My Favorite Books

In honor of Banned Book Week, an awareness campaign in the ever-ongoing battle to censor non-obscene books for their radical views or real-life content, I thought I would share my Top 10 Favorite Books.

#1. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. This war memoir by the legend “Lawrence of Arabia” may be the best written first-hand history there is. Aside from his high quality of prose, Lawrence describes the politics of war–diplomacy and military policy, economics, culture and sociology of the war in the desert that he led, in a war of national liberation, that he invented for his time and place. It is truly fascinating writing and a great story greatly told.

#2. The Trial by Franz Kafka. Kafka’s construction of the “auto-horrific” is a masterpiece of creative writing. He literally constructs a living hell of everyday things and forms them into a journey into the impossible that feels so ordinary and real. If I were one of the Book People, this is the one I would memorize.

#3. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. This is a great love story in a time of conflict. Hemingway’s prose is always spectacular, even the parts where you can’t tell who is saying what or what is going on. As a work of fiction, it captures sentiment and then it rips out of you like pulling a bowling ball out of your belly button.

#4. Kim by Ruyard Kipling. Although Kipling may be considered rather un-p.c. by today’s cultural standards, Kim is a good adventure for any man, old or young, Boy Scout or not. Part lesson on the fates of life, part spy story, it puts one in a frame of mind when they were young and dreamed of doing something just like Kimball O’Hara did in their back woods.

#5. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Forget Kerouac and his poor writing, Steinbeck’s account of a cross country exploration of America shows our nation as it once was, and still is, if we stopped someplace long enough to see what is familiar with it. Although nothing much extraordinary happens, Steinbeck is the best writer of American English of the 20th Century, in my opinion. This is mindless, good, easy reading.

#6. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell. When I read this story of this idealistic, sad fool, I kept thinking to myself: This is so me, or what I would really be like if I didn’t open my thoughts to others. It is not autobiographical for me in any way, but hey, it is Orwell’s satire of the type of person that I would see of myself if I had a point of view of me some place hidden around me. You get it, don’t you?

#7 Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This is a story, entirely realistic, of what can happen when time goes nowhere and you suddenly find yourself older and unfulfilled. It is worth reading, even as a translation, because of the fully formed characters trapped in a retreat for the sick, on the Magic Mountain.

#8. The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Thucydides was the father of strategy and he wrote a book about the great war of his time. It is a story of what fate befalls a democracy that assumes the pretensions of empire. The history relates how demagogues and diatribe can cause an entire civilization to fall. There are always lessons in Strategy.

#9. Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. It is said that Vonnegut wrote the same book, or rather sold the same book, twenty different times. Regardless, Vonnegut writes a funny and inspiring story of how things work out in the end; how life has its own sense of irony.

#10. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The description of a seizure, I was told by a doctor, is a close example of what is supposed to happen when people receive electro-shock therapy. Dostoevsky is a great writer of psychology and how guilt and conscience are as natural to humans as hair and earlobes.

Well these are the Top 10 books that most influenced my philosophy, if I can presume to have a philosophy. There are other books that are important. My list is atypical as I have a rather bizarre taste and a predilection for good history. The list can change, as I change with it. But for now, these are the most important books I have read among a couple of thousand (at least) that I have experienced first hand.