity for foraging. I could name, thanks to that encyclopedia, just about every life form that walked, flew, slithered or swam but knew very little about the ones outside the door that make up the most of this world but don't have the ability to flee a fire. So starting with Euell I took a deep dive. I still have "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" which contains a purple thumbprint of elderberry juice placed there accidentally by one of the hippie chicks of our then "household" making up some jam after a forage (thinking she wandered off to join an Ashram in the mid seventies, we moved back to the land). Honorable mention to Virgil Vogel and his "Native American Medicines" and also Grace Firth's "A Natural Year", they both sit well worn.

Being a history buff and living in the Old Nothest Territory I came across Alan Eckert and his Americana series. Good novel type reading inspired by the history and the events of the areas, drawn from first person accounts. Tons of footnotes.

Solzhenitsyn' "Gulag Archipelago" was the last thing I've read. Better late than never.
Thinking I may put Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" on my Christmas list. Thanks Norm!

Speaking of Christmas brings me full circle to the one book my Godmother gave me as a child, which I still read.

Nice to meet y'all.
Click to expand...
Greetings to the Rhineland of America!

I spent many an afternoon at the Bentonville public library with an old set of Britannica. You were fortunate to have a set at home.

In my case, the mandatory school reading list was heavily augmented by my interests and recommendations of friends and family.
The Gulag Archipelago was required reading in my college honors composition course. Been a long time.

I read Crime and Punishment that same year. Again mandatory, in preparation for creative writing.

I was in a famous bar in San Francisco some years back. The bar had been a favorite of Samuel Clemens. I mentioned this to the bartender expecting to hear all about it. She did know who Mark Twain was an neither did anyone at the bar. Wow!
 
The most interesting book I have ever read is called "Stealing Speed".
WARNING - SPOILER COMING UP.
Its a true story of how Suzuki got the tech to build their world beating 2 strokes. It happened in the 70/80's I think.
Its how a little bike builder and mechanic built their world beating 2 strokes bikes (CZ I think) on the shitty side of the iron curtain and how the mechanic defected through the iron curtain with his kids hiding in the boot and he had the builders plans in his pocket which Suzuki paid him for.
The defection took place one race away (i think) from them winning the title - the builder, who didnt defect, had all his equipment taked away and he had to start from scratch.
I have had to tell you this much so you will get the book and read it - I promise you will not regret it.
The original is available online for hundreds of dollars but Matt Oxley (the author) has reprinted it for much less now.
Its an amazing true story about espionage and it happened in our lifetime. Suzuki got the tech for F.A.
Regards Ray.
 
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Matt Oxley has a new graphic novel version on his UK website. However if you have a Kindle this novel is available for $7.99. With Kindle Unlimited it is zero dollars!
 
Books...in 1912 as a wedding gift it came to happy couple 1911 scholars edition. The condition is now very poor, but it's all readable. I grew up reading it, well, I didn't really grow up ;)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica
I am blessed and burdened with a large library.
ALERT! The concept of "Pee See" (PC) or whatever did not obtain, the encyclopedia may offend...if so, I shall pray for you ;)
 
The wife refers to me as Mr. Encyclopedia amongst our peers "He knows everything." spoken with a hint of sarcasm of course. I then correct her with "No, I have an opinion on everything." It's our Burns and Allen routine.
Not sure how any of this reflects on our peers........
 
I read first person accounts of WWII veterans.. all participants ... some Korea and Nam. I have a book bedside... in the bathroom... my truck and shop. I'm in two books... " 50 Shades of Rust "..... one of those barn find books..... and " Project 19, A Misson most Secret ".... an aircraft repair station in East Africa... to service and repair British planes from the north Africa campaign prior to America's entry into the conflict. 😎 Apparently my " royalties " checks are in the mail..
 
LTGTR said:
The most interesting book I have ever read is called "Stealing Speed".
WARNING - SPOILER COMING UP.
Its a true story of how Suzuki got the tech to build their world beating 2 strokes. It happened in the 70/80's I think.
Its how a little bike builder and mechanic built their world beating 2 strokes bikes (CZ I think) on the shitty side of the iron curtain and how the mechanic defected through the iron curtain with his kids hiding in the boot and he had the builders plans in his pocket which Suzuki paid him for.
The defection took place one race away (i think) from them winning the title - the builder, who didnt defect, had all his equipment taked away and he had to start from scratch.
I have had to tell you this much so you will get the book and read it - I promise you will not regret it.
The original is available online for hundreds of dollars but Matt Oxley (the author) has reprinted it for much less now.
Its an amazing true story about espionage and it happened in our lifetime. Suzuki got the tech for F.A.
Regards Ray.
Click to expand...
Starting reading Stealing Speed on Kindle. Having a hard time putting it down! Historical spy-like thriller about 2-cycle engine development.
 
1. The Real Lincoln by Tho. DiLorenzo
2. Flyboys by James Brady
3. An Untutored Genius by Lonnie E, Maness
4. Co. Aytch by Sam R. Watkins
5. Mary Chestnut's Journal
6.One Second After by William Forstchen
7. One Year After by Wm. Forstchen
8.The Final Day by Wm. Forstchenrt
9. Fault Lines by Voddie T. Baucham Jr.
10. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
And for a bonus book...Klondike By Pierre Barton
 
1712335146103.png
Who'd a knowed...the Korean war was Stalin's idea to distract their former allies, aka the west, outta Europe, where the USSR was faced with a massive enemy force, to Asia, where they'd fight the Chinese, with whom Stalin had some disagreements...not that Stalin was cheap...he did send the MiG's, and some hotshot pilots, who wasted a lotta B29's... Rather a bloody ploy, but it worked...
 
40north said:
View attachment 322576 Who'd a knowed...the Korean war was Stalin's idea to distract their former allies, aka the west, outta Europe, where the USSR was faced with a massive enemy force, to Asia, where they'd fight the Chinese, with whom Stalin had some disagreements...not that Stalin was cheap...he did send the MiG's, and some hotshot pilots, who wasted a lotta B29's... Rather a bloody ploy, but it worked...
Click to expand...
You mean "Uncle Joe" was our adversary?
 
46th Georgia said:
You mean "Uncle Joe" was our adversary?
Click to expand...
Rather the other way, we wuz his... operation unthinkable, which Stalin knew about, was the Churchill Plan to attack USSR (again, they did it in 1919 too, iirc) using the German Army combined with the UK and US Armies...and that became the plans to nuke USSR in 46 and thereafter, which continue to-day. The "allied" N bomb supply never made enough, and then the Ruskies tested Joe #1 and the race became less deadly...but continued as an "arms race" and the several related "clandestine" and sometimes illegal (terrorist) games, some of which continue...such as the affair in zone Ukraine... The UK and US plans were an open book...many spies. The Ruskies and Soviet Army were weak and exhausted, USSR largely in ruins...So? What to do, asks Uncle Joe... get those yanks and Tommies busy in Asia...we'll arm the Korean Commies, who've been fighting the Japanese fascists really well, we'll arm the chit outta dem fellas...tell em to roll on the fascists...well, what about the UNSC? No problem Comrade! We'll boycott the vote... It worked...and now Comrade Kimster has nifty Ruskie rocket designs, plenty oil, selling ordnance to his new friends...and (evidently) has nice boosted atomic bombs... Interesting that George Blake, a UK diplomat captured by NK early in the war, was so offended by the "allied" bombing of NK, that he became a deep cover Commie spy... speaking of which...see Springing George Blake...https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3478179 And both the Ruski-Japan and the US-Korea wars continue to-day...Stalin's little plan continues to operate. https://www.rbth.com/blogs/continen...r-war-over-korea-became-bloodbath-west-725501 (imho the story has some errors...but the Plans to bomb USSR came to a suspended state after the soviet bomb and the MiG 15 --- and the B-29's burning...) Russia remains a juicy and tempting place to conquer, as we see. ;) The clever, and desperate Stalin might be seen as inspiring the Ruskie Czar...they say he uses the same desk, same office... I look for clues in the History. fwiw myself...I do not much approve of violence....but it happens anyway... ;)
 
Not really reading so much as thumbing through the 1901 edition of Knight's Modern Seamanship
But I did download the book. Written when battleships carried sail and steam without radio...the hard way...and did remarkably well, considering that all the elements of the destruction of a ship reside within her... anyhow>
https://archive.org/details/modernseamanship00kniguoft/mode/2up

(the only time I had the con of a ship I put her in the mud, but I used to be very good with boats, people tell me..personally I don't recall ;) )
 
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