Good morning, folks! The sun is shining, the coffee is brewed, and there’s a multitude of birds at the feeder. It’s a beautiful day on Long Mountain!
As if that’s not enough, I’m heading to go book shopping today. So, here’s the short question: What books do you consider to be foundational to human knowledge?
And of course, a context. I love books, and have read a lot, but: man, there’s a lot to know! At 36, I feel a new age of learning upon me, and I wish to fortify oh, one or two of those gaping holes in my knowledge. Strangely, this is quite exciting. After all, I get to buy more books, and experience new vistas of learning. YES!
I’ve got the Chirp app (audiobooks), am currently halfway through Ancient Greece 101 (Christopher M. Bellitto), and thoroughly enjoyed Mere Christianity (CS Lewis), Master and Man (Tolstoy), and of course, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Read by Stephen Fry!) The bookshelves have new volumes: Oscar Wilde, Hemmingway, Thoreau, American civil war memoirs, presidential leadership, Shakespeare, Frost…
YES!
I’m eating up as much as I can, and so, I must ask: What books do you consider foundational? (Not your favorites - heck, I like Captain Underpants…although that’s a modern classic, as far as I’m concerned.) But - you know - essential volumes for any human? Let me know in the comments, or drop me a note. It’s shopping time!
"Atlas Shrugged" (get large print edition and a sturdy table to rest the book on) unfortunately Ayn Rand's vision of the future is becoming familiar, "1984" always a classic but closer to home now too, "Surely You're Joking" adventures of physicist Richard Feynman, "What Do You Care What Other People Think" more on Feynman, and "Feynman's Lectures" Vols. I, II and III which are pretty technical but provide the background for much of the physics behind your amateur astronomy and everything else from one of the people who developed Quantum Electrodynamics ("QED"). The latter 3 all Feynman-centric capture what science and scientists should be - authentic, personal and FUN! I see the first two books describing what can (does) happen when science becomes political