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Fifteen Books
Aug. 12th, 2009 10:23 pmAs seen on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loganberrybunny, the 15 book meme. I actually did pick the books in 15 minutes, although it took longer to type out the notes.
01. Black Beauty - A book that really shaped a lot of my attitude toward life. It took on such a deep level that it's actually difficult to examine.
02. Watership Down - Everyfur has read this, and carries part of it with them, I think.
03. The Phoenix and the Carpet - The beautiful Phoenix plainly has a crush on Robert, and he's too dense to know it. One wants to @bap him sometimes.
04. History of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - The first of the Floyd Climer yearbooks, this one covers the history of the Speedway from 1909 to 1941. I spent many summer days with the library's copy as a child. Now I have my own :)
05. CRC Handbook - The standard reference work on chemistry and physics. When I worked for Western, I kept it on my desk within reach.
06. The Army of the Potomac - Bruce Catton's iconic three volume study. Probably the best book ever written on the American Civil War, it deals not just with the history of the subject, but also with the inherent tension between Americans and their government in time of war, and with what it means to be a volunteer soldier in the American practice.
07. The Day the World Ended - A badly-flawed popular account of the eruption of Mt. Pelee in 1902. It's a magnificent work of storytelling, and a dismal work of volcanology and history. Ironically, it's the very weakness of the authors' account of the eruption itself that spurred my curiousity about what really happened, and led to a longstanding interest in volcanoes, and this eruption in particular. As a semi-fictional disaster story, it remains one of the best I've ever read.
08. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - I love all of Lewis' 'Narnia' series, but this is probably the richest and strangest of them. It served as my introduction to several themes of medieval mythology that would interest me later.
09. The Wind in the Willows - I have fond memories of my grandmother reading this to me before I was old enough to read it myself. It's remained a favourite. In some odd way, it's entangled with Blue Willow china in my memory. One brings the other to mind. Rat would have used Blue Willow.
10. The Bible - It's technically a compilation of books, but generally treated as a single work. It's hard to live in the States, and not have it affect your thinking on some level. And yes, I've read the whole thing.
11. Gettysburg - the Long Encampment - A study of the battle of Gettysburg, and its place in the national memory. Quite passable as a general-interest account of the battle, its real strength lies in the examination of how Gettysburg gradually moved from experience, to history, to mythology.
12. The Complete Jack the Ripper - The first book I ever read about the Ripper, it sparked not only a lifelong interest in the Ripper, but in Victorian crime and poverty in general.
13. Helter Skelter - I was a teenager in post-60s America, when the shockwaves from the Manson incident were still reverberating. It wasn't that unusual to meet survivors from that whole West Coast scene of a few years earlier, and I had a small (but still too large) circle of acquaintances who professed active admiration for Manson. This book came out in the middle of that mileu. It has long fascinated me to see just how completely people can go off the rails, and this is a haunting study in that very subject. It's all the more bothering for having been on the fringe of the affair, in both space and time, closely enough that I can understand both sides of it.
14. Satyrday - The last book I read that really, truly floored me. There's a point in one's life around 12-14 or so when a book can completely fill one's imagination, and colour all one's waking hours. This one did that to me at the age of about 25 or so, which was in itself a special experience, since I was old enough to understand that this might not happen again. It's the story of a lonely, unfulfilled Raven named Dierdre, who saves the world and loses it, all without knowing how others see her.
15. Stranger than Science - Frank Edwards was an Indiana radio personality of my childhood. He specialized in reporting stories about UFOs, monsters, hauntings, mysteries, etc. What he lacked in factuality, he more than made up for with narrative ability. The man understood how to tell a disturbing story. Naturally, I adored him. This is one of his books of compilations of his radio reports.
loganberrybunny, the 15 book meme. I actually did pick the books in 15 minutes, although it took longer to type out the notes.01. Black Beauty - A book that really shaped a lot of my attitude toward life. It took on such a deep level that it's actually difficult to examine.
02. Watership Down - Everyfur has read this, and carries part of it with them, I think.
03. The Phoenix and the Carpet - The beautiful Phoenix plainly has a crush on Robert, and he's too dense to know it. One wants to @bap him sometimes.
04. History of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - The first of the Floyd Climer yearbooks, this one covers the history of the Speedway from 1909 to 1941. I spent many summer days with the library's copy as a child. Now I have my own :)
05. CRC Handbook - The standard reference work on chemistry and physics. When I worked for Western, I kept it on my desk within reach.
06. The Army of the Potomac - Bruce Catton's iconic three volume study. Probably the best book ever written on the American Civil War, it deals not just with the history of the subject, but also with the inherent tension between Americans and their government in time of war, and with what it means to be a volunteer soldier in the American practice.
07. The Day the World Ended - A badly-flawed popular account of the eruption of Mt. Pelee in 1902. It's a magnificent work of storytelling, and a dismal work of volcanology and history. Ironically, it's the very weakness of the authors' account of the eruption itself that spurred my curiousity about what really happened, and led to a longstanding interest in volcanoes, and this eruption in particular. As a semi-fictional disaster story, it remains one of the best I've ever read.
08. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - I love all of Lewis' 'Narnia' series, but this is probably the richest and strangest of them. It served as my introduction to several themes of medieval mythology that would interest me later.
09. The Wind in the Willows - I have fond memories of my grandmother reading this to me before I was old enough to read it myself. It's remained a favourite. In some odd way, it's entangled with Blue Willow china in my memory. One brings the other to mind. Rat would have used Blue Willow.
10. The Bible - It's technically a compilation of books, but generally treated as a single work. It's hard to live in the States, and not have it affect your thinking on some level. And yes, I've read the whole thing.
11. Gettysburg - the Long Encampment - A study of the battle of Gettysburg, and its place in the national memory. Quite passable as a general-interest account of the battle, its real strength lies in the examination of how Gettysburg gradually moved from experience, to history, to mythology.
12. The Complete Jack the Ripper - The first book I ever read about the Ripper, it sparked not only a lifelong interest in the Ripper, but in Victorian crime and poverty in general.
13. Helter Skelter - I was a teenager in post-60s America, when the shockwaves from the Manson incident were still reverberating. It wasn't that unusual to meet survivors from that whole West Coast scene of a few years earlier, and I had a small (but still too large) circle of acquaintances who professed active admiration for Manson. This book came out in the middle of that mileu. It has long fascinated me to see just how completely people can go off the rails, and this is a haunting study in that very subject. It's all the more bothering for having been on the fringe of the affair, in both space and time, closely enough that I can understand both sides of it.
14. Satyrday - The last book I read that really, truly floored me. There's a point in one's life around 12-14 or so when a book can completely fill one's imagination, and colour all one's waking hours. This one did that to me at the age of about 25 or so, which was in itself a special experience, since I was old enough to understand that this might not happen again. It's the story of a lonely, unfulfilled Raven named Dierdre, who saves the world and loses it, all without knowing how others see her.
15. Stranger than Science - Frank Edwards was an Indiana radio personality of my childhood. He specialized in reporting stories about UFOs, monsters, hauntings, mysteries, etc. What he lacked in factuality, he more than made up for with narrative ability. The man understood how to tell a disturbing story. Naturally, I adored him. This is one of his books of compilations of his radio reports.
