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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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What? No Separate Reality?
Tao of Physics, was pretty eye opening, since I'm not a math whiz.
Certainly the most sobering:
Confronting Collapse
The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World
by Michael C. Ruppert
If you want a care-free go-lucky day, don't bother with this one.
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howlostami
Trad climber
Southern Tier, NY
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I think Siddhartha forced more constructive intellectual activity from my noggin than most.
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anees
climber
temporary exile from the land of enchantment
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Vote #3 for Godel Escher Bach, for making one re-evaluate long-held unconscious assumptions.
On a more artistic note: Omeros, by Derek Walcott. An re-telling of Homer, the Illiad and the Odyssey, set on the post-colonial Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Written in verse. For those of you who are very familiar with the Homeric works, it's mind-blowing. I return to it again and again.
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Bad Climber
climber
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Another vote for Tao of Physics. The mathematics and more extreme abstractions near the end start to run away from me, but I really loved that book. One of the more fiercely intellectual books I've read is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Jeez what a thick read. Currently I'm working on City of Quartz by Mike Davis about Los Angeles. Thick sledding at times but great stories about weird aspects of LA most never encounter. More accessible and hugely fun is The Ecology of Fear, a noir history and profile of LA. Simply fantastic!
Keep on reading.
BAd
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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I'll also go with Guns Germs and Steel for non fiction. Previous mention of Siddhartha made me think of all those Hesse novels, I think I'd go with Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) for fiction.
If you're looking for a more gonzo fiction classic, I'd have to say Giles Goatboy by John Barth. How can you not be entranced by a story about a young man that is sired by a computer and a virgin and then raised by goats. When he reaches the age that he has to decide what he's going to do with his life, he realizes that the only thing he's qualified to do is...be The Messiah!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Someone mentioned Stephen Jay Gould's, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. That get's my vote for the just plain heaviest book I've read (as in hurts when you drop it on your foot).
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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The one that comes to mind for me is "To Kill a Mockingbird."
But!
I was in first grade, and had just begun to read(at the "See David run." level), and was hooked on reading about as badly as I was when I first began climbing - HOOKED. I went to my mother's bookshelf and pulled that one...
It took every ounce of my mental capacity, at that reading level and age, to get through some of it, and I am sure I did not finish the book, of course. I just remember being totally baffled in trying to connect the concepts from one paragraph to the next.....
Everything is relative, I guess!
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mawk
Big Wall climber
Hugo, MN
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I'd cast another vote for Kant.
And I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Pynchon yet: "Gravity's Rainbow" or "V".
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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interesting post, but i would split "heavy" into "dark" and "dense".
"dark"--anything by stephen king. i read one. that was enough.
"dense"--tripmaster monkey. i liked pirsig's book, but i don't think it was either dark or dense. some books i avoid because of their density--harmony by walter piston was one. gödel, escher, bach got hold of my youngest brother's imagination and he hasn't done anything outdoors with me since. yes, gravity's rainbow by thomas pynchon sounds like it'd be pretty heavy. (is he still hiding somewhere in california? does anybody know where?) i read his vineland, a tad lighter. that was enough.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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"Guns Germs and Steel" has had several mentions.
VDH's "Carnage and Culture" is a great counterpoint.
He deconstructs Diamond fairly convincingly.
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The Lisa
Trad climber
Da Bronx, NY
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Bluering, I have read all of King's novels (including 'Bachman') but thanks for the offer. I detest a lot of his more recent novels like 'Gerald's Game' but 'It' stands out for me as extra 'deep' and not just a horror story with kids.
I do love Helprin novels, looks like a few here are fans. James Joyce takes some work to read and I find reading 'Ulysses' aloud helps absorb the narrative.
I got a lot of food for thought from Ayn Rand's novels so decided to tackle one of her philosophy books.
I am also reading Aristotle's 'Ethics' so it is interesting comparing the two books.
I do not know whether my iPad is ultimately a blessing or a curse. Instead of carrying one physical book with me to read at a time, I carry many diverse books digitally and can switch from one to another if I have my fill of philosophy and want to read a horror story.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Upton Sinclair - The Jungle, and after you stop eating meat, think about the process of 'speeding up' he describes in other contexts.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Ahhhh! Gravity's Rainbow, that was a tough one for me. Maybe it was the sentence that was 1 1/2 pages long, or the adenoid that ate NYC, I think it would be better read on mescaline.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Lots of good stuff here,
also
Pattern recognition William Gibson
Freud's analysis of da Vinci's bird dream is fascinating and perhaps a cautionary tale about lucid dream interpretation.
Did anyone Mention Hawkings?
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howlostami
Trad climber
Southern Tier, NY
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Mawk;
I was thinking about about mentioning Pynchon, but although I've technically "read" "V" and tried "Gravity's Ranibow" a couple times (trying again as of recently), I can't claim to be any better off for having done this... "Slow Learner" is his book of early short stories, and those are wonderful, I'd recommend them to anyone. Of course "Vineland" is a must read for all you left coasters :)
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crøtch
climber
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn opened my eyes more than most books I have read.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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first-place: A Scanner Darkly -- now a shittty indie movie starring Keanu Reeves! A discourse on the nature of "self".
Anyway, I'm looking to crack another good book. Show what you got.
I'm not a Reeves fan, but I thought the movie was actually pretty good.
For intellectually heavy books I have read (at least in the sense of looking at every word), it would have to be some of the Nietzsche stuff I tried to work through.
For a great, long, serious, enlightening work, I would recommend Anna Karenina.
For a great, short, fun, enlightening work, I would recommend Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. I read this as a Freshman in college and it had an impact on me also. It was a seminar class with a wide ranging reading list. For instance, reading some of Isaac Newton's views on science was memorable also.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Richard Reti's Masters of the Chessboard
Not only did I learn a lot about chess, but it is a good template for the study of any endeavor. Understand what was past and you learn what is to come. I even applied it to climbing, and it worked!
Second place would be any musical score by JS Bach. The more you learn, the deeper he gets. It's scary.
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