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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Sep 11, 2018 - 03:14am PT
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I could not possibly have lived this life having read fewer than 10,000 books.
I've not bothered with Joyce's "Ulysses" thanks to Tom Robbins.
I've left Cheyenne with McMurtry three times and always come back to it.
I dare you to do it once.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Sep 11, 2018 - 05:12am PT
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I would add David Denby's 1996 volume "Great Books", which is a grand tour of literature and philosophy starting with Homer and Plato, and ending with Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf. He also addresses both the old and new testaments of the Bible as literature, not from a religious perspective. although obviously religion and literature have been entwined through the ages. This survey approach came from his experience as an undergraduate at Columbia starting in 1961, taking the course "Literature Humanities", and then auditing that same course thirty years later as a middle-aged man.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Sep 11, 2018 - 06:11am PT
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THocking...not sure about that list you posted. 50% of those are/were typical required HS reading.
So if you did your classwork, I'd have thought most folks would have nailed a good chunk of that list.
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Sep 11, 2018 - 07:27am PT
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Lists such as this are incredibly subjective. If your interests run towards science fiction it will be significantly different than if it runs towards military history, or poetry, or adventure/travel. All of those categories as well as a plethora of others are filled with fine reads. I love to read, it is, along with good coffee, my drug of choice. That being said, such a list I would make now would differ greatly from one I would have made back in college. Additionally, there are books that it seems everyone likes that I found to be tedious beyond all belief. Never been fond of anything Ayn Rand wrote (most humorless writer ever, and takes herself way too seriously) and I thought "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" was dense and boring. I love Dostoevsky but thought, and still think, he should be read in the dead of winter in a place that has very cold winters. Loved Herman Hesse back in the day, and have always loved Kurt Vonnegutt, but some of his work is certainly better than some other stuff (Sirens of Titan is a favorite). There are some children's books that I just absolutely love, but gave mine all away to friends with little kids (and I STILL miss those books!). All very subjective, but a life-long love afair ith reading abides in me still.
cheers
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Don'tKnowHim
Social climber
California
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Sep 11, 2018 - 09:36am PT
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"The Dharma Bums" -Jack Kerouac
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Sep 11, 2018 - 09:48am PT
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Besides Vonnegut, a couple of other Hoosier writers should be on the list:
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Sep 11, 2018 - 11:31am PT
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For your consideration:
I like historical novels and here are my a couple of my favorites:
Burr by Gore Vidal. A contrarian view of the American Revolution that argues that Hamilton was the villain in the duel, not Aaron Burr.
The series of 19 or so seafaring novels by Patrick O'brian, starting with Master and Commander. Taken together they are one long, great adventure story.
On the non-fiction side, Robert Caro's The Power Broker is an eye-opening story of how 1960s and 1970s urban renewal projects in New York city decimated poor and minority neighborhoods, all in the name of progress. Caro is one of the best living writers of non-fiction, now working on his final volume of the equally fascinating biography of Lyndon Johnson.
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Mike Honcho
Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 11, 2018 - 05:49pm PT
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Seriously, not trying to bump this thread. Just wanted to say thanks for about a decade worth of solid reading recommendations from y'all. I'm a big reader, history mostly, but have gotten quite the list going now.
For some reason, every Christmas and Birthday my Dad always sends me a pre-loaded $500 Amazon gift card and I blow the whole wad on books. So this is great!
Caylor
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Yury
Mountain climber
T.O.
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Sep 11, 2018 - 05:55pm PT
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Honestly, I read only 2 out of 10. :(
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 11, 2018 - 06:11pm PT
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Honch, if ya like history then honor Rick A’s nod to Patrick O’Brian. I dare ya to stop at one!
Virtually everything that happens in his books actually occurred and often quite closely to
how he so eloquently relates it.
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Mike Honcho
Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 11, 2018 - 06:35pm PT
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Thanks dude, but I actually wrote down everything he suggested. You had me at Rick A!
Funny, I've actually had Master and Commander at the bottom of a fat stack of books for years and just haven't read it.
Super interesting Gore Vidal suggestion that has Alexander Hamilton maybe being the villain! Hamilton seemed like he might have been a really big as#@&%e if you weren't on his side.
If everybody would just read a couple books on a our founding fathers (pick any of them, I don't care which), the US would be a far smarter landscape I think.
Caylor!
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hailman
Trad climber
Ventura, CA
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Sep 11, 2018 - 07:00pm PT
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Agreed everyone's list is different which is cool. I've been affected by two books centered around places I've lived.....
namely the Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold -- lots of Wisconsin pastoral appreciation in there....and....
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. Coastal CA before the Gold Rush? Oh my!!
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 11, 2018 - 07:24pm PT
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There's nothing in books except ink and paper so I threw them into the dumpster ......
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Jorroh
climber
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Sep 11, 2018 - 07:36pm PT
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Three more modern novels that I enjoyed.
By Gaslight
All The Light We Cannot See
The Orchardist
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originalpmac
Mountain climber
Timbers of Fennario
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Sep 11, 2018 - 10:59pm PT
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I never finished Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I was reading it while riding an XR 650 from Colorado to California. And it was breaking down! Agreed with Nick Danger. Dense and boring.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Sep 11, 2018 - 11:44pm PT
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Boardman Tasker Omnibus. Okay, three books in one, but the Changabang stuff is awesome and it's well written.
They each wrote about Changabang, and their individual accounts of the climb, what happened there, are very personal, and different. For a climber this is the real stuff.
As for the original list, Harry Potter with no mention of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or anything by Ambrose Bierce?
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Sep 12, 2018 - 05:56am PT
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I’ve read Zen and the Art 2x, and once by audiobook, far from anything I’d call dense. It’s a worthy book.
Audible.com has gotten better, good selection, often multiple readers for the same book and you can sample them to see what might be tolerable. I drive a lot, great time for a book. It’s a little lazier, but I also have a bit of ADT for the novel, less so for technical books, having someone read to me is nice.
Richard Bach - Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions are quick reads - almost childrens books in thier content - but good - definitely not dense.
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Aeriq
Social climber
Location: It's a MisterE
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Sep 12, 2018 - 06:25am PT
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^^Dense? You want dense?
Godel Escher Bach.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Sep 12, 2018 - 06:45am PT
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Yes, Douglas Hofstader's book "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" is one that I encountered in the late 1970's, or maybe 1980, whenever it was published. I have it to this day. It is an intellectual merry-go-round, for sure, for anyone interested in logic, computer science, and so forth. Though the main topic that suffused the book was really RECURSION, or self-reference of a sort, which anyone who has a software education or a mathematical education would know about. You certainly can see the concept visualized in some of Escher's work. Hofstadter was, and maybe still is, a physics or computer science professor at the University of Indiana. He wrote at least two, and probably more books after that, which were also good... "Metamagical Themas", and "The Mind's I" ( or was it "The Mind's Eye"?) were two, I think? And also wrote a column for "Scientific American" magazine, for several years. I haven't looked him up for several years now online, but perhaps will now.
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