Another Other List
And here is Mark Pitely’s list:
1) Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes. Brilliant, eye-opening, and quite possibly wrong. It definitely changed by thinking, even my thinking processes.
2) How to Read a Book – Mortimer J. Adler. Fascinating. I love all of his library science efforts.
3) Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies – Douglas Hofstadter (et al). My coding and AI leanings are showing. Great stuff here that it lightyears ahead of the rest in AI. His methodologies and tactics changed my approaches.
4) Cybernetics – Norbert Weiner. Complicated and varying, even unfocused, but a glimpse of how his mind worked.
5) Blood Rites: Origin and History of the Passions of War- Barbara Ehrenreich – Her own ideas in here were so potent they changed the intended nature of her work. It taught me to rethink my views on pre-historic man.
6) A Perfect Vacuum – Stanislaw Lem. Mind-blowing reviews of fictional books by fictional reviewers that simultaneously attack modern literary movements one by one despite using their tools.
7) The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin. Science Fiction, yes, but as political study of anarchy and capitalism, it belongs with Brave New World and 1984 – except it is better written.
8) The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil. A meditation on the modern human condition.
9) Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle- Nabokov. Unbelievably high in content, feeling, beauty, style. Its existence raises the bar on everything.
10) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte. People would come looking for me if I didn’t mention this book. No other author has had such a profound effect upon me.
too many I havent read.. oh dear. My brother, a late but prodigious reader, rates Wuthering Heights as the best book he has ever read, forcing me to reccommend it blind. Ursula Le Guin also rules, especially the Left Hand of Darkness.
Tomorrow (30 July,1818) happens to be Emily’s birthday.
Your brother knows whereof he speaks. WH is a brilliant, stunning novel.
Loved Mark Pitely’s selection of Musil’s ‘The Man without Properties’. This is DEFINITELY the most unread novel of the 19th century.
In 1968, the editors of the German satirical magazine ‘Pardon’ sent extracts of TMWP to several leading literary critics and publishing houses, alleging that the text had been written by a wannabe novelist — ALL TURNED IT DOWN as unreadable crap.
More here for those of you who are fluent in German.
19th? Isn’t it early 20th?
I was interested in the selection too – I’ve been meaning to read it for years, ever since the new translation came out. But have I? No.
There’s an idea for a list. Books we’ve been meaning to read for years and years and years and haven’t gotten to yet. Boy, that would be a long list…
Ooops — two howlers, sorry. 20th century of course — and the title is translated as ‘The Man without Qualities’, not ‘Properties’ (must be my libertarian streak).
Musil’s books are undoubtedly brilliant but because much of the content circles around the ennui and boredom of the protagonists and he writes about this so accurately, ennui and boredom in the reader can be a potential hazard.
How is the time machine coming along, Mark?