By Bahamut.Oblivion 2010-02-06 09:24:10
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
-- Don't care if it's "popular", LOTR's high fantasy settings inspire to never be content with my own writings.
George Orwell - 1984
It's always relevant, such a timeless book.
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club
- Read the book first years ago, just because Brad Pitt was in the movie and I didn't want to watch some Brad Pitt movie... but the book was almost some 'religious' experience for me, it was sort of like a reaffirmation that it was OK to hit rock bottom. Fight Club was my first real literary look at "nihilistic" topics.
J.D. Salinger -- The Catcher in the Rye
"...Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, Many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them -- if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
"I'm not trying to tell you that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with -- which, unfortunately is rarely the case -- tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And -- most important -- nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker."
It's a nice read, I suppose I read it a bit late into my "life crisis", or it might've had a larger impact on me.
Jean-Paul Sartre -- The Transcendence of the Ego
I haven't gotten around to Being and Nothingness yet, I'm saving that for later, but Sartre's one of the few who's ever "shown me anything new" that I haven't already "realized" by research, or empiricism, over the years.