Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Ten Books Which Have Influenced Me Most

Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution, replying to a reader, lists ten Books which have influenced me most, with a wee bit of commentary, and encourages others to produce their own list.  Here’s mine.

1.  The Bible.  Various authors.  Most definitely the first book read aloud to me as a child.  Not in its entirety, but passages each night at the dinner table, though I have read it through on a number of occasions over the years.  A source of spiritual guidance to be read, I think, as if you are thrashing wheat.

2.  The Gulag Archipelago Parts I & II.  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.  Read shortly after their release.  I was 15 I think.  Taught me that the beneficence of the State invariably was dangerous.  A lesson I’ve learned well, and I urge others to heed the warnings.

3.  The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis.  Led me far from dogmatic religion and further into faith.

4.  Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand.  Buttressed my courage to live as an individual.  That dang Galt speech, though, is drudgery.

5.  King Rat. James Clavell.  A story which I reread almost every year to delve into the human condition and interaction under duress.

6.  The Deputy. Rolf Hochhuth.  Just read, twice in a row, and commented on here.

7.  The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antonius.  My copy is a pocket sized hardcover from 1899.  It travels well, especially along trout streams.

8.  Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Ludwig von Mises.  I am not an economist, but Mises’ book, though a sweeping tome, is written with clarity.

9.  The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexander Dumas.  Love, revenge, survival, a sweeping tale as far as I am concered.

10.  Representative Men - Seven Lectures. Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson’s writing is aphoristic, which I enjoy, and his constant forays into transcendentalism also feed my metaphysical musings.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/16 at 01:23 PM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages