The Influential Books Game

Usually I avoid memes like the plague, but I got sucked into this one. This notion of listing the books that have affected you the most has been making the rounds, and I'm going to play along. Hope some of these surprise you.

Also, once you've read mine, go check out the NY Times, Marginal Revolution, ("Sexual Personae" is a great choice — Ayn Rand is not), The League of Ordinary Gentleman, (love the childhood books theme) and Google the rest.

"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Annie Dillard

The book that made me want to become a writer. Incandescent prose, insights to mull over for years, a modern-day Thoreau journey. I only wished she published more nonfiction — it's been eleven years (!!!) since we got "For the Time Being."

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra," Fredrich Nietzsche

It's difficult to choose just one book of Nietzsche's. But he's the guy who taught me how to think. If you want to learn how to think — and we all need to learn, and re-learn — I suggest you study his aphorisms. The man thought outside all boundaries. Yeah, I've read everything of Nietzsche's (yes, even including "Will to Power" — many times), so it's difficult to pick just one book, but "Thus Spake Zarathustra" manages to combine a narrative of sorts with his aphoristic wisdom, so it gets the edge over "Beyond Good and Evil."

"How to Win Friends and Influence People," Dale Carnegie

Decidedly not literary. But a seminal book that shaped my social relationships from college onward. Truly useful in learning people skills (and God knows more people need them). I guarantee that if you read this, the way you interact with every human being around you will change for the better. I think I just made up the BookFox Guarantee. I should copyright that.

The Old Testament

Even Nietzsche praised it, saying it's "where we find men, things, and words in a style so grandiose that the Latin and Greek literatures have nothing to lay upon it." I go back to those epic stories again and again. I can't get over Nehemiah rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem or Hosea being forced to marry a prostitute. It enlarges your vision of what narrative can accomplish.

"Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoevsky

I continue to revisit Dostoevsky. Just re-read "Notes from the Underground." Have read "The Brothers onhealthy generic medicine online Karamazov" several times. But "Crime and Punishment" has an unparalleled clarity of vision. The quintessential story of realizing the limits of our humanity — we are not ubermensches.

"Blindness," Jose Saramago

This is the only book on my list I've only read once. So I don't know what it's doing on my list. But somehow it's been one of my favorite books for the last seven years, and nothing really seems to dethrone it. I refused to see the movie because I thought it'd ruin the book for me. Someday I'll revisit it and see if it still holds up. Unfortunately, Saramago's other work has disappointed me. The sequel to "Blindness," "Seeing," was a sad exercise in dogmatism. "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" committed the crime above all other literary crimes — boredom. And "Death With Interruptions" had no continuity of characters, just a device that wasn't able to sustain an entire narrative.

"Fear and Trembling," Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard manages to bridge the divide between literature and philosophy much in the same way Nietzsche does, and I love him for it. My first Master's thesis was on the Novel of Ideas, so I seek out fiction that's trying to tackle philosophical questions. Haven't worked through all of Kierkegaard (c'mon, who gets through all of "Stages on Life's Way") but what I have read of his has made an indelible impression.

"The Complete Stories," Flannery O'Connor

This is probably the least surprising book on my list. Flannery's a wonderful amalgam of violence, unexpected juxtapositions, and religion. She's someone who it really pays to re-read. And every time I read about what older authors are reading, they always say they've stopped reading new material and gone back to the classics, so I think that Flannery's going to be someone I return to for the next forty years.

"The Art of the Commonplace," by Wendell Berry

Berry is the author I drop into conversation the most. "That's so Wendell Berryesque," or "You totally Wendell Berried that." I'm not being pretentious — he's just represents a whole lifestyle of counter-cultural living. He's staunchly agrarian, ecological, local-centered and anti-industrial. Above all, he's wise. After reading him I was never able to look at sex or technology or food the same way. In America, he's the closest thing we have to a modern-day prophet.