That book meme
Sep. 22nd, 2014 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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1) Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien.
When I was about 7 or 8 I got completely into The Hobbit and read it with the obsessive avidity of the young. When I was done I went and asked my mum if the author had written anything else, and she pretty clearly saw an opportunity to shut me up and get me out of her hair for the forseable and took it. "Of course", she said, dumping a doorstop of a tome in front of me. "Off you go".
It took months; I even started taking it to school for
2) The City and the Stars, Arthur C Clarke
My first experience of big idea sci-fi and future history. About fifteen years ago I set out to write a sci-fi novel (which looking at t now seems juvenile and heavily influenced by Iain M Banks. I can dig it out and post the first three chapters if you like) which referenced and was dedicated to Clarke, due to this book.
3) The Horse and His Boy, CS Lewis.
My absolute favourite book when I was little. I wanted to be Shasta when I grew up. In many ways, I still do.
4) The Stainless Steel Rat, Harry Harrison.
When I stopped wanting to be Shasta, i wanted to be Slippery Jim diGriz instead. I think I did better at that one.
5) How to be Topp, Willans and Searle.
Possibly the funniest book I have ever read, I have nicked every single joke - and there's a lot of them - in this book at least once and pretended they were my own. It also led to the writing of Hurrah for Saint Custards!.
6) Being and nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
There are some books which if you don't read them when you're a pretentious teenager, you never should. This is one of them. Fortunately I was pretentious and nineteen at the time, so it fit the bill perfectly. The idea that it's up to you to make the meaning in your life and nobody else's responsibility stuck with me, and I reckon it's visible in my philosophy to this day.
7) The Mind's I, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter
Back when I was doing my degree I took the Artificial Intelligence elective in the third year, on the basis that I wanted to build a thinking machine which would help me subjugate humanity. The actual course took a direction completely unexpected by me; it was run by a computer geek and an amiable old hippy, and the first lecture opened with the pair of them at the front of the theatre. "So", said one of them. "You want to build an artificial mind. Now, who can tell me what a mind is?"
From there the course went off into philosophy and biology and questions of what thinking actually is and what it's for and how it works, and what is known and unknown about it. It was fantastic. The Mind's I is representative of the course, as it was pretty much the first book they told us to read and from there I went off into Godel, Escher Bach (What I understood of it) and Metamagical Themas and way more. It was a doorway into a whole new intellectual world that I'm still exploring.
8) MR James, Collected Ghost Stories.
The absolute master of ghost stories. Everyone steals from James; Susan Hill, Lovecraft, King all owe him a debt which is rarely acknowledged. One of the very few writers - possibly the only one - ever to make me put down the book and look around for a few moments just...to...be...sure...
I nick his ideas all the time.
9) Down Under, Bill Bryson.
Bryson is a fantastic writer. His style is honed, practiced and impeccably well-researched, and then worn with a lightness of touch and a self-deprecating wit that makes him highly engaging. When I do any travel writing his is the style I aspire to and don't get anywhere close to, but hey - aim high, that's what I say. This is his best book, by a fair margin.
10) Irrationality, Stuart Sutherland
One of those books which changes how you see the world. There's a lot in this, but amongst several other things it completely changed how I see and interact in debate; you have to begin on the assumption that other people aren't ignorant or stupid when they disagree. They've just looked at the evidence and come to different conclusions which are perfectly rational and in their interest from their standpoint. It's why I get annoyed when I see people declare their opponents as stupid or ignorant. They ain't. They're just different - and, when they disagree with me, wrong :)
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Date: 2014-09-26 10:11 pm (UTC)Are you relocated to London from bongo bongo land now?
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