Journal Entries
Life book change
Posted Jun 28, 2005
Yeah, it was this thing about books changing life. When I finally got the hang of reading books - about 1950 or so – I read a lot of them … small ones of course at first. But through most of my school years, I read a couple of books a day … sometimes even three on a Sunday. That adds up to a lot of books, literally thousands. And I’m tempted to claim that as many as one in ten of them changed my life in some way or another … usually by changing the way I understood my position in the universe, I guess. But some of them remain in the forefront.
1956 - I read Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, I’ve been on an expedition around the world ever since.
Late fifties and early sixties: (I discover science fiction, philosophy and politics and more.)
Some of the change bringing books for me would be:
Essays, Bertrand Russell;
My Experiments With Truth, Mahatma Ghandi;
Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov;
Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and Magister Ludi by Hermann Hesse;
The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley; < the two neurones left in my brain are still hallucinating>
The Bhagavad Gita;
And lots of others, too. They all changed me.
The mid sixties gave me the Tolkien bug (I read Lord of the Rings in one long sitting)
The seventies were full of delights, like Salman Rushdi’s Grimus, Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Trout Fishing in America, by Brautigan; The Whole Earth Catalogue; thought provoking … but not life-altering.
In the eighties, two books changed my life … After The Hitchhikers Guide, I no longer was addicted to science fiction. (who could follow up a title like Life the Universe and Everything) And when I had finished the last pages of Marquez’ Hundred years of Solitude, I realized I was no longer addicted to literature.
I almost stopped reading.
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subject to abuse
Posted Jun 8, 2005
This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ... This is where i jot down my thoughts ...
The problem is to know enough to recognize an interesting thought when one passes by.
We guys usually recognize an interesting lass when she walks by ... why should it be more difficult with thoughts?
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Latest reply: Jun 8, 2005
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"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."