These books have literally
changed the way I look at this life, changed my attitude, changed my
priorities.
Bible, The. This is perhaps the most important literature to have under one's belt to understand Western culture and history. This familiarity with Christian scripture was the best thing to come out of my early history with the fundamentalist church.
Diary of Etty Hillesum A beautiful, diary. Incredible displays of humanity, intellect, and introspection in the death camps.
"Sometimes when I pass a woman in the street, a beautiful,
well-groomed, wholly feminine, albeit dull woman, I completely lose
my poise. Then I feel that my intellect, my struggle, my suffering,
are oppressive, ugly, unwomanly; then I, too, want to be beautiful and
dull, a desirable plaything for a man. It's typical that I always do
end up wanting to be desired by a man, the ultimate confirmation of
our worth and womanhood, but in fact it is only a primitive instinct.
Feelings of friendship, respect and love for us as human beings, these are
all very well, but don't we ultimately want men to desire us as women?"
Games People Play,
Eric Berne, M.D. I learned how to see the roles we play in
social interaction. This is a deeply flawed work, hard to read, and
extremely rewarding in places.
Lucid Dreaming, Stephen
Laberge It's a radical concept that people can be both asleep
and conscious, but the ramifications are tremendous.
Programming Perl, Larry Wall (Editor), Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Christiansen, Stephen Potter I know, it's odd to have a technical reference on this list.
But this reference has gotten me through many tough spots in the past 3
years (in the earlier pink version). Affectionately known as the Camel
Book, the perl ref is complete, helpful, and has a real sense of humor
about itself. If you do any kind of web or unix scripting, do yourself
a favor and snag a copy.
the mousepad
