I thought I’d start this blog off with the books that influenced me. These books have shaped my thinking and are an important part of how I conceptualize the world.

Nothing remaining solid. From one century to the next the actors, the people, the land all change and end up unrecognizable. Memories get forgotten and changed, people leave and come back.

This is the book that influenced me in my transition from adolescence to adult. The Bhagavad Gita is Hindu scripture but has very little to do with God and metaphysics. It is a practical book on how to lead life. The basic premise of the Bhagavad Gita is dharma or duty. Duty to oneself, others and God. I hope to cover the Bhagavad Gita in the future with a set of posts.

Huxley attempts to connect the different religions and philosophies of the world under what he calls the Perennial Philosophy. Basically what I call the Oneness of the world is what Huxley refers to as the Perennial Philosophy.

Ishmael is an unusual text in the way it is written. It is a Socratic dialogue about civilization’s pitfalls and man’s role in those pitfalls but through the psyche of a gorilla in a zoo.

Frankenstein should be a required reading for every engineer and scientist. Frankenstein is a scientist who creates a monster which he quickly disowns after creating. The story questions science’s quest of creating and the pitfalls and danger that it may lead to.

Freud covers the disconnect between our want to be civilized and the animalistic urges that overcome us. He states it as an innate conflict which leads us to have an undertone of unhappiness. Because of this unhappiness we gave ourselves “mass delusions” like religion. A good book for understanding Fight Club.

If we are doomed to push a rock up a mountain for all of eternity just to see it roll back down everyday how do we deal with that? Camus states that freedom lies in the way we react when we walk down the hill: In that time we have freedom. And the freedom is the freedom to choose how we are going to react to pushing the rock back up.

Similar: Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

It is a kids book which tries to remind adults about what is important in life. The little prince is a prince of a planet with a rose which he leaves to come to earth. But he realizes that the most important things in life are those with priceless value like his rose.

The History of Sexuality covers the link between power and sex. If you think about anything in the last two centuries relating to imperialism, division among the sexes, homosexuality, power relations, Victorianism, the overt sexualization of culture Focault answers it.

Similar: Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

Huxley and Orwell have a gift for creating a hero who can be labeled as an outsider. In Brave New World the Savage is the outsider. Someone born outside of society and its rules he goes back into it and realizes that he has already been tainted. He can’t get away and his very nature of existence prevents him from ever assimilating to the culture that he is trying to get into. Brave New World is a multidimensional story which not only covers the dystopia of a prescription drug addicted society but also the complexity of living in between worlds.

Similar: Burmese Days by George Orwell