Apr 19 2009
My Top Five Books (Classics)
My Top Five Books (classics)
The Outsider
This book was written by Colin Wilson before he was 25. He became famous overnight. He showed incredible insight into the world of the Outsider as seen through a number of books and people. He basically identified the Outsider as someone who never completely feels as if he is part of life on the one hand while on the other he is intensely involved.
The book is haunting, gripping you at the heart with its themes of man who can’t connect with his world. He covers a variety of well known characters from Camus, to Kierkegaard, to Hemingway and many more.
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand wrote this book while she was in her thirty’s. The woman was a strange person but the book leaves you with no doubt that she was some kind of genius. Her theme is rationality and what happens when people decide to make decisions not based on rationality. The hero is absolute, refusing to compromise on his rationality. Rand makes it quite clear why giving a man a fish out of pity is not necessarily the solution to the problem.
Alice in Wonderland
The insight of Lewis Carroll is remarkable. His looks at the world and sees directly. He is what I call a truth detective catching the fogginess of life and going write to the heart of the matter. “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, surely it must come to jam today?” said
Alice.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Here you have mind who has managed to do something few thinkers are capable of doing. He has taken the Western mode of thought and combined it with the Eastern in a way that makes the head rush. He apparently took the book to hundreds of publishers before one was so kind to print it.
Slaughterhouse 5
Kurt Vonnegut, what more can I say? Vonnegut tells the story of how he was in Dresden when it was bombed during World War two. Vintage stuff.
All these books can be read once every three years. They become markers on your map of living, showing you how your own perspective changes and grows.
