I used to be an avid reader but I haven't actually "read" a book in a long time. I just listen to them on audiobook but I've recently decided to start back reading so I'm looking for suggestions. I'm open to anything it doesn't have to be IM related. Fiction or non-fiction though I prefer Non-fiction.
I posted this question on facebook and I got a series of "50 Shades of Grey" responses BOOOOOOOOOOOO! lol
I'll start first...
The best book I've ever read is Master of The Game by Sydney Sheldon. Not non-fiction but it was one of the first novels I read.
I quit reading real books years ago. A collapsing economy does not allow for a lifestyle that has enough leisure time to include the use of books for personal development. My personal development involves 1) Making more money, and 2) Keeping myself and several other people alive.
Books are a memory, although a good one. It bugs me when I read young people advocating that other people drop school for all the wrong reasons. Book smart has a place in things, but you will never know anything directly profitable simply by reading books. Basic concepts, some historical reference, examples of how other people think, etc... but the nuts and bolts information needed for economic survival come from reading forums like BHW.
And that's the simple truth. No need to dress it all up, fall down on my knees and offer a blow-job of gratitude to all the forum staff that bravely defend us all against the tyranny of censorship and terrorism.
Oh wait. That's the US Military I'm supposed to offer the blow-job too. Sorry. My programming gets corrupted sometimes due in part to the data I get from the mass-media. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
So anyways books were a big deal to me at one time. I remember reading Tolstoy's War & Peace. I read Moby Dick. I read almost everything ever written by Charles Dickens. "Great Expectations".
Y'know, it bothers me that we are supposed to look upon our 1800's ancestors with such disdain. It was the end of royalty, and they all survived, despite the dire predictions at the time. Unfortunately I think we need a new royalty, instead of the sick and diseased electronic royalty we all pay attention to. I need a daily update on the status of Kim Kardashian's Kunt, otherwise I feel lost and alone, with no one to obey.
So there's the book, and then there's who I am. Did the book do it? Did I let the book do it? Did I make the book do it, against it's will, after 1st getting it stoned on bath salts and kool-aid? This Inquiring Mind wants to know.
And then I read the truly dangerous books. The Bell Curve. "Satanic Verses". Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda. Plato's Republic. Black's Law Dictionary. The Art of War. Whatever book that was presented to me as canon, I read it. Anything and everything that was considered "core" or essential. And then after that I read all the old-school Science Fiction. Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Larry Niven.
I used to like Steven King. "The Stand" really messed up my mind, because I had already been programmed to expect a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union (aka "Russia"), and the idea that the whole human race could be almost completely wiped-out was an idea that no one had ever contemplated AFTER the fact. Andromeda Strain showed us what the brink looked like, and King showed what living at the bottom of precipice was really going to be like. There better be a hero with a gun that can go around and save people, but then he could only do so much. He was only one person, and no one can save a people that will not save themselves.
Theme & Variation on Clint Eastwood.
Additional thoughts at no additional charge:
Ladies and Gentleman, there is no single more dangerous book that Plato's Republic, as it contains the seed of all internal strife in the human race. The long & short of it is that Plato and others believe that there are some people that are more suited to governance than others. And it's in for a penny, in for a pound because that axiomatically means that there are some people should be prohibited from participating in the governance of the whole.
DANGEROUS DANGEROUS DANGEROUS.
You Greeks. You founders of civilization. It was true then, and its' true now. It will always be true. It can never be anything other than true. The survival of the species depends upon the acceptance of that fact. They knew it then, but we don't know it now. We think that we're all equal in some way, and I agree. Just not in THAT way.
[video=youtube_share;skU-jBFzXl0]http://youtu.be/skU-jBFzXl0[/video]
