Books

[stereotype441]

A wonderful meme from linettasky. "List the 20-odd books you have personally read that have been most influential in your life. By personally read, I mean that we aren't talking about indirect effects of famous books you haven't read. By influential, I mean intellectually, spiritually, politically, aesthetically, or any other way you might be influenced (e.

Comments

[auranja]

Wow, what a great list. I've been looking for some inspiration lately. Maybe I'll read The Adventures of Johnny Bunko and The Art of Happiness.

[dlakelan]

Cool list! I'm going to try to think up a list like this. Some of yours will carry over: The Language Instinct, and QED for example...

Your descriptions of the books are extremely well written also. I hope I can do justice to the meme!

[stereotype441]

Thanks. I'm curious to see what your list looks like.

Thanks for including IMPROV WISDOM

[anonymous]

Few things MAKE MY DAY more than to see my book on someone's list. Thanks for telling others and for finding value in it.
May all of your adventures turn out as dazzlingly good improvs!
Best wishes,
Patricia Ryan Madson

[linettasky]

Funny, some of the books on your influential books are books that stood out to me from my dad's reading list: Gödel, Escher, Bach; How to Win Friends; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. GEB and Zen, etc., are the two books that I stole -- still haven't gotten past the first 20 pages of GEB, although it's on my bookshelf.

These similarities don't surprise me -- you and my dad are actually very similar people in some ways; I've noticed similar influences before, so other ones make sense.

I think when I took Physics 101 ("Physics for Poets") in college, we had some readings that were out of that Feynman book.