| back to the future! |
[Dec. 11th, 2005|12:46 pm] |
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SO. I'm going to GRADUATE soon. I want graduation PRESENTS. Specifically:
I want lists from people of books that have changed their life in some manner. These lists needn't be long, and they needn't be annotated. You can comment here, or email me. I need a nice long list of good books going into the new year.
Note that I am not asking for the best books you have read, or your favorites. I want the ones that have fallen at crucial times in your life, and left a mark.
For encouragement, I offer a short list of my own:
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig. I read this on the Greyhound from Ithaca to Charlottesville, Fall of 2002, during which ride, I decided to leave Cornell.
2. What the Buddha Taught, Rahula. Concise, straightforward. Read it making coffee outside in November 2003.
3. Philosophy and Social Hope, Rorty. Read it this last Spring.
4. The American Scholar, Emerson. It took me a while to decide what of Emerson to put on this list, but this was the first thing I read, so it won. First read it December 2004.
5. The Meeting of East and West, Northrop. This book is long as shit, and a little outdated, but it was the first philosophy book that I read without cringing. Read it recording with FbD, summer 2004.
6. Ghandi's Challenge to Christianity. I forget the name of the author, but he was a Christian Missionary in India in the 1930s. This book is both brilliant and impossible to find. Read it in that rain-forest of an apartment, summer 2004.
7. Acts of Faith, Stark & Finke. I spent so much time with this book last semester it was unhealthy.
8. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wilde. Spring 2001, high school graduation.
9. The Art of Loving, Fromm. Fall, 2004. I read this immediately after The Road Less Travelled, which was also seminal, but wasn't quite as simple. Thus Fromm makes the list and Peck gets and honorable mention.
10. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera. Read it on the plane from Ithaca to DC, for my sell day at my future employer. Made me think the world was beautiful again.
// end request.
--
I have spent the last couple of days thinking about what life might/will be like when I move to DC. Thinking about money, and what I'm going to do with it (which is, put it into an investment portfolio automatically so I don't even see it.) Thinking about how I am going to exercise (some nice yoga studios in Georgetown), where I want to live (right now, Vienna or Georgetown), how I can still read books and have some sort of intellectual life while working 60 hour weeks (haven't solved that one yet). Over all, I am getting very excited about the move. I am very excited about my west coast trip in January, and, really, very excited to start work. I don't want to build it up too much in my mind for fear of disappointment, but the people at this place seem awesome, the work seems like it will be cool. I don't think I will ever get bored.
I'm thinking more about music, again, thinking about trying to put together a solo act and play out in DC. Not for a career, for me. I tried, for the first time in god knows how long, to write something new on the guitar yesterday. I would like to get something set up to record with and put a couple of demos down. I think if I don't get something musical established in my life right off the bat, it will be a rougher transition.
As usual, I have the most to say when I should be studying. Last final ever tomorrow. Back to the books. |
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