Hey, if you like books.....

Read philosophy and English and European literature. Loved Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Apologies for going off topic, but I just loved the irony of the auto-censorship in your closing sentence -  a "well noted omission" indeed!

English and Italian Lit. So we studied Boccaccio, Dante, Manzoni, Verga, Moravia, Tom Jones. The antirealist novel with Tolkein, Calvino, Buzzati. 

Wish I had made more of the Italian side

nexus9 said:

at uni, we read Catch 22 and Middlemarch, there way have been one or two others. Middlemarch I found thoroughly depressing. 

What’s your degree in?

These all seem quite existential btw..., observations on life from an outsider perspective?... 

“Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.”

I use the above Pirsig quote a lot with my students

Philip K *** is also a well noted omission... 

I have read most of the SF on the list: 1984, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, Never Let me Go...... at uni, we read Catch 22 and Middlemarch, there way have been one or two others. Middlemarch I found thoroughly depressing. 

No Phillip K Dicks I noticed. And I was surprised that from the good Nevil Shute there was only a Town like Alice, rather than On the Beach? I read the latter at 17 and had nightmsres for weeks afterwards. I suspect a war like that would be much messier than depicted here - it is absolute extinction of all human life, but really everyone just keeps enjoying what they already enjoyed doing, the lie back with their favourite drink and the cyanide pill. I think it was the thoroughly 50's stoicism of his characters that got me. 

Oh and I heard about and ordered the Connie Willis, The Domesday Book. Historians can travel on time but the girl student ends up witnessing the Black Death.

I did like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the time, though it might seem a bit flaky for nowaday's tastes. He could have been on the spectrum....

A pretty solid list. I'd have to include Frank Herbert's Dune series (especially God Emperor) and Clive Barker's Weaveworld. God Emperor is unique and I love the way Weaveworld mixes the ordinary with the fantastical, lots of contrasts that mix well.

The Famished Road, Ben Okri. Winner of the Booker Prize in the 1980s. It’s about an African Spirit child.

”Once upon a time there was a road, and because the road was once a river it was always hungry”

opening lines (from memory)

“We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.”

Yes... I like the humanity of the story... the outcast nature of the rabbit... it’s desire to be accepted. Also, the child can see worth, but others only see what it is NOT or what is lacking.

Thank you! There see to be a Pinocchio element to this if I am not mistaken 

Enjoy...

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html

:)

I have never read the velveteen rabbit.

At 16 The Chrysalids spoke to me in a way I had never imagined. 

Hi Nexus

its a pretty good list...and there are books I would add...

the velveteen rabbit - as a story of diagnosis acceptance

... further books to add....

Oscar Wilde: The Nightingale and the Rose (the fickleness of folk)

black Roses - Simon Armitage - about the dangers of not fitting in. A piece of prose about a goth and her partner killed for being different - true story. Quote below:

”

Have we said the wrong word?
Have we made the wrong turn?
Have we strayed from the path?
Have we stepped on their patch?

Do they find offence
at the studs in my lips,
or the rings in my ear?
Are they morally outraged by what we wear?

We are kindly creatures, peaceful souls,
but something of our life aggravates theirs,
something in their lives despises ours.

The difference between us is what they can't stand.”