The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I was considering suicide as a young person. I had never read a book before. I read it in one sitting, only breaking to get some food and bathroom. It’s a great story but it changed me and gave me something special. Confidence.
It’s the perfect balance between whimsy, deep themes, emotion and writing techniques.
The Lord of the Rings. It has become such a big part of my cultural self. I love everything about it, but especially the fact that there is an entire universe Tolkien created, mainly because of his love for languages. That kind of passion is absolutely amazing and it kind of taught me that it’s good to be passionate about something. It also taught me that some thing “nerdy” is actually very widely accepted to be one of the greatest works ever written (and one of the greatest films), and in turn it led me to accept that you shouldn’t be ashamed of the thing you like, even if they are nerdy/geeky/dumb or stupid in other people’s opinion. It also got me super interested into world building, which I’m expressing currently in building a boardgame.
Favourite part is hard, but the Ride of the Rohirrim gives me goosebumps everytime someone even mentiones it.
Two things about getting into LoTR, especially as a younger person, that easily go undervalues:
- It is basically a gateway drug to history. The world building goes beyond just “a world”, it’s a history. In fact I’d argue that Tolkien wasn’t aiming at “world building”, except for the minimal amount … but rather “history”, “culture” and “geography” building, which is why his “world” feels so real. As a young person, you’ll basically become a history nerd without realising it.
- It demonstrates very well some powerful ideas about what heroes actually look like. Neither Gandalf nor Legolas nor Aragorn are the heroes of that story. Not even Frodo, as he fails at the end despite his many virtues within the context of the story. It’s Sam and Hobbits in general … the little people with big selfless hearts who made the difference in the battle between good and evil. Eowyn is obviously a relatively feminist figure against the patriarchal backdrop of the world, but without knowing Tolkein’s intent with that character, it’s a pretty natural character arc when you’re already doing the whole Hobbits thing.
For me it was the book Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It played a great part in the development of my beliefs. The most memorable part was where he was talking about the spirituality of science in the chapter “Science and Hope”:
In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.
…
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
Plato’s Republic.
I got really interested by its description in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. After reading the book, I realized how arbitrary the setup of current society is. Then I followed it up with More’s Utopia and Marx’ Das Kapital. A true Big Bang for my political views.
“Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
I’ve read Utopia & Das Kapital, but admittedly at the time they were for school projects and I was young. Too young to pay attention to the real, major themes.
I love to learn about all of those things, I just don’t feel I’m equipped to do it solo & fully grasp the concepts being laid out. Like I almost need someone to tell me what I need to be looking for and why it’s important in each chapter. I love to read, and I do it a lot (fiction & nonfiction), but classics like that…it’s so weird, like I am incapable of understanding it in an intuitive manner, like other books. It’s almost embarrassing to admit.
I find it all fascinating & enjoy learning about it, but I don’t do so well when I go to the source…if that makes sense.
Do give Russell’s History of Western Philosophy a try. It places those books into a much needed context. When I first picked up that book, it was out of a hope to learn more about philosophy, but after finishing it, I only had those three books on my ‘definitely must read’ list. I know there’s a companion book to Das Kapital written by David Harvey, but he’s not the easiest to read either. And Marx, omfg, that mofo has a way of dancing around things for pages on end through the most labyrinthine sentences, so I can definitely commiserate! It took me months to get through the whole thing. Luckily I was in the middle of a move, without TV or computer, so that helped a lot :)
Thank you for the detailed response! That clarifies things a lot. I will give it a try!
I think for me it’s Terry Pratchett’s ‘The Colour of Magic’. Not because of that book in particular, but because of it being a gateway to the Discworld as a whole.
As much as I enjoy those books, and have read almost all of them at this point, it’s more that they taught me how to be a thoughtful, empathetic person when I was a thoughtless, selfish teenager. Almost on the sly, Terry instilled values in me simply by virtue of the heroes of his stories being mostly good people who just want to have a positive impact, even if they’re flawed in different ways.
Like, Sam Vimes is undoubtedly a hero. Night Watch shows us that he strongly believes in the power of good, and that people can - and should - band together to limit the tyranny of power. But he’s also distrusting and curmudgeonly. Nanny Ogg is foul-mouthed bon viveur who places a lot of emphasis on living her best life, but she always puts her family and friends before her if she needs to. Even the Nac Mac Feegle work together for the greater good, even if, in their case, that means being able to get more drunk and fight more violently.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Honestly, Same Vimes is my all time hero. What a character
When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music went on. He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that.
Slaughterhouse-five
I read this a few years after I was in a near drowning accident, it was very surreal to read and has stayed with me since.
deleted by creator
Das Kapital and the explanation of what money is.
My Side of the Mountain. Kid gets tired of family problems, runs away to live in the Catskills off the land on an old family farm. Befriends a librarian who lends him books on survival. He makes his own clothes from deer skin, catches his own fish with homemade hooks, lives in a hollowed-out tree, that sort of thing.
I am currently a bushwhacking bookworm. I suspect it was all that book.
I’m a full grown adult, but I still think about the book, The Giver by Lois Lowry frequently.
I remember reading it in middle school and seeing how sad the monotony of the restricted world was. How cruel people could be acting on orders and/or without their hearts. How educating yourself with different experiences opens your eyes. Among other great undertones and lessons.
I hope to introduce all of my nieces and nephews to it in the future.
weirdly, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
It made me take up reading books as a hobby which I voraciously enjoy doing now.
1984- one hell of a way to start caring about politics
Hyperion, first of all it’s just great and should be right up there with other classics. Second, in this age of AI I keep thinking back to Hyperion.
Days of War, Nights of Love, by the Crimethinc Ex-Workers Collective.
I’m not gonna pretend I’m now some completely freegan anarchist living on the fringes of society or anything like that, but this book really opened my eyes up to what it means to live and the weight of making (or not making, more often) choices about how you live your life.
It was also the kick in the teeth I really needed at the time to finally break free from the (imo rather oppressive) religious structure I had grown up in. I think it would have happened eventually anyways, but it really did a great job of making for a good clean break, in a way where I really feel no lingering regret about it whatsoever (again, choosing how to live), other than maybe wishing it had happened sooner.
I just really wish I had kept in touch with the person that gave me the book in the first place.
Just ordered my copy.
Jiddu Krishnamurti - Life Ahead (talks to students)
"One of the causes of fear is ambition, is it not? And are you all not ambitious? What is your ambition? To pass some examination? To become a governor? Or, if you are very young, perhaps you just want to become an engine-driver, to drive engines across a bridge. But why are you ambitious? What does it mean? Have you ever thought about it? Have you noticed older people, how ambitious they are? In your own family, have you not heard your father or your uncle talk about getting more salary, or occupying some prominent position? In our society - and I have explained what our society is, everybody is doing that, trying to be on top. They all want to become somebody, do they not? The clerk wants to become the manager, the manager wants to become something bigger, and so on and so on - the continual struggle to become. If I am a teacher, I want to become the principal; if I am the principal, I want to become the manager. If you are ugly, you want to be beautiful. Or you want to have more money, more saris, more clothes, more furniture, houses, property - more and more and more. Not only outwardly, but also inwardly, in the so-called spiritual sense, you want to become somebody, though you cover that ambition by a lot of words. Have you not noticed that? And you think it is perfectly all right, don’t you? You think it is perfectly normal, justifiable, right.
Now, what has ambition done in the world? So few of us have ever thought about it. When you see a man struggling to gain, to achieve, to get ahead of somebody else, have you ever asked yourself what is in his heart? If you will look into your own heart when you are ambitious, when you are struggling to become somebody, spiritually or in the wordily sense, you will find there the worm of fear. The ambitious man is the most frightened of men, because he is afraid to be what he is. He says, “If remain what I am, I shall be nobody, therefore I must be somebody, I must become a magistrate, a judge, a minister”. If you examine this process very closely, if you go behind the screen of words and ideas, beyond the wall of status and success, you will find there is fear; because the ambitious man is afraid to be what he is. He thinks that what he is in himself is insignificant, poor, ugly; he feels lonely, utterly empty, therefore he says, “I must go and achieve something”. So either he goes after what he calls God, which is just another form of ambition, or he tries to become somebody in the world. In this way his loneliness, his sense of inward emptiness - of which he is really frightened - is covered up. He runs away from it, and ambition becomes the means through which he can escape.
So, what is happening in the world? Everybody is fighting somebody. One man feels less than another and struggles to get to the top. There is no love, there is no consideration, there is no deep thought. Or society is a constant battle of man against man. This struggle is born of the ambition to become somebody, and the older people encourage you to be ambitious. They want you to amount to something, to marry a rich man or a rich woman, to have influential friends. Being frightened, ugly in their hearts, they try to make you like themselves; and you in turn want to be like them, because you see the glamour of it all. When the governor comes, everybody bows down to the earth to receive him, they give him garlands, make speeches. He loves it, and you love it too. You feel honoured if you know his uncle or his clerk, and you bask in the sunshine of his ambition, his achievements. So you are easily caught in the ugly web of the older generation, in the pattern of this monstrous society. Only if you are very alert, constantly watchful, only if you are not afraid and do not accept, but question all the time - only then will you not be caught, but go beyond and create a different world."
https://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/life-ahead/1962-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-life-ahead-chapter-7
