The Five Books I Would Want If Stranded On A Deserted Island
If I were facing a long stretch of solitude, I would at least want some books. You probably never get to choose, you just end up with whatever didn't burn up in the crash or sink to the bottom. But wondering what you would choose is a better way of determining what your actual favorite books are. Like I enjoyed reaching Jurassic Park and The Firm a long time ago, but I would never re-read those and they don't offer much insight into life and the internal human experience.
Criteria are re-readability of course, distillation of human history, a lot of substance to chew on regarding both the internal and external human experience. As in, what it is like to operate a human mind and body as well as what is out there in the world to remind one how big it really is in it's absence.
And above all, what would help me feel less alone?
It should go without saying that the ones I have chosen all happen to be deeply subversive of the dominant paradigms of human thought in 2017. These are life-changing, question everything you learned in school, you will not understand it the first time through, epoch-shattering, diamond distillations of knowledge of the human experience and how-to manuals for accomplishing what everyone wishes they could.
So without further explanation, these are 5 books that will reward further study, if not blow your mind completely.
My gift to you, ten thousand bites of the purest mind candy. ReSteem if you find it helpful, referral links included.
- Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram
Get this book. Just get it. Go on a meditation retreat and do what this guy says.
This is the missing manual to the human mind, it's like a map that gives you the power to choose how to manage your sentience. It's about taking seriously what you can do with your mind, and using your time to take the investigation of what life is seriously.
It's about taking the pursuit of enlightenment seriously. It will teach you how to maximize your focus which you could then use, if you so choose, to explore the most esoteric realms to find out what is real and what isn't. If there is an english book that would form the basis of a thousand year school that might lead to something like actual Jedi powers, this could be it. When people join cults, this is the type of knowledge they are looking for but never get. When people go to Tibet to meditate, this is what they are hoping they will learn, and you can have it for around 20 bucks.
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book
- Days of war Nights of Love by Crimethinc
You're grinding day to day, going further into debt despite the fact you're working your ass off. The police harass you at every opportunity, the news media is a farce. The institutions of your country are a sad joke played on those who believe in them. Everything is getting worse.
What can you do? What is an appropriate attitude towards an absurd, repressive, disfunctional state? How to avoid being a sheep or cow, being fleeced or led to the slaughter in a world of illusion?
Enter Crimeth Inc., the dare I say mysterious non-organization of ex-workers, of which I am a single person cell, has put together this how-to manual for resisting in a productive way and having fun doing it. The key is to stop using the system's own terminology to define your life, embrace your own poetry and take your own story seriously. To stop evaluating the world according to the ten pages of fine print in triplicate and start writing your own book. To stop following rules that are written by people bent on your destruction, who see you as a tool or rube.
If you have ever wondered why everyone's always arguing about anarchy and what it means, it's because you haven't been hanging around people who actually believe in anarchy. Because those are the people who are easy to find, the ones who are actually living anarchy are out there doing stuff, like smashing the state for instance. Remember the Army slogan 'Be all you can be', well what if you actually did that for a different world? For your part of the city? That's what I'm doing, 14 or so years later after first reading this book, it has been one of the most influential in my life without doubt.
Maximum Ultraism, Forever!
Days of War Nights of Love Crimethink for Beginners
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance(aka The Tao of Motorcycles) by Robert Pirsig
Why do they separate art from science in school? What is the most important word in language? Why are people frustrated with technology?
The Amazon reviews for this book are some of the most wide ranging of any book ever written, it is loved and it is hated. 'A man describes how he went insane and then neglects his adolescent child on a long, boring trip nowhere while deluding himself into thinking he is a messianic figure who discovered everything taught in modern philosophy is a lie.'
I think that's pretty harsh. There are two starting points to the book, the first is his friends who have a dripping faucet they hate but never fix. The second is when he's out riding on his motorcycle with his son and they run out of gas even though they can still hear gas in the tank.
He realizes he knows nothing about motorcycles and that his friends know nothing of faucets, and he recognizes that this is a shared fear. One he overcame but that his friends refuse to. People are afraid of the frustration that comes with learning technology, but then again they have a horrible attitude about it and have never been taught a good attitude about it.
Have you ever seen a computer programmer get excited about finding bugs or learning about an obscure problem with their code? Or a mechanic light up when he talks about the most difficult problem he ever solved? Or an artist become so animated it looks like they are on fire when they talk about their work? How when you are really into what you are doing, it's like you aren't there at all?
This book explains why that is, from about ten different angles including Plato and Poincare. It's all connected, math, philosophy, art, science, mechanical objects, transistors, the internet, the words themselves....
The motorcyle you are working on is yourself.
Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
I think this book saved me from being a religious person. It helped me be a man. It helped me have a larger view of the english language(long prior to Blood Meridian) It helped me realize how long life is. It helped me feel life could be fun, that I could have a story. I just love this book, any passage could be memorized and recited for wonderful effect. You should just read this book and admit you know nothing about the actual limits of sentence structure.
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
What would it be like to actually be the Buddha? A monk with no possessions, in the forest with the courtesan, the city with the wealthy merchants, by the river with a friend. This book has a metaphor for just about everything you can do in life.
Herman Hesse is one of the greatest writer's who have ever lived, his prose and perspective are mountainous filled with the collective subconscious, dreams we can't escape.
Like Jitterbug Perfume and ZAMM this is about a full life, a long arc, embracing the full duration of a human life and all it's seasons. All of the things that would be difficult to remember in long stretches of solitude, where the tendency would be to pity yourself and see your situation of permanent, when it is not, just like everything else.
Honorable Mention
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Songs of the Doomed by Hunter S. Thompson
Powell's doesn't have it, but well, it would be a good one to have on a desert island because it is funny and Hunter's voice just makes you feel like he's right there with you.
I hope you enjoyed this, if you are so inclined send some business powell's way and pick up these excellent titles and screw monopolistic mega corporations who integrate with spy agencies.
If you end up reading any of these, send me a book report in comments!
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