Also--book poll

[rebeccmeister]

Inspired by a recent post by phoenix_riddle:

What books are most significant to you? Why?

[Why I'm asking: I'm in the middle of reading a book that seems like it's important to read even though it's a bit of a drag to read. I don't know if it will be significant or not, but I can't put it down.]

Comments

[boolean263.livejournal.com]

Always a tough question to anyone who's read more than a few.

The Human Factor by Kim Vicente. It's a good read about what got me interested in engineering in the first place: the fact that, despite all logic, humans are being asked (or even forced) to adapt to technology, rather than adapting the technology to humanity. Fortunately it gives lots of good examples where people became very successful by doing it the right way around.

Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin. One of the first works of comedic fantasy (and in fact, of fiction at all) I can remember reading, I was introduced to it by my mother.

Those are the only two I can think of on a lazy Friday night, but I'm sure more will come to me, and I'll come back.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Both books sound quite interesting! I'm particularly intrigued by the first and will have to add both books to my list of books to read. We had a human factors program in Engineering at Tufts, and talking to the Psychology faculty who were involved in the program made me much more aware of how important it is to have SOMEBODY who thinks about practicality of design! I'm perhaps particularly interested in the subject as a left-handed person in a right-centric world, if you know what I mean. (;

[boolean263.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think I might have a bit of an idea of what you mean. (; In fact, I wonder if that's why UI design interests me so much. Maybe it was influenced on a subconscious level by trying to make it as a southpaw in a northland.

[annikusrex.livejournal.com]

The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond. I read this when I was quite young and it helped me develop an understanding of where the human species fits in relation to the rest of the world. Represented the point where all my reading about primates (Jane Goodall, de Waal, etc.) and humanistic endeavors converged.

Genet, by Edmund White. This is a beautifully written biography, and it helped me to consider new ways that nonfiction writing could give readers a feeling for the texture and nuance of the world as well as analyzing its contents. It also started me on a postwar France kick that hasn't let up--esp. Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs, letters, novels, and journals.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), To the Lighthouse, and Invisible Man. Three novels I read in high school that, respectively. got me excited about literary theory, showed me that even as a student I could make legitimate contributions to contemporary thought, and presented me with an interpretative challenge that I didn't have the skills to negotiate to my satisfaction. All of which eventually let to pursuing graduate work in English.

[annikusrex.livejournal.com]

Oh, obviously, To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf and Invisible Man is the Ralph Ellison novel.

[phoenix-riddle.livejournal.com]

My belated yet sincere list of books most dear to me:

1. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky - When asked if any of the characters, which is a positively insane cast of eccentrics, were based on himself, Dostoevsky replied, "They are all based on me." This is what the book is to me: a kaleidoscopic mirror in which I see all of myself at once.
   
2. The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde - Wilde's philosophy on art was undoubtedly sired by the Ruskin-Pater divergence in criticisms. He knew that beauty is both universal and intimate in that you construct your own beauty in the reflection of beautiful objects. More than that, however, Wilde was also a proponent of the Contemplative life. To paraphrase him, the contemplative life is the highest achievement one can ever have.
   
3. Art & Lies : A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd, by Jeanette Winterson - Jeanette Winterson is easily the most poetic and engaging writer of the current era. Fucking breath-taking, like a Faulknerian cocktail of history grown from the human body.

Those are the only three I will share for now. ;)