First Monday Book Day

Not First Monday Book Day: Maker-Breakers

175 Comments

[copied and pasted from the Cuppa, per CH's pleadings]

also, and I know it's not First Monday, so I should probably save this for another three weeks for when I don't have a book post to offer, but I've seen this floating around the Bookface and it looks fun.

Books That Made You Who You Are ~
Instructions: In your status line, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard - they don't have to be ‘right’ or ‘great’ works, just the ones that have touched you.

1. John Christopher, The White Mountains (and the rest of the Tripod series). I wrote my first (and pretty much only) fan letter to John Christopher after reading the Tripod series in about 1971 or so. He wrote back, via an airmail letter. I think I still have it somewhere (probably buried in some of my stuff at my parents'). Some of the very first sci fi that I ever read.

2. Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising (and the rest of the sequence). Harry Potter before Harry Potter. Among the first fantasy novels I ever read (also early-to-mid 1970s). I was transported.

3. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. One of the books I read the summer before I started grad school. It profoundly reinforced my predilections for graduate training.

4. Franz Kafka, I Am A Memory Come Alive. Autobiographical essays and writings by Kafka. I went through a long Kafka phase in high school, reading (in translation) just about all of his published stuff. Kafka's work was one of the reasons I chose to study German for my foreign language requirement at Carleton. Boy, was that a mistake. I suck at foreign languages, and Kafka isn't really any easier to understand in the original.

5. Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber. A compilation of the ten short novels in the Amber Chronicles. So this is cheating, after a fashion. Zelazny was amazing; I was thoroughly captured when I discovered Nine Princes in Amber in the mid-to-late 1970s. Reading the Amber books naturally enough led me to the rest of his works. Wow.

6. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy. One of a handful of foundational works in modern political science, and by a Carleton grad. He's not the most, uh, entertaining, writer. But this book is pretty bitchin' for a dissertation.

7. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. I read this one because the Mrs had read it for a psych class. It was my introduction to Gould, a brilliant essayist.

8. D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Logic of Delegation: Congressional Parties and the Appropriations Process. I may or may not have been intimately involved in the development of this book as a graduate student. It certainly had a profound impact on my scholarly worldview.

9. William H. Riker, Liberalism Against Populism. Riker was the rock on which the University of Rochester's political science graduate program was built, a leader in the "rational choice" school of political science. This was his most influential book, or rather, his most influential "late" book (The Theory of Political Coalitions undoubtedly was his most influential on the discipline).

10. Voltaire, Candide. I read this one in a high school course. Reading it wasn't exactly the start of my skepticism, but it played a role.

The rules say stop at 10, so I will.

Addendum:
more on Riker for the interested reader. He was truly a giant in political science.

also, when I mentioned Schelling's Strategy of Conflict I probably should have instead mentioned Mancur Olson's (Pride of Grand Forks) The Logic of Collective Action, which was another of the books I read that summer. It was far more important to my intellectual development than was Schelling's book, even as Schelling's was highly effective at scrubbing the dross of Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations out of my brain. [shudder]

175 thoughts on “Not First Monday Book Day: Maker-Breakers”

  3. John Christopher, The White Mountains (and the rest of the Tripod series).

    I know I read these, and I remember enjoying them, but somehow I forgot about them completely until you mentioned them. Great series, like CH said.

  4. Question: What sci fi would you recommend for kids? My kids are 13, 11, and 7.

    The older two are through Harry Potter and Hunger Games. The oldest has read one of the L'Engle books. We have the Golden Compass books but I don't think any of the kids have started them.

    2. In middle school I really got into robotic sci-fi (Asimov in particular - I, Robot and there was a Robot City series that I don't know if it was actually written by Asimov or not, but it had his name on it). I also read the Foundation trilogy in 8th grade and loved it. Lord of the Rings I read in 9th grade (not really sci-fi).

      Redwall was a favorite of my brother around age 11 (again fantasy, not really sci-fi) and Watership Down / Shardik (both by Richard (?) Adams).

      Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was good around that age (and still is).

      I'm sure I'll think of others. Not so much for the 7-year old, but maybe something will come to me.

      1. Yes on richard adams. I read Watership Down in about 4th grade. Very readable. I then read Shardik. Much tougher read, I thought.

        I was a big fan of plowing through the public library's entire sci fi collection. But I can recommend Ann McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern stuff. I will think of some more recs.

    4. My 14 year old ripped through the Ender's Game series and 2001 Space Odyssey series by the time he was 12, but he has a keen interest in science and space. I think I read them fairly young as well and loved them.

  5. 1. PJ O'Rourke Eat the Rich
    2. Naguib Mahfouz Palace Walk
    3. Holling Clancy Holling Minn of the Mississippi
    4. Bjørn Lomborg The Skeptical Environmentalist
    5. Sandra Boynton The Going to Bed Book
    6. Wanda Gág Millions of Cats
    7. Where the Red Fern Grows
    8. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
    9. Hamlet
    T. To Kill a Mockingbird

    7-T might be a stretch.

    1. I used to use O'rourke's Parliament of Whores as a supplemental text in my intro to merican Govt course.

  6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - Still my favorite book of all time. I spent a whole quarter in high school reading and analyzing this. I thought the non-linear narrative was really really cool and used to great effect here.

    Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - I've gone quite a bit away from the philosophy/politics here, but I can't deny that this was one of the first books that made me think even a little bit critically about how I should interact with society (and how I'd like society and government to interact with me).

    The Art of Writing Reasonable Reaction Mechanisms by Ken Grossman - This was the textbook for my Advanced Organic class in college, and then my Mechanisms class in grad school as well. This was my introduction into the field that would become my career.

    House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - I think I commented one of the old Monday Book Day posts that I'm forever looking for a book that is like this one, but never really finding it. I remember reading this is one big sprint, and this being the only book I can remember that gave me actual nightmares.

    Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - My favorite Bradbury, he's just a master of the fantastic.

    Satantango by Lazlo Krasznahorkai - Only read this about a year ago, but it did spark an interest in translated literature that I've been following up on since then.

    A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy - I haven't used my math major much since I graduated, but I still enjoy an occasional math book. This one was a short quick meditation of math, age, and ability. "If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full."

    The Story of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang - The best short story collection I think I've read. Chiang writes a very technical kind of sci-fi, but it works really really well.

    ViVa by e.e. cummings - the first poetry collection I ever read cover to cover.

    The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella - Just to be contrarian I won't pick "Shoeless Joe", but this was another book that pushed me on my appreciation for the weird and fantastic.

    2. Non-book edition.

      Melissa McEwan and Tressie McMillan-Cotton have changed my world view in the last year or so with the work they do on their blogs about feminism and education respectively. Almost every single thing that Tressie writes is thought-provoking and incisive. Starting at a primarily minority-serving institution has opened my eyes to a lot of the issues she raises, that I didn't have a concept of before this.

    3. I'm forever looking for a book that is like this one, but never really finding it.

      I know exactly what you mean. The closest I've been able to find is The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. It has some of the same type of existential horror and structural playfulness as House of Leaves, and it's a cool story to boot. It doesn't quite reach the same dizzying heights as HoL, but then again, *deep sigh* nothing does.

    4. I should mention, I love Ray Bradbury. Even his poorer works are a joy to read -- he's such a wordsmith. Death is a Lonely Business was a fun one. I recommended it to a (NYT best selling) writer friend of mine, and she had to put it down because it was affecting her writing style.

      1. Dandelion Wine was a wonderful memoir-ish book. Of course, Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451

        Do you remember the television miniseries adaptation of Martian Chronicles? I remember being pretty enthralled, but, according to the Repository,

        Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".

  7. 1. the Bible

    2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
    my 5th grade English textbook had a portion of it, and it lead me to read the book; probably my first major book

    3. Ender's Game / Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
    can't have one without the other

    4. Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian (first of the Aubrey/Maturin Master and Commander series)
    I absolutely love this series

    5. Time Life Science Library (1965), particularly The Universe
    thanks, Dad & Mom. My siblings and I loved these, and they ignited my interest especially in astronomy and insects

    6. something something Robert Heinlein (probably Space Cadet or Starship Troopers)
    I ate up early Sci Fi and fantasy, and Heinlein was a major contributor to that

    7. Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
    Not long after moving to L.A., this book came out and gave me a well-needed taste of back home

    8. Introduction to Airborne Radar by R. Stimson
    my first work text, a thick primer by one of Hughes Aircraft's own

    9. Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet by Blake Savage
    bought this from one of the school book fairs (4th grade?) -- my first real Sci Fi book

    10. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
    I have to include a favorite of Runner daughter as a toddler; I was very intentional in reading at nights to her, and she's developed a wonderful love of books, I'd like to think because to that

    1. I have to include a favorite of Runner daughter as a toddler; I was very intentional in reading at nights to her, and she's developed a wonderful love of books, I'd like to think because to that

      that's doing it right. Inspiring a love of reading and learning is one of the best things a parent can do for a child.

      1. We came home from work yesterday and G disappeared into his room for 30-40 minutes. He was taking all the books off his bookshelf and reading them to himself while we made dinner. The kid isn't even two yet, but I have no doubt he's going to be a bookworm. Yes, this is bragging.

        (When he finally emerged he brought me a book and demanded that we read it together for another 20 minutes)

      2. Inspiring a love of reading and learning is one of the best things a parent can do for a child.

        This. See #9 in my list. I was the recipient, and am working to be the transmitter too.

    2. Agreed - O'Brian series was fantastic. I went from that to the Sharpe series (B. Cornwall) - British Army in same Napoleonic Wars, and then to Hornblower (C. S. Forester) which I also really enjoyed.

  8. Random order as they pop in my head...
    1) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
    2)The Painted Bird by Jerry Kosinski
    3) To Kill a Mockingbird
    4) Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
    5) Dune
    6) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    7) Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
    8) Where the Wild Things Are
    9) Animal Farm
    10) The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

    7 and 10 are great reads for parents with kids involved in sports, music, etc. Helped me as a parent put youth athletics into a healthier perspective.

    1. Funny! I talked to my son about Outliers when all his buddies moved up to squirts last year, leaving him as an old mite. Tremendous help. I will check out The Talent Code.

      1. It's funny, so much talk around the rink is about player development (as it should be). Sometimes I think that I have benefited from a fair amount of parent development as well. I try to read as much as I can off of the USA hockey and Minnesota Hockey websites, as well as suggested reading from coaches and administrators in the game. The varying thoughts on player development, and why some kids succeed and some don't, intrigue me to no end. I used to research all of this to find ways to help gain an edge for my son and daughter. Now I research just to understand what is going on. I have come to peace with the fact that my job is really just to drop them off, pick them up, give them a ton of encouragement, and occasionally remind them of their responsibility to the team (work hard). All else is completely out of my control. It really does boil down to "sit back and enjoy the ride".

        1. Most of the parents I interacted with at the rink were pretty understanding about letting the coaches coach, but there were still more than a few who could have taken a lesson from your coming around to "sit back and enjoy the ride".

    1. I may add mine later.
      Obviously one or two of them may approach the forbidden zone, but I think that I can address them without that.

  10. 1. The Old Man And The Sea - Hemmingway - Something about this one just clicked with me. I think because it's really a novella about the individual struggle for greatness, which is something that really captures my attention. Plus, I loved the group I read it with in high school, so there are fond memories.

    2. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald - Again, something clicked here. I think it was the Fitzgerald was able to participate and evaluate at the same time. I feel like I often find myself in that kind of position - indeed, I kind of embrace it.

    3. Crime And Punishment - Dostoevsky - I was completely prejudiced against the great novels going into my freshman year of college - which is odd since I'd read a good number of them pre-college. But when I I got 40 pages in, or whatever it was, and Raskolnikov was behind the door, and the others were on the outside... wow. Such tension. Still my favorite book, I think.

    4. Brothers Karamozov - Dostoevsky - I will admit that it didn't grab me quite as much the second time through as it did the first. But that was a transformational reading experience. I was studying abroad and reading what is probably the best response to the "problem of evil"... all while struggling with some of my own personal demons. I wasn't a great person going into that trip. I was a pretty ugly person at times during that trip. But by the end of it... I grew up. This book was a big chunk of that.

    5. V. - Pynchon - If Dostoevsky is my favorite author, then Pynchon is the author I most want to be. I don't remember how much of this book I really "got" my first time reading it. It was sometime in college (the same professor who introduced me to Dostoevsky, and Flannery O'Conner, and ... all of 'em, really), and I'm sure I wasn't ready for it, but I still enjoyed it immensely, and appreciated the challenge. I read it again a few years back, and definitely picked up what he was laying down.

    6. Stumbling On Happiness - Daniel Gilbert - This is one of those pop psychology books. But something about it really resonated with me. In some ways, it lays the ground for confronting our limitations as individuals - specifically our limitations at knowing ourselves. It's an important part of what I think about philosophically (I fall more into the Aristotelian camp than, say, the Hobbes' camp), and, at the time, I was frequently arguing with market-minded libertarians. So the idea that individuals frequently had no actual idea what made them happy... on a deeper level, that mattered to me.

    7. The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn - There seems to be something in our world today that exempts science from a lot of the common scrutiny we levy on non-scientific fields. Perhaps because the scientific process itself is supposed to be one of skepticism? It was always a frustration for myself, coming from philosophical angle. When I wanted to discuss bioethics, the science folks in class would put their foot down and say "science says we can do this" (or something like that), in a way that seemed to dismiss as inferior thinking about ethics, or something like that. There was probably a lot of projection in that. And we were just students, but... it felt remarkably close-minded. Indeed, my experience of science was of it being, largely, close-minded. This book explained it all.

    8. Against The Day - Pynchon - Another Pynchon. It's massive. It took me almost an entire year. But I finished. I read it through, without any help from a reading group, or anything, and I think about it - and its messages - with ridiculous frequency. This was just a great book for me. A worthy endeavor.

    9. My Side Of The Mountain - Jean Craighead George - 2nd grade. My dad made/bribed me to read it (movie after I finished!). I had been pretty much afraid of pushing myself to read harder books, until that point. My dad knew I could do it, and knew I needed to. So he saw to it. I've been all about pushing myself in reading ever since. Thanks, Dad.

    10. Treatise On Law - Aquinas - "Bad law is no law at all." That is all.

    1. The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions -- this was one that got shoved down our throats in a first-year seminar. I have to admit that I was massively under-impressed, but that may have been partly my skepticism about the loosey-goosey "theory" in the book (or so I remember) and partly my frustration with the fanboyism that seemed to surround it. I had a similar reaction to Graham Allison's Essence of Decision.

      1. Haven't read Allison. I can absolutely see how Kuhn would be a disaster in a first-year seminar. I get why a person would want to introduce it up-front, but... you're not really going to avoid the problems Kuhn writes about. And they're not really "problems" - they're just the way it works. Also, I don't recall the theory being loosey-goosey; quite the opposite in fact. I recall it being very tight. I can see it being frustrating for a number of reasons though. Especially to a first-year. Precisely while you're in the process of being brought into a paradigm, this book comes along and tells you it's just a paradigm.

        I also had an amazing class and professor for that book. Philosohpy of Economics. Something like 7 people, all upper-class, etc. It was a very intense course - probably bordering on advanced degree work, really. We started with science, moved into social science, and then econ specifically. I should probably pick that one up again someday. Maybe if I go back to school...

        1. I'm talking about the "punctuated equilibrium" concept in general of paradigm-challenge-revolution-consolidation-paradigm. I accept it as a loose description of the history and sociology of science(s). But it's pretty much a "just so" story: "There was an equilibrium. Then enough people raised questions that could not be answered by the paradigmatic model that the apple cart was upset. Then there was a period of messiness. Then there was a consolidation around a new paradigm, and there was an equilibrium."

          Obviously, I haven't got a better story. Kuhn got a hell of a lot right. I just struggled with why this was regarded as such an important text in my graduate education.

          1. I see that it is a bit of an ad hoc narrative, but that's where the philosophical aspects of it come in - it fits pretty nicely with what I observe to be true of human nature. And I think that's maybe the big takeaway, and why it is such an important text: some of the flaws of human nature affect even science.

            1. Heh. That's kind of his point, actually. The majority of the time, challengers fail and/or aren't given meaningful opportunity to succeed.

    2. It's weird, I disliked your 1 and 2 when I read them in high school. I went back a couple of years ago and read them again thinking maybe I was just in the wrong frame of mind. Nope, I still didn't like them at all.

      As for #4, it was perfectly meh to me, but just completely pales in comparison to both Anna Karenina and War and Peace in my mind.

      1. Heh. I was just thinking we must have markedly different tastes with only some overlap, because looking at your list... Atonement? Ugh.

    3. What you describe for #9 was what happened to me for Where the Red Fern Grows except without the movie.
      Any chance this happened to you over Christmas break?

    4. Re: Hnos Karamazov - for some reason, this was sentinel for me - The Grand Inquisitor chapter especially.

          1. I probably should have figured that out. The word sentinel is still throwing me. I'm unfamiliar with this usage. I'm making some guesses as to meaning, but I'm afraid to embarrass myself by discussing them publicly.

              1. That makes even more sense. I was taking the word to be correct, and meaning like it guarded his entrance to great literature, or something. See what I mean about embarrassing myself?

                  1. In my experience, NBB uses a lot of euphemisms and NBB-slang: reading his LTE's is different than comprehending his LTE's. But also, as he did with Hnos, he'll get you up to speed with a minimum of ribbing if you ask.

                    1. There's an art to decoding NBB. Typos are a rarity; LTEs are usually well crafted. "Hnos" threw up a flag that had me thinking I should look for other typos.

      2. Indeed. Quite seminal. I always thought the chapter just before, or just after, the Grand Inquisitor was even "better". The one where some rich dude let his dogs tear apart a little boy. For me, that's pretty much the most direct confrontation of the problem of evil ever. Very hard to stomach, brilliantly written.

  11. another rec for youngish readers: Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books are fun and pretty well done.

  12. I'm sure I'd come up with a different list if you asked me later.

    Crime and Punishment - F. Dostoevsky. A 5th grade band teacher once quipped to our class "it would be like one of you reading Crime and Punishment" - so I bought it at a used book store and read it. Full russian names were tough to get through, but it got me hooked on dead Russian writers, and prompted me later to take Russian in college. Favorite book evah.

    The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms - Aho/Ullman. (I had to pick either this or the CDC Cyber 170 programming manual).

    The Stranger - A. Camus.

    The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe.

    Les Miserables - V. Hugo.

    Modern Calculus. 4 years of undergrad Calc (and never used after college).

    Heart of Darkness - J. Conrad.

    First Circle - A. Solzynitzyn.

    Demian - H. Hesse.

    Concepts in Discrete Mathematics - S. Sahni. As a freshman, I had been leaning towards English, then had some courses in Logic, Rhetoric, Linguistics, and then Discreet Math. This book probably more than anything propelled me into majoring in Computer Science, then also Mathematics.

    1. Algorithms FTW. The biggest difference between a good programmer and a great programmer is sound algorithmic thinking. I seem to remember an Aho book from my college days, but not sure what it would have been.

      1. Recently I was trying to explain to an onshore contractor how indexing on a table reduces the search time by not scanning.

        Me: (Drawing an upside down tree) By dividing the table into separate branches, it reduces the search time from N to log N.

        He: (Looking at me skeptically) Are you a reincarnation of Vishnu here to trick me?

    3. Demian - H. Hesse.

      I went on a Hesse bender in h.s. too. Demian, Siddharta, Journey to the East, Steppenwolf (not about the band, btw -- the other way around) and Narcissus and Goldmund. And fit in there somewhere was a mini-Thomas Mann run (Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus).

      and Camus. The only Dostoevsky I remember reading was The Idiot.

      Ahh, I could go on all day.

      1. Funny, I often did runs on authors like that also: J. Conrad (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Secret Agent, Secret Sharer, Typhoon), Hesse (Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf), Camus (The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall), Nabokov (Pnin, Lolita, The Eye, Invitation to a Beheading), Kafka (The Trial, Country Doctor, Hunger Artist, Amerika). Am currently doing a run on D. Barthelme.

        1. I enjoyed Heart of Darkness, I think it actually helped that I read it while sick, trudging through it because it was an assignment while in and out of fever sleeps.

          I've tried several times to start The Secret Agent and I probably got 70-80 pages in before drifting away.

          Somehow you reminded me I should put a Jack London short stories collection to my list.
          And Black Hole by Charles Burns, although I don't even know how my brain ran there.

        1. I read The Stranger a few years ago. It was pretty good, but it hasn't stuck with me like Brave New World, which I read immediately before.

          1. I think I would point to The Plague first. The Stranger is outstanding, of course. Neither is what you might call a "happy" story.

          2. NBBW and I were just discussing this. Brave New World was a sentinel work for both of us. Also Animal Farm, 1984, and for me, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

          3. I think we read The Stranger first. First (and last?) book I read cover-to-cover within a day. It helps that there are no chapters, so there was nowhere to stop once I started. There is a break in the middle, but once I was halfway in, I just kept going.

  13. Copied over from yesterday:
    1. Robert Caro, The Power Broker
    2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (note, I'm only about halfway through it now, but omg(!!!!) it is amazing)
    3. Shelby Foote's The Civil War trilogy (yes, I'm cheating and combining them all; and, yes, I realize that he whitewashed a lot of Confederate history; and, yes, I realize that, like #2, I just read these this year, but they were sooooooo accessible)
    4. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
    5. Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game (I must have read this book ten times)
    6. Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee (ditto)
    7. Ian McEwan, Atonement
    8. William Goldman, The Princess Bride
    9. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters
    10. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

    It's strange that I read fiction so rarely, yet it comprises more than half of my list. As for bs's comment yesterday about Halberstam, I completely agree that he is unnecessarily verbose, but I just loved his take on the attempted manipulation of the media (and the sporadic times the media actually bares its teeth) leading up to Watergate in The Powers That Be. Forty-plus years later, and it seems nothing has changed.

    1. Numbers 1, 4, and 9 would be one my list for sure.

      Apparently when he was writing Power Broker, Caro wrote a whole chapter on the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and Robert Moses' dealing with Walter O'Malley that is suppose to be just wonderful but have never seen the light of day.

      1. I would devour that chapter. I think I read Vol. 4 of his LBJ stuff in about three days.

        1. Really. How many time have you read about the Kennedy assassination, but still those chapters were absolute page turners.

    2. note that my criticisms of Halberstam's style and verbosity did not stop me from reading The Powers That Be back in the day.

      1. And the book has many sections that didn't make it in the movie. Thankfully, William Goldman wrote both, so the movie perfectly captured the silliness and poignancy of the book.

  14. We have a lot of lawyers in the group - am curious if this is due to 1) personal predisposition to the craft, 2) guided by things that you read early on, 3) influenced by a teacher, or other?

    2. 4) Love of arguing. Seriously, though, my father is a patent attorney. As someone with absolutely no mechanical aptitude, his job was completely unappealing to me, so I never considered law school. It wasn't until I started learning about all the attorney jobs that Sheenie's law school classmates found that I learned that a legal career was appealing. Plus, I was in a dead-end path working in higher ed that had no appeal to me after five years.

      1. I'd say love of arguing was a fair part of it. Love of grappling with ideas was probably a bigger part of it. I just wish I actually got to do that in my career.

  15. I love this question. Here's mine, in no particular order:

    1. Beloved, Toni Morrison – I consider this to be the best book I’ve ever read, hands down. I almost can’t believe how rich it is, in story, character, tone, symbolism, everything. I basically consider it the perfect book, and I revere it as such.

    2. The Boy Detective Fails, Joe Meno – This book, more than any other, makes me feel like it was written just for me. I first read it at a time in my life where it struck me more than anything else possibly could have.

    3. Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis – I don’t know if I can explain why this book has stuck with me for so long. It’s a fantastic story, with a fabulously interesting concept, and it’s very well written. But something about it went deeper than that for me in a way I can’t really put into words.

    4. Tokyo Suckerpunch, Isaac Adamson – I must’ve read this book half a dozen times my senior year of high school. It’s so goofy and weird, and almost every time I’ve recommended it to someone they’ve ended up hating it. But I absolutely adore it for all of its cheesiness. It was also the source of my quote in the yearbook (slightly paraphrased): “Even the more down-to-earth kids still harbored painful illusions about life ahead. To them, life was an ascension. Adulthood would come in one swift movement, like an epiphany. I couldn’t tell them that growing older was like a long, slow kick to the balls.”

    5. House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski – Just like Daneekas Ghost, this book gave me nightmares. It might be the only thing I have read that has actually caused a physical reaction. It’s so intense that the anxiety it induced would last for hours after I stopped reading. I don’t want to oversell it, but reading this book is an experience like no other. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

    6. On Writing, Stephen King – I’m not a huge Stephen King fan, but his book about writing is a really brilliant look into his process. It gives so much insight on what it takes to be a novel writer, and how much commitment it takes to finish a book. It has wonderful advice for anyone who wants to write, but it’s also really interesting from a reader’s perspective.

    7. Calvin and Hobbes (collections), Bill Waterson – I learned how to read using Calvin and Hobbes books. Even before I could understand the words, I would sit and pore over the drawings and laugh without understanding why. They got even better once I could read the words and understand why it was funny.

    8. Redwall (series), Brian Jacques – These books really got me to love reading. Looking back on them they’re pretty lousy, filled with repetitive structures, lazy stories, and weirdly racial overtones. But damn if they didn’t start a passionate love affair with books.

    9. Geek Love, Katharine Dunn – One of my favorite teachers in high school gave me this book before she moved across the country. She actually gave everyone in the class a book, but most people just picked one out of a giant pile that she brought in. But she picked this one out specifically for me because she knew that I would love it, and I did. It was a really thoughtful gesture, and it’s one of those things that really makes me smile when I think about it.

    10. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend, Christopher Moore – I’ve read this book more times than I can count. It’s an irreverent and imaginative retelling of the life of Jesus, from the perspective of his best friend. I’m not a religious person, but I still find the story of Jesus to be compelling and undeniably instructive. The way that it’s presented in this book – filled with swearing, sex, violence, humor – is irresistible.

        1. I'm tempted to take off one of my doubled authors, but can't quite pull the trigger. Perhaps if I'd had a discrete reading of C&H, but I just pick it up periodically.

    2. Beloved, Toni Morrison

      i also love that book. i was reading it before class one day, and this super hot girl sat down next to me and said, "oh, that's one of my favorite books! it's sooooo good." to which i replied, "i know, this is my second time reading it." even i knew i was so in after that.

      1. That suuuuure is a believable story! 😉 😉 😉

        When I was in college, one of my go-to conversation starters with girls at parties was "So what's your favorite Harry Potter book?" It was kinda ridiculous how well it worked.

          1. I would have liked to have had that in my pocket in college. As it was, I wasn't single anyway.

            Think that'll still work?

          1. Ha! Yes that's exactly when I first read it too. Also, when did we talk about both being Lakers? Because I apparently completely forgot.

            1. we've briefly touched on it, i think. i transferred there senior year from south out of sheer boredom. i was genpop though since my mom lived in the district and i had to fight real hard to stay in his class all year (don't recall how i ended up there in the first place though). that said, i'm glad i did. i loved that power-dork.

              1. Ah, right on. Yeah Dunham's class was pretty good. What year were you? The teacher I mentioned who gave me Geek Love was Ms. Borges, I'm not sure if you would've had her or not.

                1. party hard, rock and roll, drink a 40, smoke a bowl, we're so sexy, we're so fine, we're the class of `99. that was a fun year. plus, i didn't have to take 3 buses to get to work after school.

                  i remember the name borges, but i didn't have her for anything. i jumped ahead a year in science, social studies, and... something else, so if she was one of those teachers, i was already done by senior year. in retrospect, kind of wished i would have gone IB, but i had automatic entry into the open program at south so i went with that.

                  1. Borges was a history teacher. IB was okay, but I only did well in the english and art classes. I did terrible in IB chemistry and physics, and I never even attempted any IB math classes. I was class of '04, but we weren't clever enough to think up a jingle.

                    1. I was class of '03 (not in Minneapolis, obviously). We didn't have a chant/jingle, but we did have a gang sign. I'll re-create it when I get home.

      1. I'm not surprised that his earlier books aren't in wide circulation anymore, but I would've thought that Complication would still be on the shelves. You might have to go the Amazon route.

    4. I was dubious about On Writing when I picked it up, but I agree with your comments. I was really impressed with what he had to say about the writing process.

            1. On Writing is the sort of book that can be read a chapter at a time here and there, which is pretty refreshing.

              1. We've talked about it here before a couple of times. It is one of very, very few books I have read more than once.

                E-6 said, and I agree, that the book can apply to a lot of creative pursuits - not just writing. It's a great (and fast) read.

            3. The face in the sun/clouds is staring at him/her!

              At least it's a cool dude SelectShow

  16. Here are mine in the order they popped into my head.

    1. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. First read it in third grade and adored it. Reread it many times. One of the books that really made me a reader.

    2. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Read for the first time my senior year of high school. Opened my eyes to a lot of things. "How to Tell a True War Story" is probably one of my favorite short stories of all time.

    3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Read this in tenth grade and it blew my mind. I didn't know it was even possible to write a book like that.

    4. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. The first L'Engle novel I read.

    5. A Four-Sided Bed by Elizabeth Searle. I tore through this in several days during the summer before my senior year of college. It was a memorable summer, and somehow the experience of reading the book brings be back to that moment of being right on the cusp of adulthood but not quite there yet.

    6. Sula by Toni Morrison. First book by Morrison that I read. I really need to pick this up again, but the complicated friendship between Nel and Sula has stayed with me.

    7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Guys, don't tell anyone, but I'm a feminist! I've read plenty of other feminist books, but this one was among the first.

    8. Self-Help by Lorrie Moore. Such a perfect little book of short stories.

    9. A Nation Challenged: A Visual History of 9/11 and Its Aftermath This book was a part of my life for the better part of a year. Not an easy year by any means.

    10. Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian. I just read it this year, but right now it has a lot to do with the things I'm thinking about when it comes to both writing and life.

    1. Further supporting the "we are the same person" theory - 2 and 4 were really really close to my list too. Easily make a top 20.

        2. Actually, I'm not sure you exist. You say you were at Barley John's last night, but I saw no sign of you.

            1. Venn Diagram overlap extends.
              We've never been in the same place at the same time.
              Yet Pepper leaves and shortly thereafter I appear.
              You do the math.

    2. I was forced to read The Secret Garden three times in elementary school and I grew to hate it more each time. I'd probably enjoy it more now as an adult, but I could not identify with that girl at all.

      On the other hand, I loved A Wrinkle in Time.

    4. Pepper - #'s 1-5 are excellent.

      I've probably told this story here before, but when I was 12, my cousin gave me the entire L'Engle collection as part of the annual Cousin Christmas Gift Swap. She was 14 and knew a good gift. I was 12 cried because I'd received "Girl" books. I later (much later) apologized because it turns out, it was one of the best Christmas gifts I've ever received.

  17. 1. Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)--I read this so many times as a kid, and cried so many times. And I pretty much hate dogs.

    2. Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)--For the longest time I felt a hatchet was the most useful tool ever created and fantasized about being lost in the woods. And I hate woods.

    3. Phantoms (Dean R. Koontz)--Not his best book, but it was the first book that ever made me scared shitless to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I began to crave that feeling of being on complete edge, hypervigilant, while reading.

    4. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)--It started out slow for me and Dickensian coincidence always bugs me a bit, but the final section just completely blew me away. The ending practically makes me cry just thinking about it.

    5. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt)--I have little interest in Georgia life, but Berendt really drew me into this world.

    6. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

    7. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglas Adams)--I absolutely adored this man. I have pretty much loathed every humorous book that's been recommended to me, with the exception being the Hitchhiker series.

    8. The Cave of Time (Edward Packard)--The first book in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, and it's really awful like most of them are. But it really inspired me for all kinds of user-influenced fiction, be it books or computer games.

    9. Gary Carter's Iron Mask (Robert Montgomery)--A series of small books about a kid who rises up the ranks as a catcher and eventually makes the major. Carter had input into the book and it models somewhat his life and those of other catchers he knew. My favorite ever fictional book about baseball.

    10. The White Mountains (John Christopher)--While I'm not a huge fan of the other books in the tripod series (especially the last, which gets really preachy), the first book mesmerized me.

    3. I still remember how hard I cried at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows. It was one of the first really sad books I read (sixth grade, sheltered life), and I resented the book for that.

      1. I LOVED Where the Red Fern Grows. And I also remember being overly impressed with myself because I read it in 3rd grade but it was labeled "teen" or something.

        1. That was the one Dad made me read on Christmas break in 2nd Grade.
          #humblebrag
          I think I read The Yearling the next year.

  18. First 10 I wrote down:

    1. Stories For Children – Isaac Bashevis Singer

    2. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

    3. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle

    4. This Raw Land – Wayne Short

    5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis (also, The Screwtape Letters)

    6. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

    7. The Memory of Old Jack – Wendell Berry (also, Jayber Crow)

    8. Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein

    9. The Big Sky – A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

    10. John Adams – David McCullough

    After thinking about it, these are another 15 that I came up with:

    Gary Paulsen (Hatchet), Bill Watterson (Calivn & Hobbes), John Steinbeck (Winter of our Discontent), Louis L’Amoure (Jubal Sackett), Zane Gray (Riders of the Purple Sage), Neil Gaiman (American Gods), David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars), John Grisham (A Time to Kill), Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes), Jack London (The Call of the Wild), Stephen King (It), Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods), Max Hastings (Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs)

  19. Revised:

    1. PJ O'Rourke Eat the Rich
    Shook me out of some collectivist leanings I had up until that point. Made me realize that incentives are important.

    2. Naguib Mahfouz Palace Walk
    The first time I realized I loved long drawn-out stories that might just be drawn out so you feel you know and love the characters.

    3. Holling Clancy Holling Minn of the Mississippi
    This book is what my brain looks like. A story in the middle, but some really awesome marginalia that can totally distract you from the main story but maybe the story's there to serve as a marginalia-delivery device.
    I tried reading this aloud to my kids. Each four-page chapter (one fully illustrated!) took about an hour. Because I took questions and provided answers.

    4. Bjørn Lomborg The Skeptical Environmentalist
    Put aside the particular points (as some may be Forbidden-Zone contentious). What I got out of it is even if we have a clear diagnosis of certain problems, it doesn't necessarily follow that the solutions should be to attack the cause. What if the cure is simpler than prevention?

    5. Sandra Boynton The Going to Bed Book
    I first read this about 10 1/2 years ago. I have read it at least 500 if not 1,000 times since then, maybe more. I may have read it 400 times to the same girl over one year. Perfect to the syllable, with just a touch of bizarre (although, really, there was nothing else to fit after "they all go up..."). I try too hard sometimes to keep editing things down. Or I give up because I'll never get here.

    6. Wanda Gág Millions of Cats
    More little bizarre bits for kids. The cats eat each other all up! After eating a hillful of grass!
    I have a dream where someone films this and The Funny Thing and maybe another as an feature collection of shorts and doesn't overload them with backstory or extra story or lessons or connections to current events, but puts the story, more or less as told and as drawn, but with actors and sets and digital magic to do nothing but "bring the books to life" because I want to watch it and live with the endings that feel like morals of the story but aren't, really, because is the point to be ugly and quiet so no one eats you?
    Oh, and I love the pictures hanging in the little old couple's house.
    Full disclosure: the author's from my hometown.

    7. Albert Camus The Stranger
    Grabbed me. This was my first exposure to existentialism (and it wasn't described as such until after reading it), seemed kindof a freeingly matter-of-fact way of life.

    8. Jack London The Love of Life and other Stories
    I can only recall the title story, although I know I read the rest and they'd probably come back to me.
    Nature can be cruel and lives come and go and there might be just a slight difference between which happens.
    Get past the crisis and there may be much more life, don't and it's over.

    9. Charles Burns Black Hole
    The only graphic novel I've ever read. Images and thoughts from it pop up now and then and I wish I could reference them but I can't because no-one would know what I was talking about.

    T. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    So that's how I'd get by with a crueler, more miserable life. Or would like to imagine I would.

    1. 10 1/2. (Incomplete book)
      One chapter from Edward Tufte's Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. I read this before I ever made charts and graphs. I should remember to read some of this stuff again.

      Edit: This Chapter.

      1. Went to a seminar by E. Tufte at Yale several years back. Images and Quantities was good, also Envisioning Information.

        Dude kinda had a rant against the whole PowerPoint-5 bullets on a slide meme. His point was that people were capable of taking in way more information visually - give them the data to look at. One example of this is WSJ financials pages - lot of data crammed into small spaces.

          1. I am Envisioning Information on that steak sammich. Blue cheese cutting against arugula… Yowza.

    2. Your comments about the marginalia in Minn of the Mississippi reminded me that A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers nearly made my list. These two books probably have nothing in common, but AHWOSG blew my mind with how Eggers used an innovative structure to tell a story.

  20. Late to the party, and off the top of my head (in semi chronological order.)

    Ball Four - Jim Bouton Read an older brother's paperback copy when I was about 10. The first "adult" book I ever read.
    Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
    The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald A book I re-read every 10 years or so. Totally deserving of it's classic status.
    Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut My college GF turned me on to KV and opened my eyes to a whole new world of writers. Thanks Micky.
    My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok see above. A book about a young artist read while I was a young artist.
    Hunger - Knut Hamsun One of the greatest books about striving to create art in the face of incredible odds.
    A Singular Man - JP Donleavy / A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley Two dark and disturbing books with unlikeable anti-heroes that I totally related to. Wildly funny when they aren't depressing as all get out.
    The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler Kickstarted my love of gumshoe noir. The master of the craft.
    Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami If you haven't read it yet, do so. Mind. Blown.
    Collected Stories - Raymond Carver No one spun a yarn as darkly comic as Carver.

    2. Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

      also, have you read any of his other works? i keep meaning to read more. hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world was awesome. also, norwegian wood kind of reads a little like a much less smutty bukowski book to me

      1. Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, South of the Border West of the Sun, and The Elephant Vanishes. I've enjoyed them all, though WUBC (my first) is still my favorite. I do need to read more, though.

          1. I have a Borders gift card I need to use (before all of their stores close.) I think more Murakami is what it will go towards.

            1. May already be too late. I took one to Barnes & Noble a month ago and they informed me it was no longer valid. Definitely check before you get too far along on your shopping.

              1. I can't find mention of it online, but as I remember a year or two ago, HMV went into bankruptcy in Ireland and told people that their gift cards were no longer valid. In pure Irish fashion, people took DVDs and CDs for the value of their gift card, slapped the card down and walked out. I so hope I'm remembering that correctly.

              2. Upon further inspection, it's a Barnes and Noble gift card, but my concerns should prolly transfer there, as well.

    3. I'm glad Hunger made someone's list. Possibly makes my top 20, possibly just outside, but yes, to exactly what you said.

  21. Seems like the place to mention: several years back, I started collecting the original L. Frank Baum Oz books in the white 1960ish edition hardbound editions -- probably have ~6 of the 14. Runner daughter has inherited them and one of her Xmas wishlist items was for one of the missing ones. Found someone on eBay selling five for a reasonable price; three were ones that were missing, one is a nice replacement (the one we have has a coffee ring on the cover among other things) and one will probably be trade bait for (one of) the great used bookstore we have in StL.

    I love used bookstores; I wish there were some closer to me. socal, check out Acres of Books in Long Beach sometime

    1. Oooh. The mrs has, I think, the full series of Oz books in that white-bound paperback edition, rescued from her childhood.

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