An old friend, Tim Ford, revived a Facebook meme this week by posting 10 books that have stayed with him, and tagged 10 friends, inviting them to participate. I tagged 10 people (inevitably leaving out many readers I should have listed) and posted my 10. Arthur Hlavaty has just posted his 10 on his blog; I don't know if he saw my post or was inspired by something else.
Please consider this as an invitation to post my 10 in the comments.
My 10 books (slightly altered from the Facebook posting):
Illuminatus! trilogy, Wilson and Shea
This Immortal, Roger Zelanzy
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
The Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers
Cosmic Trigger 2, Robert Anton Wilson
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison
Money, a Suicide Note, Martin Amis
The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe
Can't point to a particular title, as I love almost all of them, but Jack Vance belongs on that list, too.
Supergee's 10:
Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
Shea & Wilson: Illuminatus
David Cole Gordon: Self-Love / Overcoming the Fear of Death
Joseph Heller: Catch-22
Alan Watts: The Book
Martin Gardner: Fads and Fallacies
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed
Philip K. Dick: Eye in the Sky and others
G. Spencer Brown: Laws of Form (though I haven't managed to finish it)
James Joyce: Ulysses
ETA: And of course The Crying of Lot 49. These top 10 things never work.
6 comments:
Ten books:
Prometheus Rising (revised edition) - Bob Wilson
I, Wabenzi - Rafi Zabor
The Bear Comes Home - ibid
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
Leave It to Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
The Beethoven Quartets - Joseph Kerman
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
The Fusus-al-Hikam - Ibn 'Arabi
Schroedinger's Cat (three volume edition) - Bob Wilson
10 Books
1. The Books of Charles Fort
2. Doctor Dolittle's Island, by Hugh Lofting
3. Illuminatus!
4. A Study of History, by Arnold J Toynbee
5. Howl, And Other Poems, by Allen Ginsburg
6. The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan
7. Slan, by A E Van Vogt
8. The American Political Tradition And The Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter
9. The Irony of American History, by Reinhold Niebuhr
10. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter
The Last Temptation Of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis
The Soul's Code, James Hillman
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
Place Of Dead Roads, William S. Burroughs
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
Catching The Big Fish, David Lynch
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
Cosmic Triggers I, II & III, RAW
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung
Crazy Wisdom, Wes "Scoop" Nisker
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
The Golden Bough(abridged), Sir James George Frazer
Grunch of Giants, R. Buckminster Fuller
The Game of Life, Timothy Leary
Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski
The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P Hall
A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander
-Scott in Wisconsin
Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea.
Cosmic Trigger I by Robert Anton Wilson.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Eumeswil by Ernst Jünger.
My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny.
Center of the Cyclone by John Lilly.
Shamanism: the Beginnings of Art by Andreas Lommel.
The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith.
"...ten and not nine, ten and not eleven..."
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