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Favorite Books
Here's a relaxing topic. Simple question; what is your favorite book?
Me personally, I am a huge fan of Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451". It is set in a futuristic American society where the people have democratically decided to ban books and intellectualism in their culture. Mass entertainment has dumbed down the people to such a degree that there is no need for books and conflicting ideas.
There is hardly any resistance to this idiot fascist government save a few exiled professors and a disenfranchised fireman. Of course this future fireman's job is to burn books and the houses that store them, not to put out the fires. As the fireman, Montag, begins to question his society, he meets a rare, intellectual teenager and a retired professor. Their support leads him to actively rebel against his mindless society as he engages in a brilliant plan to frame his fellow firemen and cast doubts about their integrity.
My favorite scene in the entire book is a rather minor one, where Montag confronts his drone like wife and her friends about their lives. The confrontation is intense as he criticizes the negligible lives that they and their husbands engage in. He does the unthinkable by reading them a banned piece of literature.
1984 is also another one of my favorites, but I think Orwell differed from Bradbury in his writing. Orwell was warning of what had happened and what would happen to a society dominated by a Stalinist regime. His book was largely political in its structure. Bradbury's book is written from a much more personal aspect. There is little to no mention of the government structure in Farenheit and as is alluded to, the people of society chose to be ignorant.
Me personally, I am a huge fan of Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451". It is set in a futuristic American society where the people have democratically decided to ban books and intellectualism in their culture. Mass entertainment has dumbed down the people to such a degree that there is no need for books and conflicting ideas.
"Don't give them two sides to a political argument, give them one. On second thought, don't give them any at all."
There is hardly any resistance to this idiot fascist government save a few exiled professors and a disenfranchised fireman. Of course this future fireman's job is to burn books and the houses that store them, not to put out the fires. As the fireman, Montag, begins to question his society, he meets a rare, intellectual teenager and a retired professor. Their support leads him to actively rebel against his mindless society as he engages in a brilliant plan to frame his fellow firemen and cast doubts about their integrity.
My favorite scene in the entire book is a rather minor one, where Montag confronts his drone like wife and her friends about their lives. The confrontation is intense as he criticizes the negligible lives that they and their husbands engage in. He does the unthinkable by reading them a banned piece of literature.
1984 is also another one of my favorites, but I think Orwell differed from Bradbury in his writing. Orwell was warning of what had happened and what would happen to a society dominated by a Stalinist regime. His book was largely political in its structure. Bradbury's book is written from a much more personal aspect. There is little to no mention of the government structure in Farenheit and as is alluded to, the people of society chose to be ignorant.
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Comments
One of the most surprising things about it is that it is Hesse's last novel and, to my mind, his greatest. Most writers produce their best early on in their career and then go downhill. Not here: this is truly worthy of his Nobel Prize.
I don't really have a favorite book. There have been books I've read and loved and books I've read and not liked so much and books I've read and stopped because I didn't like them at all. It would be hard to pick a favorite. Certainly Hesse's books would be up there. I'm reading an excellent book on the Anasazi (or "ancestral Puebloans" for the PC name) by Craig Childs right now, but picking a favorite would seem to lessen the other great books I've read somehow. Who really cares about "favorites" and who's number 1 anyway? A silly American habit...
Palzang
Would anyone recommend a single book or perhaps a short series of books that cover as much as possible of all of the Buddha's discourses.
I suppose I'm asking about the most approachable translations as well.
stuart
www.DanaBowl.com
I have it but am working on Confucius before I tackle that book.
stuart
www.DanaBowl.com
Some of my suggestions are Anguttara Nikaya: The Discourse Collection in Numerical Order Part III: Books Eight to Eleven, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, Samyutta Nikaya: An Anthology Part I, Samyutta Nikaya: An Anthology Part II, Samyutta Nikaya: An Anthology Part III, Wings to Awakening. (Note: Wings to Awakening is a little more heady reading than average.)
Jason
stuart
www.DanaBowl.com
The Glass Bead Game is the only novel I did not read completely from Hesse, besides Gertrud. In fact, I started reading it a week ago and I am still about to finish it. To be Honest, I liked Narziss & Goldmund, Rosshalde and Steppenwolf much more, but this is not say the Glass Bead Game is bad. It is just a different kind of novel, very difficult and calm imo.
I would recommend you Narziss & Goldmund, it plays in the middle ages and the fact that Hesse writes there about a progrom against the jews made the Nazis reject the print of it. They demanded him to remove the scenes about the progrom but Hesse rejected. The book is about a relationship between two genuises, a "thinker-type" and an "artist-type".
Metta
I am a great admirer of all Hesse's work. The Glass Bead Game is, indeed, very different and, dare I say it, far more 'dense' and thoughtful, the work of an 'elder'. It is its very calmness that sets it apart from most novels.
I will have to finish the glass bead game first so i can talk with you about it
(Takes one to know one.....)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman
Palzang
It is considered the greatest, most stinging pieces of satire ever made against Joseph Stalin, and I am inclined to agree.
Have you gone on to read 1984, KoB? I re-read it a few months ago and was struck by the lessons it has for us in an increasingly totalitarian West devoted to perpetual war.
KOB,
I never finished Animal Farm but Fahrenheit was, and still is, in my top 10 list. What a book! I loved it deeply.
Another book I read in high school that completely changed me and the way I saw the world was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl (or is it Viktor?). That book completely changed who I was. It yanked me off the wrong path I was on and firmly planted me on the right one. I'll be forever in that man's debt.
In Animal Farm, my favorite character only had a few lines in the whole book. It was Benjamin the cynical donkey. He seems to be the only character in the book who sees through the lies of not only the human regime, but Napoleon's as well. Although, he does nothing to combat either evil, he probably is even more intelligent than any of the Stalinist pigs.
I've just finished The Golden Compass and I'm a few chapters into The Subtle Knife. Great stuff really--but I have the same problem I have whenever I'm reading a great novel. I'm tempted to daydream about it all day. Making up my own scenes and wondering what my deamon would look like...
Need to discipline my mind :om:
The story is about a girl from Northeast Brazil [Incidentally, there is where I live :P] that is now living in Rio:
The author has a lot of 'philosophical' digressions:
Fiction - not so much a favorite book but more favorite authors, I dearly love anything written by Fannie Flagg, Billie Letts, Rita Mae Brown, Jennifer Fulton, and Lucia St. Clair Robson.
They're a nice break between reading about Zen and whatnot.
The Master and Margharita
Brothers Karamazov
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Love your new avatar, Brxan.
Recently, I've read The Soul of Battle and Carnage and Culture, both by Victor Davis Hanson. Both are excellent. The former details numerous military marches through history, my favorite of which to read about was the Theban march against Sparta around 360 BCE led by the Ancient abolitionist Epaminondas. Any romanticism I had about Spartan culture from the movie 300 was shattered by that book.
I'm also "enjoying" Mao: The Unknown Story. It's a fantastic read, but some parts are physically unsettling and painful for the kinds of Maoist tortures it details. So sad.
Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill
So Others Might Live: A History of New York's Bravest--The FDNY from 1700 to the Present by Terry Golway
and...
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Someone earlier mentioned "For Whom The Bell Tolls". Read that for a book report back then and enjoyed it as well.
Always enjoyed a good old "thick" history book too.
And there was a book a friend lent me back around 1990, that for the life of me I can no longer remember the title of...it was about people living among and respecting old growth forests as a religious and spiritual experience. (fiction) I have searched the internet for hours upon hours looking for this book, to no avail. i can't remember the title, although if someone was to say it to me it would instantly leap to mind, YES!!!
I know everyone here would love the book as much as I did.
Perhaps it's title will come to me in a dream.....:)
It's hard for me to give a favorite author because I don't care to characterize them that way. Some authors I like, others I don't. That's about as far as I go with it.
I'm just finishing a book now that was very interesting. It's by an Italian author, Niccolo Ammaniti, and the book is As God Commands. It is a gritty, gut-wrenching look at the underbelly of humanity, not for the squeamish, but well written and well worth the effort of reading, imho. It's about three losers and the son of one of them, the skin-head Nazi. Think Italian Coen brothers. You can read more on Amazon if it interests you. Before that I read Let the Right One In, a book about Swedish vampires. I like to get eclectic!
Palzang
Yeah, that's why I read the book. Personally I liked the movie better. There are some details in the book that were disturbing and didn't really add to the story.
Palzang
Palzang
Palzang, as usual, you words are accutely acurate.
I'd also like to suggest some books I'm sure many of you would love.
Desolation Angels and The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac... musts for Buddhist seekers.
Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior
What is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger he makes absolutely remarkable statements on the mind and science
The Doors of Perception/ Heaven and Hell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley all pure gold.