While I was out doing yard work over the weekend, instead of singing songs expressing my anguish and agony to pass the time and drive away wildlife, not to mention Jehovah's Witnesses, I started thinking what books, music, and movies in my collection were the most significant for me. If Obama got tired of me not going along with the glorious revolution and sent his goons to exile me to some forlorn tropical island, what books would I take other than The SAS Survival Guide and Martha Stewart's 1001 Uses for Coconuts? The TSA says I can have ten besides those two, and they'll throw in Obama's Speech of Myself as a bonus that I might see the error of my ways (and who wants to wipe with fronds all the time?).
I'm not going to try and rebuild Western Civilization, so no Complete Works of Shakespeare, no Summa, no Plato or Aristotle. Those would all be good choices, but I just want something to keep me entertained when I'm not spearfishing or talking to Wilson. Here's my list:
The Bible
Lord of the Rings -- only counts as one
Lilith
Phantastes
Til We Have Faces
The Great Divorce
The Place of the Lion -- Charles Williams
The Once and Future King
The Complete Works of Robert Browning
The Complete Works of Flannery O'Connor
It's a sad, bad list -- no Wodehouse, no Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, no Princess of Mars, no H.Beam Piper, no Louis L'Amour, no Robert E. Howard, no Seven Pillars of Wisdom, no Andrew Murray, no Chesterton!-- this won't work at all. I'm not going. They can have my e-reader when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.
What about it? What would your list be?
Plato For the Win!
6 hours ago
15 comments:
That's a purty good list!
Lessee, for books mine would be:
1. The Bible
2. The works of C.S. Lewis
3. American Sniper (great! Great book! Sadly, Chris Kyle was murdered last year).
4. Dantes Inferno
5. MOTT
6. The complete works of Thomas Merton.
7. Ditto to the works of Flannery O'Connor
8. One Cosmos Under God ( and a hard copy of Bob's blog).
9. Lord Of The Rings of course.
10. The complete works of Dan Greenfield (I like the way he thinks).
Yeah, I'm with you, Mushroom, I ain't goin'!
Chris Kyle's death was really tragic. Trying to help out another vet.
The Inferno is essential. Merton, too, and he had completely dropped off my radar, but I owe him a lot. Back when we were young and broke, I would go to the library to check out Merton's books like Seeds of Contemplation or The Way of Chuang Tzu and that's how I got by.
I did hear that Google is adding a whole bunch of satellites to give world-wide coverage, and if Amazon can fly us out whatever we need on its drones ... We could set up a Grog LZ -- not to be confused with a Grog Drop Zone which is where the imbiber drops when he/she has imbibed enough.
Ok, let's see...
Bible -might get a chance to read it first hand.
MOTT
The collected works of Bob.
Oh, and that text on Electromagnetisim that I'm slowly chewing through along with my college Calculus text, to help me with the former.
That should do me for a long time.
I can't tell you the last bit of fiction I read. Wait... some Jeeves and Wooster about 20 years ago.
I can't even get to 10.
I've got Berlinski's A Tour of the Calculus and Hartog's Mechanics I'd like to finish. I'll lend you my copy of Caveman Chemistry and along with the Electromagnetism book, we can do the Professor thing.
Caveman Chemistry. I'll have to check that out. Sounds like it was written for me. Hmmm.... The author teaches at Hampden-Sydney. He's practically my neighbor!
I also think we will need a copy of Coconut and Bamboo for Dummies to truly learn the ways of the Professor.
Mushroom, aye.
Merton is who got me started into being more esoteric.
I went on a retreat for a few days sponsered by the good Nuns neAr St. martin college in Olympia in the early nineties and while there I listed to all the Merton tapes they had.
Very illuminating!
Say, we have enough Raccoons to form a football team.
Obviously, Wilson will be the ball.
We can even add the moniker: DangeRuss Wilson after my favorite quarterback. :)
Er, listened not listed to the tapes.
Raccoon Island is sounding better all the time.
Russell Wilson seems like a really good person, as well as a good QB.
Some of the stuff in Caveman Chemistry is pretty impressive, and it's all supposed to work hands-on. Maybe when I retire ...
Russell Wilson does seem like a genuinely nice guy.
He certainly doesn't keep his Christian belief a secret and he does a ton of charity work, mostly at Seattle Childrens hospital.
I wanna get the Caveman Chemistry now. If I accidently demolish our house you'll know what happened.
Yeah, I like the idea of a Raccoon island.
How to Build Genie Lamp.
Then coonz haz all the books.
Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning always cheers me up.
I've read Berlinski's Devil's Delusion 3 times. Just for the pleasure of it.
If it's really hot, we can read 1776 again.
Better bring Wildwood Wisdom in case Mush gets hurt and can't tell us how to remove the arrows.
The Nick Adams Stories.
Animal Farm. (1984 won't matter anymore)
You guys are bringing the other stuff.
Rick,
I can remove arrows as long as I have alcohol and gun powder.
I watched a lot of westerns. :)
Guaranteed those are all gone day one.
:-D
I'm purty sure Mushroom and John Lien can make more.
:^)
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