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"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again,
there is no use in reading it at all."
-- Oscar WILDE(1854-1900)
"The best way to make your dreams come true
is to wake up."
-- Paul VALERY (1871-1945)
Bravo for reading and reflecting upon this page! People with your curiosity keep literature
and critical thinking alive. Of course, I welcome your recommendations for books I should read.
Here are a few treasures (in alphabetical order) which I reread periodically to gift myself
a "reality check". Feel free to link your site to this page.
- Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus
Bosch by Henry Miller. A novel by a courageous author who
fought 'til the end for eros, art, and "joie de vivre" against America's
Puritanical censors.
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Visionary Huxley predicted with uncanny clarity the world in which we
live.
- Celebrations of Life by
René Dubos. A profoundly optimistic book, written by a scientist
about people and society.
- How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by
Michael J. Gelb. Gelb distills da Vinci, arguably the greatest genius ever,
into Seven Da Vincian Principles: Curiosità Dimostrazione, Sensazione, Sfumato,
Arte/Scienza, Corporalita and Connessione. Anybody who takes this book's
lessons to heart will be rewarded greatly.
- The Magus by John Fowles. A novel
by a master storyteller about the power of a magician on a Greek island
to teach an innocent British schoolteacher about the multi-layers of life.
Fowles fuels the reader's imagination by blurring the distinction between
"fantasy" and "reality".
- Prometheus: The Life of Balzac by
André Maurois. While he was young and impoverished, Honoré de Balzac
promised the literary world he would become "the Napoleon of literature."
With superhuman energy and talent, Balzac succeeded. Balzac is a master at
describing the inner psychology of obsessive persons.
- Sartre by Annie Cohen-Solal. A candid
biography of existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the 20th century's most
controversial authors (the only person to turn down the Nobel Prize), and
his life-long companion, Simone de Beauvoir. If you want to learn how two
persons pushed social conventions to the limit (while achieving worldly
success), read this book. Meeting Sartre in Paris has been one of the high
points of my life.
- The Story of Civilization by
Ariel and Will Durant. This eleven volume history of the world (which
took 50 years to write!) reads likes a series of witty, juicy novels.
Will Durant & Ariel (Will's former student turned wife) were passionate
in their quest to bring philosophy out of the ivory towers and into the lives
of the public. The Age of Voltaire and
Rousseau and Revolution are my favorites in
this series. The Durants retired in the Hollywood Hills. I regret I was
unable to meet them before they passed away in 1981.
- Success and Failure of Picasso by
John Berger. A biography, complete with photos, of the prodigious 20th
century painter -- whom his contemporary Jean Cocteau called "the hardest
worker on Earth".
- Suppressed by Dr. Albert Ellis. In this
collection of essays, renowned psychotherapist/sexologist Ellis is remarkably
candid about himself and his profession. One essay, "Intellectual Fascism"
describes brilliantly the hypocrisy of many persons who consider themselves
enlightened.
- "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!":
Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman. Dr. Feynman,
who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, solved the mystery of why the
Apollo spacecraft exploded, was commissioned to paint a naked (female)
bull fighter, and cracked many "secure" safes at Los Alamos during the
development of the atomic bomb. He was a world-class thinker and an
iconoclast whom I had the pleasure to meet at the California Institute
of Technology.
- Unpopular Essays by Bertrand Russell.
The free-thinking British philosopher debunks many "politically correct"
myths which ebb and tide in history's vast ocean. For example, Russell
satirizes the idea that people with poor health, education, and resources
are "morally superior" to persons with excellent health, education, and
resources.
- Voltaire in Love by Nancy Mitford.
This is the story of Voltaire, one of France's premier authors and activists,
and his mistress, Madame Émilie du Châtelet, one of history's most remarkable
women. Émilie du Châtelet, for instance, was the first woman admitted into
French café society, the first person to move kitchens from the backyard
(they were considered fire hazards in her time) into the house, and the
first person to translate Isaac Newton's scientific works into French.
