Post by MagnetMan on Feb 21, 2008 18:53:00 GMT -5
Over time I am going to try and list the titles and authors of all the books I read that have had a profound effect on my thinking.
I would like to know what yours were too.
As a nine year old boy I loved to read and literally read hundreds of western and sci/fi novels. The lone cowboy riding into town to battle with the baddies and rescue the damsel in distress and save her estate, was, like the ancient tales of the Knights of the Round Table, pivotal exercises in moral behavior at that time of my life. They had a profound effect of allowing me to view life in a positive and romantic way. I guess I am still like that.
Zane Grey was my favorite western author, he not only gave interesting romantic plots and characters, but also described the landscapes in each of the different Western States where they were set, very vividly.
Those western novels certainly made a young South African boy dream of the American West as his spiritual home. When I first arrived in California inn 1972, and drove up the coast through Big Sur and the Redwood forests to Oregon, the feeling of being in the Promised Land was very strong inside me.
So my first choice is:
1. WESTERN novels.
Science fiction novels have had a life-long impact as my regards my interest in the potentials of the future. Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasies were also influential around puberty. Tarzan the Ape man formed a sub-conscious bridge between biblical Creation and scientific evolution. I read all his Martian books.
Comics about super-heroes stirred atavistic mythical images of the Gods of yore.
Superman Lord of the Sky
Batman Lord of the Dark
Tarzan Lord of the Jungle.
So definitely:
2. SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
As an African youngster of course I read
3. KING SOLOMON'S MINES by H. Rider Haggard
4. SHE
I also liked WWI and WWII biographical accounts of the air battles over England and Europe. The most inspiring of those was:
5. REACH FOR THE SKY by Douglas Bader.
He was a legless flying ace and his determination to over-come his handicaps really got to me.
At age eighteen I got a job in the East African bush veld. I read a book;
6. THE WANDERINGS OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER by Karamojo Bell
I became an elephant hunter myself. Hunting wild game laid the foundation for my future interest in wild-life conservation.
The first philosophical books I read as a young adult that impacted on my consciousness was a couple of narcissistic novels by Ayn Rand:
7. THE FOUNTAIN HEAD
8. ATLAS SHRUGGED
I was 21 at the time. For the next decade so I believed life was there for the strong and the most determined and never graduated out of teenage self-centeredness.
During that decade I read almost all of the novels and biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and Scot Fitzgerald.
The most influential books during that period were on zoology.
9. THE SOUL OF THE WHITE ANT by Eugene Marais'
10. THE SOUL OF THE APE
11. THE YEAR OF THE GREYLAG GOOSE by Konrad Lorenze
12. KING SOLOMON'S RING
13. THE NAKED APE by Desmond Morris
These books, together with my earlier hunting exploits in East Africa, got me into wild life documentary films and I shot my first feature film MOTSUMI
My reading habits changed completely during my thirties, when introduction to mind-altering drugs and metaphysical exercises refocused my psyche..
I would like to know what yours were too.
As a nine year old boy I loved to read and literally read hundreds of western and sci/fi novels. The lone cowboy riding into town to battle with the baddies and rescue the damsel in distress and save her estate, was, like the ancient tales of the Knights of the Round Table, pivotal exercises in moral behavior at that time of my life. They had a profound effect of allowing me to view life in a positive and romantic way. I guess I am still like that.
Zane Grey was my favorite western author, he not only gave interesting romantic plots and characters, but also described the landscapes in each of the different Western States where they were set, very vividly.
Those western novels certainly made a young South African boy dream of the American West as his spiritual home. When I first arrived in California inn 1972, and drove up the coast through Big Sur and the Redwood forests to Oregon, the feeling of being in the Promised Land was very strong inside me.
So my first choice is:
1. WESTERN novels.
Science fiction novels have had a life-long impact as my regards my interest in the potentials of the future. Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasies were also influential around puberty. Tarzan the Ape man formed a sub-conscious bridge between biblical Creation and scientific evolution. I read all his Martian books.
Comics about super-heroes stirred atavistic mythical images of the Gods of yore.
Superman Lord of the Sky
Batman Lord of the Dark
Tarzan Lord of the Jungle.
So definitely:
2. SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
As an African youngster of course I read
3. KING SOLOMON'S MINES by H. Rider Haggard
4. SHE
I also liked WWI and WWII biographical accounts of the air battles over England and Europe. The most inspiring of those was:
5. REACH FOR THE SKY by Douglas Bader.
He was a legless flying ace and his determination to over-come his handicaps really got to me.
At age eighteen I got a job in the East African bush veld. I read a book;
6. THE WANDERINGS OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER by Karamojo Bell
I became an elephant hunter myself. Hunting wild game laid the foundation for my future interest in wild-life conservation.
The first philosophical books I read as a young adult that impacted on my consciousness was a couple of narcissistic novels by Ayn Rand:
7. THE FOUNTAIN HEAD
8. ATLAS SHRUGGED
I was 21 at the time. For the next decade so I believed life was there for the strong and the most determined and never graduated out of teenage self-centeredness.
During that decade I read almost all of the novels and biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and Scot Fitzgerald.
The most influential books during that period were on zoology.
9. THE SOUL OF THE WHITE ANT by Eugene Marais'
10. THE SOUL OF THE APE
11. THE YEAR OF THE GREYLAG GOOSE by Konrad Lorenze
12. KING SOLOMON'S RING
13. THE NAKED APE by Desmond Morris
These books, together with my earlier hunting exploits in East Africa, got me into wild life documentary films and I shot my first feature film MOTSUMI
My reading habits changed completely during my thirties, when introduction to mind-altering drugs and metaphysical exercises refocused my psyche..
