Do me a favor~!
Could you tell me about a book that's really special to you? Maybe 2?
Summer reading by the pool or the lake or on the deck will soon be replaced by reading in the windowseat in front of a rain wet window, or on the sofa with a yellow glow late into an Autumn night...............delicious! What do you recommend?
WHAT is your favorite book? Were you 10 when you read it? Did that get replaced when you were 32 by something even better? Please tell...
86 comments:
This is tough.
I say this because I had a favorite series when I was a child, the Little House on the Prairie , Series of books.
WVDOTTR
Oh, I love the Little House series, too. Read it when I was about 12, then again during my pregnancies. It's so calming.
But, one of my other favorites is Heaven, Your Real Home by Joni Earickson Tada. It's a deep one. Amazing, life-changing book.
Of course, The Kite Runner.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Definitely in my top ten.
and...a strange little known book by C.S. Lewis. A Greif Observed. A quick and easy read. Worth checking out.
Oh, just thought of another one. Blue Like Jazz. It's edgy, Z. I think you'd like it.
I adored LITTLE HOUSE, too...all of them!
Pinky..TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and THE KITE RUNNER..two of my favorites, too!
I'll have to check out the Blue Like Jazz...I'm not the edgy type, but you never know, do you! Thanks! Have you read the new book by the Kite RUnner's author? They say it's at LEAST as good as this one...got to get it!!
I truly love so many books, but a really strange one that I like is A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay. I discussed it at my own blog a long time ago.
http://gluxian.blogspot.com/2006/03/book-im-rereading.html
all of Terry Goodkind...woohoo!
Bullets Over Hollywood by John McCarty is one of my favorites.
I was always thrilled by American mobster books and movies.
Another good one that I just read this summer is
2nd Chance by James Patterson
CHILDHOOD
1) Anderson's Fairy Tales & Grimm's Fairy Tales
2) Winnie the Pooh, When We Were Very Very Young - A.A. Milne
3) Runaway Rhymes - Alice Higgins & Tom Lamb
4) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
5) Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates - Mary Mapes Dodge
6) Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
7) Heidi. also Vinzi - Johanna Spyri
8) Treasure Island and Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
9) The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum
10) Misty of Chincoteague - Marguerite Henry
11) Lad, A Dog - Albert Payson Terhune
12) Kon Tiki - Thor Heyerdahl
13) The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
14) I Remember Mama - Kathryn Forbes
15) David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
16) The Blue Bird - Maurice Maeterlinck
17) The Egg and I - Betty MacDonald
18) I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
19) Bless This House - Norah Lofts
20) Stella Dallas, Now, Voyager - Olive Higgins Prouty
LATER
1) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
2) Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
3) Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
4) Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
5) The Aspern Papers, The Spoils of Poynton, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
5) The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
6) February Hill - Victoria Lincoln
7) Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
8) The 39 Steps - John Buchan
9) The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
10) The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Three Lives - Gertrude Stein
11) Auntie Mame - Patrick Dennis
12) Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma - Jane Austen
13) The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle
14) The Counterfeiters, The Immoralist - André Gide
15) Tales of Mystery and the Imagination - Edgar Allen Poe
16) The Complete Works of Agatha, Christie, Rex Stout, P.D. James, John Dickson Carr, John D. MacDonald, etc. - I LOVE MYSTERIES!
17) Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
18) The Red and the Black - Stendhal
19) Shakespeare of London - Marchette Chute
20) The Holy Bible
And now I'd have to stop and think, and it's time to go to breakfast, so all for now. ;-)
~ FreeThinke
Two of my recent favorites (in the past year):
1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter
2. Water for Elephants
Right now, I'm reading Cost. So far, so good.
I don't know what my favorite book is. I have so many I loved and still love!
As a child, it has to be Little Women, which I read countless times. Somehow, I never got into the Little House series; I opted instead for Nancy Drew and Zane Grey -- and Gone with the Wind, more than once.
Later, in my 20s and 30s, I read a lot of Michener and particularly enjoyed Centennial and The Source.
For summer reading, I enjoy romances by Rosamunde Pilcher and Anita Shreve.
I also enjoy much of what Stephen King has written. My favorite: The Green Mile.
"The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant. It informed and guided my reading for the next 5 years...
I liked to Kill A Mockingbird. My dad's family was from the south and I identified with the language and mannerisms.
they haven't written it yet!
i'm in the midst of "the haj" and a patrick mcmanus book of his columns from field and stream.
the bio on mr. rogers was excellent - he was such a great guy and ours still appreciate his program on occasion.
Let me just scrape the surface. Gary Jennings wrote a few amazing stories 25-30 years ago. "Aztec" is his greatest and the sequel is "Aztec Autumn." Then he wrote the "Journeyer" about the travels of Marco Polo.
It's physically impossible to put these books down, so pack a lunch.
This is a post I could spend all day writing, so i'll just give one more suggestion, "My Grandfather's Son", the story of Clarence Thomas.
Morgan
Nanc I read "The Haj" when it came out! Do you want me to tell you how it ends? Okay since you insist. Here they are, all together standing at Mecca, and...
Morgan
There have been a few that have been important to me. A few are good for the beach or poolside.
History and Economics:
Fernand Braudel - Capitalism and Material Life
Charles Beard - An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
Biography:
Boswell: Life of Samuel Johnson
Benvenuto Cellini: Autobiography
Hazlitt: My First Acquaintance with Poets
Fiction:
Charles Dickens - all of it, but especially Great Expectations
Defoe, Twain, Melville, those cats.
Art History and Criticism:
Johann Wincklemann - History of Ancient Art
Susan Sontag - Against Interpretation
Poetry:
T. S. Eliot
Poolside I'll take a mystery. I enjoy Sue Grafton quite a bit.
As a kid Heinlein's "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" I should go back and read that. As I recall, Kip didn't really arrive until he realized he was part of a larger collective.
I've been reading the Horatio Hornblower books by Forester since I was in High School. I always took them with me aboard ship when I went on floats, and I just finished reading the series again this week.
Shoprat, never heard of that..need to look into it, thanks for your link.
Throwing Stones.....LA Confidential type of films appeal to you, too? I love that stuff..especially Edward G. Robinson types of films!
Always...Nancy Drew was bliss when I was a kid, too. LITTLE WOMEN...GONE WITH THE WIND. I feel for any girl who didn't read those as a child and i like to give them as gifts.
Womanhonor...Terry Goodkind, never heard of that author.thanks!
FT: I REMEMBER MAMA is one of my very favorite films...I need to get that book. AND, oh, are Jane Eyre and WUthering Heights favorites! Good list..thanks! I just wish you'd be a LITTLE more comprehensive (Smile!)..seriously, if you think of more, let us have 'em! Do you find time to read much these days? I suspect you'd always stick to the classics, huh? Madame Bovary knocks my socks off. The film's great, too...
FJ..thanks. We can thank Durant for your interest that teaches US on your blog.
nanc and Morgan...is THE HAJ a novel or an exposee of islam, or??
Chuck, me, too (Pinky's too, did you see her comment?) And the film is my numero uno favorite of all time, I think. It's perfect on all counts. "Stand up, boy, that's your FATHER walking by" makes me tear up every single time.
Ducky...I can't picture you reading Sue Grafton! Thanks for your list. Have you read any Martha Grimes, if you like mysteries? I think the Richard Jury and Melrose Plant characters would appeal to you (when I've read her last, and I think Mr. and Mrs. Z have read about 18 in the last few months, we're near the end of what she wrote!, I will miss them like good friends who've moved or died.)...Her novels are mostly set in England, which appeals greatly to me. I honestly think you'd like them all..I buy them used for $.01 thru Amazon.com. Give them a try, I'd love to hear what you think. Start with JERUSALEM INN or any others...
DO NOT read THE BLUE LAST until you've read quite a few of them!
Hermit...so you read books again and again. I have friends who do that. I think my business partner had read THE DAY OF THE JACKYL 5 times by 1982! I'm sure it's 50 by NOW! Thanks!
I'm loving this and will make a final list for myself..I hope some of you do the same. Interesting to see if sharing values makes for sharing taste in books!
East of Eden and To Kill a Mockingbird.
I just realized I haven't read fiction in a long time!
I like just about anything by Ray Bradbury.
Along that genre I also like the Riverworld and Dayworld series by Philip Jose Farmer.
I liked the book by Jerry Lewis called Dean and Me.
I'm starting a book on Napoleon and I also enjoy books on Apologetics.
A favorite biography I have is of Sir Richard Francis Burton
History - Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's, The Passing of the Armies is very good. Anything by Civil War historian Bruce Catton is a must read.
Humor - I like Patrick McManus also..his books are hilarious.
oooh and Rudyard Kipling...Rikki Tikki Tavi
I forgot to mention that MORGAN is so right about CLARENCE THOMAS's book..it's a MUST READ for any parent (it shows how utter respect for your parent helps you in your life) and for anyone desirous of peeking into the young liberal mind, especially the black mind, and how it suddenly wakes up to conservatism. It's really very inspiring.
Kevin...STeinbeck's terrific. GRAPES OF WRATH is such a fantastic book, too!
Elbro...apologetics..excellent reading. I got to meet Ray Bradbury, just a hand shaker no conversation, really, .. but I never could get into sci-fi, as you know :-(
I'm unfamiliar with Martha Grimes, z. Another top mystery writer for me is Tony Hillerman.
I'd describe Bradbury as more fantasy than sci-fi. Although there are elements of that in such books as The Martian Chronicles. He also wrote books like Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Illustrated Man.
One of the reasons I enjoyed him is because his books are really shorts stories tied together in a theme.
The beauty of that is you could put the book down after reasding a chapter or two...pick it up a month or two later and you didn't have to remember anything at all about the past stories/chapters.
If you want to read about a remarkable man than I suggest you think about a biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He led the Union soldiers at Little Round Top and probably saved the Union by his actions. He was wounded 6 times and left for dead once. He recovered. Grant thought so highly of him that he put him in charge of receiving the Confederates arms at Appomatox. As the Confederates laid down their arms Chamberlain had the Union Army salute. He went on to become a four time governor of Maine and a college Dean.
Remarkable character.
Chamberlain understood Lincoln's vision for reconciliation between the North and the South.
Meeting Bradbury would have been a treat.
Elbro, that does sound like an amazing man to read about!
Ducky..thanks, I"ll look into Hillerman.
My face is red. Even though no one appeared to notice, it should read ANDERSEN at the head of my list.
Sorry! Things like that are very important to me, and I believe they should be to everyone. Feel free to correct me anytime you find a spelling or grammatical error.
Hermit, my father was very fond of C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower books too.
Ducky, your good taste and erudition is impressive, except for what-I-would-assume-to be anti-Capitalist tomes. ;-}
I'm a little surprised you didn't list Thorstein Veblen among your favorite authors, or is he too mild for your tastes?
Poetry is very important to me too, although there are acres of it I have yet to explore, and probably never will.
The King James version of Psalms, Shakespeare's sonnets, a bit of Pope, Byron, Keat, and Shelley, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Edgar Allen Poe, Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Dylan Thomas, Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash have all brought empathy, delight, fresh insight and inspiration into my life.
I came to a personal conclusion years ago:
There is more truth in poetry [also great plays and good fiction] than there is in any catalogue, collection or recital of mere facts.
~ FreeThinke
PS: I love Great Expectations, too and can't think why I didn't list it earlier.
FT
"the haj" is a fact based fiction.
biographies (chuck yeager my favorite), some apologetics like elbro and books written on the understanding of the book of revelation.
i outgrew most fiction books quite awhile ago - it seems one day i couldn't get enough and the next, no desire to read another. strange.
I used to read a lot of biographies.
One of my favorite fiction writers , especially historical fiction was a writer named Norah Lofts.
She taught History at a girls' school in England.
Went through a phase of reading lots of Phillip Jose' Farmer books, too.
I liked the classics, such as Freethinker mentioned , as well.
WVDOTTR
The Haj is a FABULOUS book from Leon Uris, fiction. Also read "By the Rivers Of Babylon." Ya can't put em down.
This summer while lying by my pool basking in the sunshine and tanning my beautiful body I did read some really great books.
Velocity by Dean Koonty
Just one look by Harlan Corben
The Reagan Diaries by RR and Douglas Brinkley
And a very interesting one called Running the World by David Rothkope
And that's about it for the summer.
nanc, I went through that when I became a stronger believer; all I wanted to read was apologetics.
I have to say I was relieved when I felt like reading fiction again about 2 years later, so I sure do understand your feelings. I just needed the break from politics, etc...
FT..thanks..good stuff.
I have felt, in the last few years, that life is imitating art (debauchery in film and TV, etc.) more than the other way around so your 'more truth in poetry' makes some sense to me.
WV, I've read some Lofts, too...but I'm not GREAT with historical fiction; I have enough trouble remembering the truth to have it fictionalized, too!
Is it John Jakes who wrote the bicentennial series? I read half a book and put the series (which had been a gift) down because I couldn't take reading that Benjamin Franklin was sauntering through the woods when he came upon Abe LIncoln's cabin! (YIKE!)
Leon Uris is good..I'll have to look into THE HAJ...though reading anything on 'that' subject makes me nervous.
There's a wonderful series about life in Egypt which is very famous and I can't for the life of me remember the author or the titles..it's a trilogy and MAN, I wish I had our many books stored alphabetically..it's a MESS to find anything.
I've read every Anita Brookner book...anybody like her, too?
Freethinker, yeah I enjoyed "Theory of the Leisure Class". Veblen's fine with me.
Although Braudel gets down to it and separates capitalism from market economy. Critical difference.
Suspense/Crime:
Books by:
-Michael Connelly
-John Sandford
-Carsten Stroud
-Eugene Izzi
-James Ellroy
-Raymond Chandler
Science Fiction:
-Tuf Voyaging: George RR Martin
-Armor: John Steakley
-The Vang: Christopher Rowley
-Death's Head: David Gunn
BZ
OOh, there are SO MANY.
For fiction-fun, I liked The Jester and being a Trek nerd, I've liked Metamorphosis in the TNG line since I was a teen.
Journal of the Plague Year has also been a favorite.
I admit to slowing a bit in my book reading and cross stitching that I enjoy so well simply because as soon as I put down about a page or so or a stitch or two, I hear, "MOOOOOOM!"
I imagine I'll pick up the pace once again when the smallest is in school... :)
How could I have forgotten
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde?
The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance and wonderful short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne?
Little Women and Little Men by Lousia May Alcott?
The Just-So Stories and Kim by Kipling?
Also stories by Isaak Dinesen (Baroness Karen von Blixen),
Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier.
On the light side, I love Thorne Smith (most famous for Topper).
And then there were Mary Laswell's charming, warmly human romps with Mrs. Feeley, Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen chronicled in One on the House, High Time, Suds in Your Eye and one or two others.
And, Z, I read virtually all the Hardy Boys mystery novels AND Nancy Drew. Loved all of that, but was told by my revered H.S. English teacher that such books didn't count as "literature." Too bad! I still love them anyway.
And believe it or not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm stands out as a memorable and moving childhood treat.
So does Anne of Green Gables.
Never got into Horatio Alger or The Bobsey Twins ––– probably a narrow escape.
Enjoyed Booth Tarkington's Penrod, and later The Magnificent Ambersons.
Of course I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but can't say I enjoyed Twain all that much. My favorite of his is a very funny essay called That Awful German Language. If you and Mr. Z. haven't run across it yet, you'd probably both get a big kick out of that.
And then there are the short stories of Guy de Maupassant full of irony, tinged with bitterness and cynicism but also great style --- very absorbing.
Enjoyed The Great Gatsby and the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but haven't read his other stuff.
Love the short stories of O. Henry (William Sidney Porter).
Hemingway is important, but I can't say I really like reading him.
Frankly hate Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, E. L. Doctorow, etc. Know I'm supposed to read and respect them, but PHOOEY!
Anyone here really read Tolstoy's War and Peace? I tried three times and failed. Same with Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
Frankly, I find most of the French and Russian classics –––and most "serious" modern stuff–––morbid, cynical and depressing.
I guess I'm just a shallow middlebrow at heart, despite having read a helluva lot more than I can even begin to remember.
Wish I could still read books ––– there are so many I've missed, but with two-thirds of my eyesight gone, ninety percent of my reading is done on the internet, because the type can be enlarged so easily.
"Gather Ye rosebuds while Ye may . . ." INDEED!
FreeThinke
MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE...FT..that was sublime. EVERY CHILD ought to read this book. I would like to again! Thanks.
SO many good books on your lists..!
We've been getting power fluctuations so we may finally lose it for a day or two here in Ponte Vedra. They've closed the bridges because of the wind gusts. Nature IS mighty to behold sometimes. The wind is really whipping and the rain is nonstop horizontal. I think I'll have a beer and go sleep with my dogs!
Morgan
FT,
I read War and Peace as a young man hoping that it would be as educational as Chandler's "Campaigns of Napoleon" or Clausewitz's "On War". It wasn't.
Anyone have a copy of Robert Paul Smith's sadly out of print masterpiece "Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing." ?
Speaking of books you loved as a kid.
Ducky, you're a liberal.
You know Beamish could be lurking (even on his birthday! Happy Birthday again, Beamish)
and you write that THIS title is one of your favorites?
YOU are ONE BRAVE DUDE! (Smile!)
and, seriously, thanks...
z - if you want to read a great set of books - read the "series of unfortunate events" - we have them all and nancson has read all of them, myself ten and zgirl eleven - there are thirteen and you will have the best time - they're so nonsensical!
nobody tell me about the last three.
Tip o' the iceberg. This IS tough.
Ditto to Mockingbird and A Grief Observed.
Anything by Poe.
Atlas Shrugged - Rand
A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell
Radical Son - Horowitz
Silence of the Lambs - Harris
1984 - Orwell
Being a horror buff, anything by Stephen King
Pris
I'm a simple ‘cloak and dagger’ kinda guy. Tom Clancy is probably my favorite secular author although Dean Koontz is interesting. Marcus Luttrell 'The Lone Survivor' is a gut wrenching account of his insertion into Afghanistan as a Navy Seal. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=irC4K7Q4JCo
But my all time fav is Clive Staples Lewis. From the Chronicles of Narnia to the Screw Tape Letters, and The Space Trilogy; he has captured my very short attention span.
I am not very much into fiction in my later years, I guess that’s why I only read The Washington Times. But in my youth, I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit, as well as Orwell’s 1984, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. In the vein of non-fiction, I recommend G.Gordon Liddy’s Will, and Ann Coulter’s Treason
Great Gatsby!!!
In all the volumes I listed, I forgot two of THE most influential:
Orwell's chilling classics Animal Farm and 1984!
For some reason I was less impressed by Huxley's A Brave New World. The themes were similar, but the world Orwell drew seemed like a more immediate possibility, and it certainly was tragically prophetic. Huxley's hideous fantasy seems almost Disneyesque in comparison.
Later on in this same vein The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood evoked and built upon the same luridly depressing atmosphere of hopelessness, doom and despair.
I could never say I ENJOYED any of these works. I found them terrifyingly believable and profoundly discouraging.
The opposite is true of C.S., Lewis–––another great I am ashamed not to have mentioned earlier. The Screwtape Letters is, perhaps, the most persuasive argument in favor of Christianity I've ever seen.
Unfortunately, I never knew The Chronicles of Narnia when I was a child, but I have enjoyed reading some of them in latter years, and have given the whole set to two generations ––– my cousins' children and grandchildren.
I enjoyed reading The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had a wonderful imagination and created an aura of grandeur in his great adventure, but it always seemed a bit too much like a takeoff on Norse and Teutonic mythology to me.
Wagner captured the awe-inspiring, epic grandeur of that material and realized its full potential in his Music Dramas much more than Tolkien did in his novels, which come off to me as brilliant but rather childish.
I liked the quintessentially middle-class British character of Bilbo Baggins best with all the cozy, "cottagey" comforts with which he surrounded himself. Like Dorothy's Kansas in the Wizard of Oz, "The Shire" turned out to be the best place to be, and all the excitement and adventure of a daunting unreal world took on a nightmarish quality in the Tolkien Trilogy.
What fun this has been to remind myself –––and to be reminded by everyone here –– of literary adventures half forgotten or too long taken for granted.
Thanks so much for this unusual opportunity, Z. It was great idea ––– and a welcome departure from politics –––something we all need now and then.
~ FreeThinke
thanks to your "recommendation" z, elmer gantry now tops my list!!!
I liked the Happy Hollister mystery series when I was growing up. But my real favorite reading material was Uncle Scrooge comic books.
Also, I read the Lord of the Rings twice.
More recently, I enjoyed the six volumes (about 5,000 pages) of Winston Churchill's history of the Second World War.
I'm a mystery nut.
When I was younger, my favorite was "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin.
Now I love reading:
Dashiell Hammett ("The Continental Op" is a great book of short stories and "The Maltese Falcon" is a must read)
Elmore Leonard (He's got a wide range. He wrote "Get Shorty" and "Out of Sight" which were made into movies...and "3:10 to Yuma" was based on one of his short stories, also)
Mickey Spillane (Start with "I, the Jury")
Andrew Vachss (His Burke novels are excellent, but very dark. Start with "Flood")
boy, Mockingbird sure is a favorite, huh?
FT..thanks for the additional tips..
Pris..didn't know you're a horror fan!!
Gawfer..Tom Clancy's so good! And yes..C S Lewis. I must admit I think SCREWTAPE is a sight gag that could have been handled in two pages, but maybe I ought to read the rest and make sure!? Enough people love that so that I am probably wrong....
DA PAtriot..I've gotta admit; any book that got me reading about a snake advancing across a cracked desert (Grapes) and not slamming the book with boredom HAD to be good. I LOVED Tom Joan...and MA!
Mike's America..I need to read more on Churchill; seems like we're reliving those times. When I heard Russia was pushing Poland around, my blood went cold!
m.a...if you like mysteries with great characters (i mean GREAT) do try Martha Grimes! The characters are so good that I don't mind the that some story lines aren't the greatest!!
PAT, that is the PAYOFF OF THIS POST...if we can get people reading books they'd not considered, how WINNING is THAT? Thanks for the support!! PLEASE let me know what you think of Gantry..it's such a dark story, but worth thinking about, that's for sure. xx
The two books that stick out for me would be:
FICTION
1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Age when read: 15.
2. Paradise Lost by John Milton. Age when read: 16.
NON-FICTION
1. Inside Out: The Story of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason. Age when read: 47.
2. Family of Spies by Pete Earley.
Age when read: 33.
There are many, too many in fact… I will mention three..
Back in 1983 when I was 22 I found a discarded book in the top draw of my work desk. It had a bland and hackneyed image on the front cover, that of a man leaning over a woman on a bed. I casually turned over to the back cover, it read, "Howard Roark was a brilliant young architect … Dominique was a beautiful, desirable woman… This is their story – a story of love…
At the time I had a penchant for love stories but as I began my journey into the world of Ayn Rand, I soon realized that there was much more to the book than a heated affair… It has influenced me ever since… The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
I also enjoy reading the occasional science fiction novel… Here Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a standout for me.
Finally, A great text I come across in 2000, ‘The Art of Possibility’ by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.
~Otto
American Interests
Otto I read Atlas Shrugged and I saw the movie "Fountainhead." When I saw the movie I wasn't very familiar with Ayn Rand, so I didn't think too much of it.
I read Atlas Shrugged less than a year ago and I LOVED the basic story line! It's one that we need to let the looters in government and the Democrat Party need to hear more often, "if you keep screwing with us we will STOP producing!" There were long parts of the book I passed over where she restated her philosophy again and again, I didn't need that since I already know my own mind, and I agree with most of what she wrote.
I'm a small businessman in a state WITHOUT a state income tax, so they hit us small businessman with a hundred different little fees. It's the IRS that makes me jump through flaming hoops of fire. My wife and I have discussed shutting down the business or going BARE BONES on the operating end if Obama wins and increases taxes on us like he's promised. I BELIEVE him! The damn fool looters just never seem to "get it" do they?
Morgan
Speaking of "Fountainhead" the movie. I think that should stand as a monument to how under rated King Vidor was as a director (also see his populist piece "Our Daily Bread") that he delivered such an energetic entertainment when he had that harpy Rand standing over his shoulder with script approval rights through the entire filming.
Brilliant movie, especially the rape scene, an act condoned by Rand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Rand
DUCKY...check out the picture of Rand at this link.....you'd think it was Patricia Neal...THAT's eerie!
Sorry Z, not much of a reader I guess. Unless it's Sport Illustrated or National Review or a great blog like yours!
edge..ya, ya, yaa..butter me up.
Hey, IT WORKED!! LOL! (thankz!)
Brilliant movie, especially the rape scene, an act condoned by Rand.
You mean Rand condoned rape or consensual rough sex Duhkkky?
from Wikipedia:
Some of Rand's fiction features sex scenes with stylized erotic combat that some claim borders on rape. Rand said that if what The Fountainhead depicted was rape it was "rape by engraved invitation."
Great post. Reading a best book list gives a real glimpse into a person's psyche.
Elbro, that's what I saw and I'm glad you posted it here, thanks. As IF she condoned rape.
I wonder if there's anything a little 'weird' that Patricia Neal, who played the girl in FOUNTAINHEAD, looks SO much like Rand. can't be coincidence because I myself have always wondered why they didn't pick a beauty instead. AND, Neal and Gregory Peck were having a wild affair during the filming and, I think, it lasted a while!
I always thought Lauren Bacall should have played Dagney Taggert in Atlas SHrugged ...perfect casting!!
Cube, I agree; that was part of the motivation for this post. Really fun to see this. Plus, what a great reference library!!
Hey, Z! I agree that the picture you referenced really DOES bear a striking resemblance to [an older, much dumpier] Patricia Neal, but I am old enough to remember when Rand first hit the scene, and BELIEVE ME that picture is probably THE most flattering shot ever taken of the Formidable Ayn. [The long-defunct-but-once-hugely-influential New York Herald Tribune instructed us at the time to pronounce her first name as ANN, but that seems to have been lost since her death sometime in the early eighties.]
Anyway, she may have had some dynamite ideas on economics, cultivating self-respect, individualism and great ambition, but she was a hugely disagreeable figure ––– The GODDESS of ANTI-CHARISMA, if ever there was one.
She was also a militant atheist, and looked upon charitable impulses as frankly despicable.
Nevertheless, I completely agree with Rand's assessment of the initiation of the affair between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon. The latter was almost literally boiling over with naked lust for the former. Undoubtedly she would have issued an engraved invitation to Roark, but she didn't give either of them enough time for that. IF a rape occurred, it was definitely SHE who perpetrated it.
Patricia Neal may not have been conventionally "pretty," but she was frankly exquisite in this part. The gal really knew how to wear clothes–––AND she could ACT.
In spite of her success, Rand must be classified as a terrible novelist. Her tendentious prose is over-loaded with preachy, stilted rhetoric, but her ideas were so powerful–––and shocking–––at the time they overrode the limitations of her writing style. And I have to say I love the names she gave her characters.
Bill Buckley, who knew her, indicated she was a consummate hypocrite who believed in one set of standards for others and a completely different set for herself.
Her one and only husband stayed married to her for fifty years (till death did them part), despite her frequent and flagrant infidelities, so either she was lovable in some unknown dimension or her husband was a Masochist.
I'd bet on the latter.
FreeThinke
Hey, Z! I agree that the picture you referenced really DOES bear a striking resemblance to [an older, much dumpier] Patricia Neal, but I am old enough to remember when Rand first hit the scene, and BELIEVE ME that picture is probably THE most flattering shot ever taken of the Formidable Ayn. [The long-defunct-but-once-hugely-influential New York Herald Tribune instructed us at the time to pronounce her first name as ANN, but that seems to have been lost since her death sometime in the early eighties.]
Anyway, she may have had some dynamite ideas on economics, cultivating self-respect, individualism and great ambition, but she was a hugely disagreeable figure ––– The GODDESS of ANTI-CHARISMA, if ever there was one.
She was also a militant atheist, and looked upon charitable impulses as frankly despicable.
Nevertheless, I completely agree with Rand's assessment of the initiation of the affair between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon. The latter was almost literally boiling over with naked lust for the former. Undoubtedly she would have issued an engraved invitation to Roark, but she didn't give either of them enough time for that. IF a rape occurred, it was definitely SHE who perpetrated it.
Patricia Neal may not have been conventionally "pretty," but she was frankly exquisite in this part. The gal really knew how to wear clothes–––AND she could ACT.
In spite of her success, Rand must be classified as a terrible novelist. Her tendentious prose is over-loaded with preachy, stilted rhetoric, but her ideas were so powerful–––and shocking–––at the time they overrode the limitations of her writing style. And I have to say I love the names she gave her characters.
Bill Buckley, who knew her, indicated she was a consummate hypocrite who believed in one set of standards for others and a completely different set for herself.
Her one and only husband stayed married to her for fifty years (till death did them part), despite her frequent and flagrant infidelities, so either she was lovable in some unknown dimension or her husband was a Masochist.
I'd bet on the latter.
FreeThinke
Don't know why that posted twice. Sorry!
FT
I'm late with this and still recovering from the fact that the Duck and I share some common favorites!?!?!?
But, my all time light reading is 'The Sea Island Lady' placed in the S.C. Low country. The author bases the ending chapters on an elderly southern lady's boarding house. That lady happens to be my husbands grandmother!
Patricia Neal may not have been conventionally "pretty," but she was frankly exquisite in this part. The gal really knew how to wear clothes–––AND she could ACT.
-----------------------
Top shelf actress. Absolutely off the charts in Hud.
FT..thanks for the background...she was never my favorite anything, that's for sure; mostly I ate my heart out wondering what Gary COoper saw in her in real life, but she must have had something going for her! She did wear clothes well, no doubt about it.....maybe she wore no clothes well, too!!?
JungleMom..thanks..I'd like to see if I can get that. How interesting that your relative's in there!
If it's by Ann Coulter, C.S. Lewis, or Thomas Sowell, chances are it's worth reading.
I was also very impressed with Josh Muravchik's "Heaven on Earth." It does a good job of showing how dogmatically socialists followed their cause despite emperical data that refuted it. Those that questioned the socialist creed were denounced as heretics.
Also, Paul Johnson's "History of the America People" was excellent. It's a long book, but from the 1920s to the end of the century, the pages flew by.
"Skunk Works" by an author whose name I can't remember was also good. Its an account of some of the developmental products Lockheed Martin has developed. I recommend it to both engineers and nerds (but then I repeat myself).
Orwell's 1984 was very enjoyable. It's brief and easy to understand and really makes you mad at those socialist pigs.
For series of childhood books, I remember the "Encyclopedia Brown" mysteries. I never figured out the mystery without looking at the answer. I also read the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. I usually chose the option that involved going to the higher number page. I thought I'd get through the book faster that way.
--Tio Bowser
Thanks, Tio! SKUNK WORKS sounds like something Mr. Z would like!
Let's see...
The Great Gatsby
Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde
The Reagan Dairies
Dragonriders of Pern
Anything by Louis L'Amour
Floating in my mother's palm
The Shanarra Books
The Screwtape Letters
Mere Christianity
The Black Arrow
The Count of Monte Cristo
Educating Esme
Gunning for Ho
The Mother Tongue
OK I'll stop now
vegas guy..GREAT! But DON"T STOP!
Z, am I too late to recommend culturism???!?!??!! I'd send you a free copy if you'd read some of it. You can find my email to ask me for one via my website. Other than that, my book summaries on my website has a lot of faves and explains why they are loved.
www.culturism.us
hi z! this is a great post!
here are a few of my favs:
We Were the Mulvaneys by joyce carol oates
A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard F. Mosher
Before You Know Kindness by chris bohjalian
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
any book written by stephen king.
A Crime in the Neighborhood by suzanne berne
;)
~m
m! I had forgotten about WE ARE THE MULVANEYS..>SUCH a power book..thanks!
I need to check into that fellow Armenian's book...
Thanks SO much. And great to see you.
NOW KEEP WRITING..go back write (Bird by Bird..know THAT book?!), girl!! (Smile)
m..just ordered BEFORE YOU KNOW KINDNESS and realized I HAVE read the author's MIDWIVES, which I remember liking, tho it's been a long time...!
Thanks for the sweet kiss ass comment (JUST KIDDING!)
me, too, kiddo
Well, this page is still alive I guess so I'll post a word or two. There's no point in trying to figure out my favorite book because whatever I'm reading at the moment is my favorite, if it's good anyway, and my interests are pretty specialized these days so my list wouldn't fit in here anyway.
One great recent read is Dean John William Burgon's The Revision Revised, about the 1881 inception of all the non-King James Bibles, a disaster to Christianity, and tonight I'm reading another great in the same vein, Edward F. Hill's The King James Version Defended. GREAT book. The man has an amazing breadth of historical knowledge he manages to present clearly and concisely. And this is why I decided to post here -- I thought this might be appreciated here:
Adam Smith's famous book had far-reaching effects. For one thing, it transformed economics from a practical concern into an academic matter. Soon economics was taught in universities and written about in scholarly publications by theorists, many of them with little actual experience in commerce and industry.
Then, as the years rolled by, these scholarly "economists" grew more ambitious. No longer content merely to teach and write but desiring to rule, they gravitated more and more toward socialism. Discarding Adam Smith's principle of laissez-faire, they founded organizations and political parties to work for state ownership and control of economic resources.
One of the best known of these socialistic associations was organized in 1884 by a group of English radicals. Since their strategy was to bring about social changes gradually, they named themselves the Fabian Society after the ancient Roman general Fabius, who won a decisive victory through the policy of delay. Not less sinister, all through the later 19th century there lurked in the background the communist party of Marx, Engels, Bukharin, and Lenin, who developed Adam Smith's emphasis on the importance of labor into a program of world-wide revolution and world-wide governmental ownership and control allegedly for the benefit of the workers.
The catastrophic changes of World War I fanned all these smoldering embers into flames which reached our own country in 1933. Since that date the government of the United States has fallen increasingly under the domination of subversive elements (socialists, Fabians, communists) commonly called the "Liberal-left." With this Liberal-left at the helm, our American ship of state has met with disaster after disaster, especially in the international sphere. Since World War II communists have taken over Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and parts of other regions such as Indochina, the Near East, Africa, and South America. More than one billion human beings have been enslaved.
And when we come to armaments, the situation is still more frightful. In 1962 the United States had 2 1/2 to 10 times as much nuclear firepower as the Soviet Union. (102) In 1972, after the signing of the Salt I armament agreement in Moscow, Dr. Henry Kissinger acknowledged that the Soviets had a 3-to-1 advantage over the United States in explosive tonnage. (103) But the only response of the Liberal-left to this terrible danger has been to cancel the B-1 Bomber, delay production of the neutron bomb, and give away the Panama Canal.
For many years it has been evident that the long-term objective of the Liberal-left leaders is to bring about the surrender of the United States to the Soviet Union. This drastic step, they believe, is necessary in order to establish a World Government. In 1958 the U. S. Senate was thrown into furor by tidings of a book entitled "Strategic Surrender," which had been prepared by the Rand Corporation, the first and greatest of the federal government "think-factories," and distributed to the U. S. Air Force. (104) In 1961 a bulletin was prepared by the State Department proposing surrender of military power to a United Nations Peace Force. (105) This also was discussed in the Senate, but this time there was no furor. Instead the bulletin was defended by a liberal Senator as "the fixed, determined, and approved policy of the Government of the United States of America." (106) In 1963 a study was made by a group of 60 scientists and engineers headed by Nobel-prize-winning physicist Eugene P. Wigner in the area of civil defense. The group proposed a tunnel grid system which for the price of $38 billion would provide all U. S. cities of over 250,000 population with protection against nuclear attack. Their report was submitted to the Defense Department and placed in storage. (107) Similarly, on Feb. 9, 1967, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended a plan providing a thin anti-missile defense for the entire United States and added protection for the 50 largest cities. (108) A bill endorsing this plan was passed by the Senate 86 to 2 on Mar. 21, 1967, but Defense Secretary McNamara said it would be too expensive ($4 billion a year for 10 years), and so nothing was done about it. (109)
In 1969 appropriations were voted for two anti-missile sites, but only one was constructed, and even this was abandoned in 1975. In contrast, the Russians have a fully operative anti-missile system around Moscow. Most of their new factories are built away from large urban areas, and Russian society is now equipped to go underground at short notice, with immense shares of foodstocks buried. Missile sites also have been hardened to about 15 times the strength of those in the United States. (110)
If the projected "strategic surrender" of the United States to a Russian dominated United Nations actually takes place, Bible-believing Christians everywhere will be facing persecution and death, and the preaching of the Gospel will well nigh cease. Until Jesus comes, therefore we must do our duty as Christian citizens. We must expose and oppose the evil program of the Liberal-left and work for the re-armament and security of our country. All available resources must be allocated to this end. Wasteful programs must be discontinued.
Does this mean that we are to return to the economic doctrines of Adam Smith? Not quite. For Smith was a skeptic, a friend of David Hume, and because he was a skeptic he failed to appreciate, or even to consider, the most important of all the causes of the wealth of nations, namely, the blessing of God and the influence of Christian Truth. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt. 6-33). Even earthly interests prosper best under the sunlight of the Gospel. This is why even unbelievers, even those who reject the Saviour whom the Gospel proclaims, prefer to live in Christian countries rather than non-Christian countries and in Protestant countries rather than in Roman Catholic countries. And the testimony of history is to the same effect. The Near East, for example, was once the richest region in Christendom, but after the Mohammedan conquest it speedily became poverty stricken. At the time of the Reformation Spain and Italy were the most wealthy nations in Europe, while England was poor and Scotland barbarous. Then the Gospel came to Britain, and this relationship was reversed. And in all North and South America the only wealthy nation is our own United States, in which alone (with the exception of the Protestant provinces of Canada) the preaching of the Gospel has had free course.
While defending our country, therefore, we must not forget to defend the Bible, for this is still more basic. Honesty, moral purity, and trust in God are the foundations of national and personal prosperity, and these fundamentals are taught only in the holy Scriptures. Two things have I required of Thee; deny me them not before I die: Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me (Prov. 30:7-8). But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19).
The book was originally written in 1956 but obviously updated later. He died in 1981.
Sorry, it's lengthy.
Oh, it's online at:
http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/kjvdcha2.htm
He said THIS in the fifties!?
"For many years it has been evident that the long-term objective of the Liberal-left leaders is to bring about the surrender of the United States to the Soviet Union. This drastic step, they believe, is necessary in order to establish a World Government."
I thought this was a newer idea.....how hideous. We've been sleeping. I'm going to look more into this book..thanks.
I don't think he says much more about politics in the book, Z, as you'll no doubt find if you follow the link. And since that passage was of course updated since 1956 there's no way to know how it read back then. I would guess that possibly the term "liberal-Left" wasn't used then, for instance, but I don't know. In any case, they were aware of the real threat of Communism more than we recognize today, weren't they?
they sure were, Connie. If we hadn't been sleeping, thinking nothing COULD happen to weaken our America populace, it wouldn't have become as bad as it is today, right?
CJ and I are the same age. BELIEVE me, the evils of Communism were drummed into my dear little ear from FOURTH GRADE onward. Communism was something we children were CONDITiONED to hate, fear, and utterly despise–––and rightly so.
That CONTINUED until after I graduated from high school. Then in the Sick-sties it changed "in the twinkling of an eye."
I don't know where everyone ELSE'S parents and grandparents were or what they doing back in the thirties, forties and fifties, but MINE were FULLY AWARE of the THREAT presented by the FDR's NEW DEAL. Every one in MY family knew what we were up against from the beginning.
By the way, "CJ" you and your author seem to proceed from the assumption that before the mid-to-late 1800's we had established a PURE and IDEAL Christian Community that "liberals" and new translations of the bible somehow ruined.
I'm sorry, but Christianity has always been "a work in progress" and still is. Like everything else that's alive an understanding of who and what God really is and the role He plays in our lives EVOLVES.
Christianity is whatever the people who practice it in any given location MAKE it out to be. That may be regrettable, but happens to be the truth. Even within one of the many Christian denominations it's hard to find two churches that seem identical.
George Bernard-Shaw, an incredibly brilliant and accomplished man, was a Fabian, and he certainly played a most creative, affirmative role in the development of late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century Western Culture. I believe the Fabians were sincerely motivated by a desire to do right by their fellow man. MARX and HIS followers on the other hand were all about VENGEANCE and DESTRUCTION. Marxism is a HATE-BASED initiative. Fabianism is not.
I've known several members of the Fabian Society in Britain, and they were all lovely, good-natured, good-humored, fun-loving, well-spoken, highly-intelligent people, even if they did believe in taxing themselves into prosperity and equity for all.
But every MARXIST I've ever known has been grubby, dour, bitter, cynical, unhappy and filled with contempt for humanity.
Huge difference there! HUGE.
FreeThinke
Hi, FT, In some says, Christianity is no more A WORK IN PROGRESS than the Constitution is.
One either believes it and adheres to it or not. That denominations bastardize it is one of the saddest, nonChristian things going today.
and very popular. THAT, I'd say, is how one could call Christianity "alive"...people are trying so hard to kill it.
Hi, Z,
The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times. There is provision within the Constitution for it to be amended numerous times again. It's a difficult, tedious and cumbersome process, but the capacity to "move and change with the times" was built in by the Founders, who were incredibly wise.
No two people see any one thing EXACTLY the same way. I believe we were DESIGNED that way for a purpose by God, just as the Constitution was designed by the Founders with a degree of flexibility.
As with most things, it's bad if there is DELIBERATE INTENT to do mischief or violate basic principles.
History is an endless stream of endless change. It couldn't be stopped at 1776, nor should it be.
"ALL things work together for good to those who love God." ALL things, not just the things of which some of us approve or find appealing.
Love,
FT
as always, we agree to disagree.
And, the fact that the amendments are SO hard to achieve is pretty much evidence of what I suggested, FT.
WHatever......all things DO work for the good, "FOR THOSE WHO ARE CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE."
The more I study, the more I love it, that's for sure!
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