mushin no shin

Yikes! Here’s the danger with that “save draft” function, it’s way too easy to leave something hanging. So anyway Huck tagged me with this here book meme, so let’s go ahead and lay it out.

[1] Name 5 of your favorite books

• The Illuminatus Trilogy – Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
  Hoo-boy, how to describe this one? Can you imagine Hunter Thompson feeding Ayn Rand some acid and convincing her to rewrite the JFK screenplay in the style of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide”? No? Neither can I. Just read the fnording book.
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
  I can’t even begin to comment on this without running the risk of either sounding too dramatic or not dramatic enough. I’ll just say I’ve read it many times, but I’m glad that I haven’t in a long time.
• Progress and Poverty – Henry George
  I cannot lavish enough praise on Henry George or this book. Apparently neither can fanboys like Einstein, Tolstoy, and Huxley. Simply put George’s ideas are the missing link that completely obsoletes the economic arguments between the left and right. Communists and Captialists are both half wrong and both half right and both for the same reason, and George figured it out almost 130 years ago.

(I’m going to have to cop out on the last two… but I’ll pick ‘em back up down in “books with meaning”)

• Collected works of Hermann Hesse
  At first I was going to list Siddhartha, but I realized this was only because it was the first I read, some 16 or 17 years ago. I think however that each of Hesse’s works has become my new favorite as I’ve read them. The book I’ve most recently absorbed (last year) was The Glass Bead Game. I suppose there is some quirky humor in having found my way to Buddhism through a German novelist, but I’m certainly not the first westerner to do so, and won’t be the last.
• Collected works of Hunter S. Thompson
  Here again I can’t pick just one. In HST’s case though I think it’s more because he’s really only written one book, it just never ends. He seems to stop writing when the deadline hits, then just pick up where he left off with the next one. I’m currently in the middle of Kingdom of Fear, unfortunately his last work. I don’t know why he left us, but he is already missed.

[2] What was the last book you bought?

I made a post-Christmas trip to Davis Kidd and stocked up for a while:
Hunter Thompson – “Kindom of Fear” (reading now)
The Taoist I-Ching
Tolstoy – “War & Peace” (yup, finally gonna tackle it)
BKS Iyengar – “Light on Yoga”

[3] What was the last book you read?

“The Tibetan Book of the Dead” — the original western publication edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz and translated by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. It’s not supposed to necessarily be the best or most accurate version, but I wanted to see the context in which it was presented to the West. Of particular interest was one of the introductary sections, written by Carl Jung, who discussed some of the parallels between Buddhism and western psychology (or at least his school thereof).

[4] Name five books that have particular meaning for you.

• “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” — by the time I read this, the material was not as illuminating as it might have been at an earlier point, but I give it props and insist that others should read it. Its significance to me? It was the only decent book I could get my hands on during my 45 day stint in the Hotel Broward County. Reading it 3 times in a row was still welcome relief from reading Tom Clancy trash once. (Though trashy pulp fiction was still welcome relief from the days I had nothing to read…)
• “Siddhartha” — my high school AP English teacher had me read this, as a “special” assignment. See, I was failing her class (like most others), mostly due to never being there, mostly due to the typical problems of being a rebellious 17 year old surrounded by dysfunction. She knew of course that passing her class would have been trivial for me if I showed up and tried and stuff. So she she gave me this assignment to save my hide. It worked in ways she may or may not have ever imagined…
• “Legal Daisy Spacing” — nothing to see here, just a token keepsake of the person who gave it to me
• “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” — at Lollapalooza 1, way back in 1991, I dropped some acid with a stone cold freak I met at the show, who first introduced me to HST’s work and gave me a copy of this book. Even though I was already well on the path, I like to think of that day as being at least memorial of my decision to “drop out”.
• “The Camel” (aka “Programming Perl”). OK I’m a nerd. I list this because learning perl & reading this book was integral to my returning to my nerd roots.

[5] Three books you are dying to read but just haven’t yet.

• L. Neil Smith – “The Probability Broach”. It’s just been recommended by so many people whose opinions I trust that I know I need to read it. I’ve read & enjoyed a lot of Smith’s nonfiction.
• The “Chang Tsu” – the second important work of Taoist literature after the Tao te Ching. I was actually going to buy this on my last trip to the bookstore, but I couldn’t find it (hence I picked up the Taoist I-Ching instead).
• “1984″ — well, not so much dying to read it as embarassed that I haven’t. But do I really need to read it, seeing as we’re living it?

[6] Tag five people to go through this same ordeal.

• Cory
• Mike
• Nathan
• Winston
• Brittney (nope, being hostess doesn’t let you off the hook)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 10th, 2006 at 11:08 am and is filed under Babble, Memes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.