Books that have made me

Via Freddie deBoer, I have become aware of the intellectual meme circling, and give my own interpretation. While Freddie's list is very impressive, I wax a little more lighthearted. Perhaps the reason for this is that I am a lighthearted person. Or Freddie isn't? I dunno. In any case, here are the five seven books that made me.

1. The Lazy Sunday Book, by Bill Watterson. Was there a better pair for mature humor, cloaked in the innocence of childhood than Calvin and Hobbes? I miss that column, every time I read a paper, but laud Watterson for walking away with both his sanity and his reputation intact. The Lazy Sunday book was the first time I saw Calvin in color, and realized he was a little blonde scamp, like me.

2. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. As a 13-year-old, this book taught me two things. The first was that rules of your elders can be bent, but going along with their system serves everyone best. The second was that as a brilliant mind, I should spend my time for the betterment of society, and not waste my life seeking wealth.

3. Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. It is no secret that I grappled with the idea of Jesus being my salvation every day until the day I read this book. I have not grappled with it since.

4. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Early on, I loved writing, and have always loved vocab. Austen's novel still thrills the parts of my brain that long for wordplay. In this world of blogs, articles, and the english language edging sadly closer and closer to NewSpeak, I feel I am writing a hundred years after I should have been.

5. Organic Chemistry, by Francis Carey. Somehow, Carey got it through my head that life exists because of the reactivity of oxygen. Water is not essential for life - the oxygen atom in water is the essential component. When I realized that every chemical reaction was basically all the other atoms trying to make the oxygen atoms happy...my understanding of nature went through the roof.

6. The Prince, by Machiavelli. Read it in high school, boring. Read it during the Bush Administration...all of a sudden it was like the pages came alive. Ruthless destruction of others for theacquisition and maintenance of power is nothing new, it would seem.

7. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. This, and a myriad of other fantasy and science fiction novels, built within a young me an intensely well-developed imagination. The best gift I ever received was the sense that "the impossible" was actually just "the difficult but attainable". I continue to believe that. I continue to dream.


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