The ten book thingee. These arent necessarily my favourites, or what I think are the best books. These are books that made me who I am. With thanks to @Darren Happens and @Ian Cooper for the prompt. Dune by Frank Herbert. Read it forty times in high school. Every story has its culture, and the culture can be stranger than the story. Ecology, Islam, and the messianic myth. Got through the first trilogy, but have never shown any interest in the rest. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. First read it when I was twelve. Its themes of techology as triumph and humanitys ascension to the suprahuman are the antithesis of how I now see the universe, but what a perfectly structured story. Add Kubrick and the obsession becomes all-encompassing. Runequest II by Stafford and Perrin. Gregs (at that time) quirky drug-touched Bullfinch cosmology and Steves SCA-tinged humanism, the mix of myth and history produce *the* RPG. CoC has served me longer, but RQII is the pinnacle. Though more than 30 years on, were still waiting for the *start* of the Hero Wars. Feminist Companion to Mythology, edited by Carolynne Larrington. Myths hide as much as the reveal, contrain as much as they enable. Myths are vehicles of cultural power. This is still my indispensible reference. Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach by Lessa and Vogt. A collection of key readings, outdated even when I first read it. However, it opened my mind to the powerhouse of human cognitive process, culture, creativity and confabulation that is religion. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind by George Lakoff. Metaphors and symbols come from us having bodies?! Mind is an embodied process!? Whod a thunk? Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges. Perfection in ten pages. It says everything. It is wicked. Nuff said. The Tain (Táin Bó Cúailnge) translated by Thomas Kinsella. There is power in these stories. Power, and poetry. War Music by Christopher Logue. Homer reinvented as a Kurasawa film. Conscious and Verbal by Les Murray. Australias greatest poet reflects on depression, and saves my life. The Collected William Butler Yeats - because he has greater range than Blake. Just. Sandman by Neil Gaiman. You know why. Oh bugger, thats eleven. Cue existential crisis ...
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 04:52:31 +0000
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