My much better half, or by volume, my much better third, has a meme going. Since it's an interesting one, I shall attempt to propagate it.
The task is, name the books that changed your life. As far as i know, there's no upper or lower limit on the number of books. It's also a tough call. When first challenged, i thought it'd be easy. Then i got stuck. Then i really, really thought about it and realized that life-changing books are rare and also that they tend to happen when you're young enough that your life changes on a day-to-day basis.
Compiling this list felt really pretentious. I thought i'd be throwing in a few curveballs and naming funky works by William Gibson and Iain Banks, Carl Hiaasen and Chuck Pahlaniuk. But they didn't change my life. They changed my week or my weekend, but not my life. The following is not an easy list either to name or to read and i would never have bothered with most of them if i hadn't been under threat of a beating and loss of sports for failing to do so. But, under duress and full of resentment, i read them and they changed me.
#1. The bible. No,
really. It changed my life. After i read it, i never really believed
another damn thing anyone ever told me. If that, the most important
thing in the universe, they all said, if that was mere fiction - as it
self-evidently is from start to finish - then lies and fictions are all
we have.
#2 - Q by Luthor Blisset. Luthor Blisset never wrote of
a word of it but it's a work of absolute genius. Q teaches us how
belief turns into cynicism which eventually becomes weariness at life
and how it works.
#3 - Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. This
is a story of how amused cynicism turns into belief and belief destroys
everything despite its utter falsity. We are none of us immune to these fantasies, it says. And it's right.
#4 - Moonfleet by John
Meade Faulkner. This teaches that there's no good people or bad people
and that everyone does bad things, but that doesn't mean that's all
they do. I read Moonfleet when i was six. I've been looking for it ever
since.
#5 - The Gallic Wars by Gaius Julius Caesar. Like most
of my updated list, this was read under threat of Jesuitical violence
at school, and to make it worse, in the original Latin. Nevertheless,
once you get the hang of it, Caesar wrote his propaganda very
beautifully. The syle is sparse but every phrase is perfectly chosen
in a manner approaching that of Japanese poetry. Caesar's choice of
word-orders and even his use of military terminology in relation to
interpersonal affairs is not only indiciative of the immense strategic
capabilities which he was, let's be honest, showing off about, but it
also echoes down through the centuries to display clearly the origins
of formal English speech. If you think you can speak English, read
Caesar. In Latin.
#6 - Paradise Lost by John Milton. I've been
known to be somewhat scornful of poetry (and the "of poetry" bit may be
redundant...) but when you read Milton, it takes you a long time to
actually figure out that poetry is what it is. The endless rolling
verses numb the mind slightly and you stop noticing them until, and
this is important, you try to remember any of it. Then the verses and
meter do their magic and the phrase or stanza you were thinking of
appears whole in your mind. I don't know why Milton works better than
other classic poetic works for this, but i can't recall swathes of
Beowulf or any of the Sagas whereas Milton leaps straight back into my
head.
Also, there's a fair chance that if Milton had been
writing any time before about 500AD most of the Western world would now
be Satanists and it would mean something very different. Do thou the
Devil's work.
#7 - The inevitable Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas
R. Hofstadter. I won't go into details but most of you already know
why and how.
#8 - Summa Theologica by St Thomas Aquinas and this
one's a tie with Opus Minor de Ocularis by Roger Bacon. Because
learning how to think and how to ask questions is the most important
thing we can ever learn, and Bacon and d'Aquino summed it up in
theological terms. Aristotle is also worth a crack but to be honest, i
found him somewhat dry - St Tom and Old Roj are lively and enthusiastic
by contrast.
So, now to tag people who won't notice.
Joe Ludwig
Steven Davis
Brian Green
Ryan Shwayder
Scott Jennings