A Conversation for The Lounge

Book reviews

Post 1

Paigetheoracle

Is there a book that has made a big impact on your life and why? For instance The Divided Self by RD Laing shattered my ego and made me realize that good mental health was about contact and connection - its opposite being separation anxiety


Book reviews

Post 2

Recumbentman

Must look into that. My most influential books were Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig) and The Selfish Gene (Dawkins).

Zen was a revelation in the way the form of the book matched the content. It gets difficult and unfocussed just as he is about to remember what he had been through, a memory that was creeping up on the writer and making him uncomfortable.

The Selfish Gene was the fulfillment of what I'd been waiting for, since reading T H Huxley on Darwin as a teenager and realising that the whole of philosophy needed to be started again, from scratch.


Book reviews

Post 3

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

"1984" scared me silly and left me with anxiety.

"A Darker shade of magic" and its sequels, by V E Schwab. thrilled me and had me hooked. "The Magicians" and its sequels, by Lev Grossman, had me wanting to escape to the magic land of Fillory.

I don't know why magical worlds resonate with me so much, but they do.


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