BW ten most influential books

I was tagged by Lisa Williamscraig, who seems to believe that it is acceptable behavior in a "civilized" society to pass on something torturous "because sharing is caring." Not so torturous for me. I know other people think "books" are what you read between one pair of covers, or in a single PDF, or whatever, but a Book for me is the collection of ideas on pages that run from the beginning of a train of thought to the end of that train of thought or storyline. I read series/authors/stories, so I will stretch the assignment out of shape and actually answer the question of the ten stories which I remember seriously changing me. These are in a kind of chronological order based on not really remembering when things happened:

  1. Wind In The Willows (Grahame) because my Mom read it all the way through with voices while we cuddled in a comfy chair together every night. Ah, so THIS is what reading is...the most archetypally loving safety in which to allow your imagination to burst into life.
  2. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (Lewis) twice through and then, over the next ten years, all C.S. Lewis, including all Narnia several times. First total entry into a complete world that unfolds itself before and within you in series, coming to a close and then opening up again to set the expectation of enldessness and then frustrate it with closure even so.
  3. Shakespeare Collected Works and verse counts as a book. I had read Narnia, and then played Peter on stage at the Dallas Theater Center, and then read every play I could reach. Shakespeare was the most bang I could get for my provebial buck in a single volume. The guy has got Everything in there with some of the coolest word/thought games and story-structures. I thought he had invented them until I got to the Greeks and Romans.
  4. Hobbit - Lord of the Rings (Tolkein) All of the series, twice, and then again every three years or so. Narnia. Only better and multiplied.
  5. Foundation (Asimov) All of the series, and then again once. I was getting over the Twice Through Immediately thing by this point, but had begun making notes in earnest. Herbert would later blow me away, but Asimov came through as a colleague, obsessed by notes on culture, working on and with everything he could find. Haven't read all of Asimov. Won't.
  6. Dune (Herbert) All of the series, twice, and then again every three years or so. As LOTR and Asimov above but with intellectual and cultural sophistication including intimate cruelty and psycho-mytho-systemic manipulation. At this point, of loving, learning/digesting, and then having several ways to improve the original and launch my own fictions, I realized my own predilections for cultural study and smithery. Haven't read in ten years. Probably will again.
  7. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell) and then all Campbell. Cultural mythology locked-in.
  8. The Road Less Travelled (Peck) through Different Drum, with notes. All Peck. Community Building locked-in.
  9. Care of the Soul (Moore) and then all Moore. Archetypal psychology locked-in.
  10. Re-visioning Psychology (Hillman) an then all Hillman, Jung, and a Ph.D. in archetypal psychology for goodness sake. At this point my library became a bit unmanageable.

Here I resisted the temptation to list just a few dozen more books but, OK, I get what Lisa meant by torturous. Back to work on Peace Practices :-)

 

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