Obiwan's Top 5 "These Is My Influence, My Inspiration" Books:

-"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche (That's obvious, yes?)
-"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" by David Hume (Perhaps the greatest work of logic ever)
-"The Republic" by Plato (Almost the de fact "Most Important Western Philosophy Text Ever" pick)
-"On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill (Only just started, but it already makes my list...that is REALLY a beautiful sentiment, Mill's beginning...)
-"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare (If you didn't see this coming...what, are you a ghost or soemthing?)

And Special Mentions To:

-"Human, All Too Human" by Friedrich Nietzsche (The first philosophy book I ever read.)

And...

-"Waiting For Godot" by Samuel Beckett and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Thomas Stoppard (I read/acted in both of these my last year of high school, and it was both of them, and the encouraging of my English teaher, that made me first try to read a philosophy text, and then six months later my first philosophy professor taught me not just to read and say "That's a nice argument," but to always ask myself, "IS this a good argument, and if so, why, and to what affect?" Words of wisdom, maybe the wisest I've ever heard, I'll never forget them, or that professor, I still visit him...and now PROFIT from his teaching tutoring others and teaching them that same principle!)

OK, now what about you?

I REALLY need to read "Dune," I think, abgemacht, lol...I'm not really a sci-fi guy unless it's film or TV, but I was wrong about "Ender's Game" way back when I read that, that was sci-fi with ltierary depth, so who knows...what about it inspires you? :)

I would say it's worth reading.

It's one of the SF books that all others are judged by. I would *not* watch either of the movies; they were both pretty awful.

Catch-22. Yossarian is, in an odd way, the single most sensible character I've ever seen in literature. He completely grasps how meaningless and absurd everything everyone else is trying to kill themselves and more importantly, him, over really is. And yet at the same time he's still ballsy enough to face it all with irreverence and a sense of humour. It's great.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and all of Sir Conan-Doyle's sequels), The Complete Works of Poe, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Food of the Gods, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte-Cristo, any of Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 novels, any of Leslie Charteris' The Saint novels, all of the Ender Saga (plus the Bean novels), The Martian Chronicles, 2001 and its sequels, Rendevous with Rama and its sequels, the Dune saga, the Incarnations of Immortality, the Aubrey/Maturin novels and, of course, the plays of William Shakespeare.

And I'm sure I'm leaving something out...

Brevity is the soul of wit, Draugnar...

You don't know anyone ELSE going on like that, do you, now? :p

(but seriously, those are some great works.)

I knew I forgot at least one, Gulliver's Travels.

All of those are in my library and most are also in my eLibrary.

Oh, and I listed probably 50 books in 8 lines, you listed 8 books in 50 lines. Who is the witless one now? ;-)

Obi: your list is total BS. If "Waiting for Godot" gives you the strength to persevere, then you totally missed the point. And "The Republic" It might be important, but you aren't the kind of guy who's moved and inspired by the proposal that a nation should be governed by a hereditary aristocracy who use lies to keep the masses in their place. Not to mention, a two-word summary of Nietzsche is "screw Plato." So instead of picking great books, pick books that matter to you--whether they're great or not.

A Wrinkle in Time
Ender's Game
God for Us
Love in the Time of Cholera
Oedipus Rex

Damn, I forgot L'Engle's classic. Also, The Once and Future King (and The Book of Merlin), and The Lathe of Heaven.

Maybe I should take the laptop into the library/den and start typing :-)

@pastoralan, have you read Ender in Exile? It covers the events in Ender's and Valentine's lives between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.

And I forgot the Ringworld series.

@Draug

The Bond books? They were a fun read, but had little of substance? Not sure I'd ever read them again. Do you really think that highly of them?

That second sentence wasn't a question.

@pastoralan:

I meant that "Waiting For Godot" got me interested in philosophy in the first place, and the works I listed formally in my Top 5 inspire me or give me strength in one way or another (trust me, I know Godot...my sister's now doing homework for it for high school, and helping her with it and reading it for the first time in a while...I never cease to be amazed at how incredible Lucky's Speech is!)

@abge - Fleming's earliest like Casino Royale, yes. His last few were weaker entries and the John Gardner and Raymond Benson novels, while in my library, are just read and forget books. But it's about the escapism for me.

I could have listed a lot of lesser books I'd reread from the library as well (Barbara Hambly's Darwath series and a story called The Galactic Rejects by AJ Offutt are two).

I think the biggest problem I had with them was the outright racism. It wasn't that bad except for a lot of deus ex machina that went along with it; took away from the stories, imho.

Bond was lucky at cards, women (except they died a lot) and life. As far as the racism, they were written in the 50s. The first movie (Dr. No) may have been released in '62, but Casino Royale was first published in '52, a full decade earlier.

Understood and for the most part, it didn't bother me, but when there were things like:

I looked in the crowd and spotted the guy right away. I knew he was the Chinaman because Negroes were never clever enough to pull of something like this.


Obviously, not a direct quote, but those things really bugged me, because it wasn't Bond being racists (which is fine) it was the author and the few times it happened, it shattered my suspension of disbelief.

Out of curiosity Obi have you ever read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he seems to have some pretty fascinating ideas even if they are often a little bit two wordy for easy digesting.

Also nicely enough all his works are available online, I'm thinking his essay on self-reliance might just make my list of texts that explains how I think.

And I DO draw something from "The Republic":

The Cave Analogy--particulary the analogy-within-the-analogy where Plato/Socrates draws a connection between the ability to see greater and the ability to know more, and he does it with the sun, can't remember the words verbatum, but it all hooks back to his central idea of gaining a greater understanding--and the idea of a Philosopher King--the "Republic" he rules maybe less so--and ESPECIALLY the mode of education...

As anyone whpo's heard me go on about it will attest, my ideas on education almost are ENTIRELY in one way or another a derivative of Palto's idea of teaching according to desire and ability, "likes with likes," and all of that...I honestly do believe he HAD THAT PERFECTLY, and if it weren't for the fact he uses that educational system to build a nation that we today would look down upon--and good reason, but there's no way Plato could ahve predicted something like the Third Reich--I think it'd be FAR more in use, I gave my Communications final speech on adopting a version of Plato's educational system in our schools today...

That, and the fact I ended with a Shakespeare quote...

I was on the verge, pass or fail...I passed. Enough said. ;)

I also disagree that Nietzsche was of the "fuck you" opinion of Plato, I actually recall reading him saying Plato "bored" him, but there's no denying that the Philospher King and the Ubermensch, while arising rhrough different methods, are similar in some aspects of their nature, and Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Return matches Palto/Socrates' argument for the immortality of teh soul via reusable "parts" that even after death may serve purposes, even our own once more, in "The Phaedo," and so on.

Plato and Nietzsche have differences, and the German is probably closer to Aristotle on the whole--"Nichomachean Ethics" practically reads like an early work of ethics by the mustachioed man--but to say they're polar opposites is a bad misreading, I'd say...



And all five of those books DO matter to me, immensely:

From "Zarathustra" I get...well, so much I can't begin without typing an essay, really, but I WILL give my favorite quote, and it's probably my favorite, most inspirational non-Shakespeare quote, one I've told people time and again after they've had a loss, adn they've always found it very comforting and even really rousing too...

"It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height."

"Hamlet"...again, enough said, you know why I consider that inspirational for me.

Hume's work--I see that as the triumph of logic, I'd argue Hume is the greatest empiricist who ever lived, and it makes me SICK to see the scientific, English empiricist legacy now being fronted by Dawkins...Hume's cooly refuting and countering what he saw as logically-absurd and a blindfold to logicalm discourse in "On Miracles" within the work is INSPIRING to those who believe his argument...Dawkins was and is an instrigator with no end aim philosophically but to grab headlines and make philosophy--and I'd go so far as to even say atheism on the whole, though I'm agnostic and not atheist, so we'll see how that holds up--look bad in the eyes of the public. Hume argued agaisnt dogma...and with his YouTube channels and fundamentalist-atheist books matching the fundamentalist-0Christian works tonally, Dawkins has created his own dogma...

And if he DID believe in an aferlife, hume now surely would be tossing in his grave.

John Stuart Mill's work...I'm not through with it yet, so that's a bit of a "to be determined" marker there, but as I've said, just the opening, where he so cooly refutes the logical fallacies of silencing voices for "just cause" and because so and so's opinion is "of course right"...

But my FAVORITE point so far is his stating that even if it's 1,000,000 vs. 1, if we silence that one voice, we lose something precious..

And as examples--he pulls out Jesus Christ and Socrates.

Atheist and Christian ALIKE, I think, can agree with Mill there. :)

And that's the five, by Plato, Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Hume, and Mill.

eh, I read self-reliance and all I thought was "man, this guy loves to hear himself talk."

Also, an essay on how people shouldn't let other people mold them? Come on...

What I enjoy most about them is the descriptions of what would otherwise be mundane events, like breakfast.

"Room service? I’d like to order breakfast. Half a pint of orange juice, three eggs, lightly scrambled, with bacon, a double portion of café Espresso with cream. Toast. Marmalade. Got it?"

@Draug,

As I said, I thought they were a fun read, but I don't feel like they impressed anything upon me.

Draugnar, is Bond as bad a *secret* agent in the books as he is in the movies? And I mean bad as in 'not good', not 'badass'.

@abge - Have you read any of "The Saint"?