What are the top 5 books you would either recommend and/or have had the greatest influence on you?
(If you only want to mention one or two that's fine as well.)
If you feel like it, please briefly tell us why. And, unless you really feel you must, please exclude:
1. Anything JW
2. C of C
3. Gentile Times Reconsidered
4. The Bible.
I think we've all heard plenty about those on JWD already.
I'll get it started.
Call of the Wild by Jack London.
(read around 11 yrs old. Very disturbing to my perfect little dub world although being below my uber-witness parent's censor radar.)
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
(read as a early 20's doubting dub. Introduced plenty of controversial ideas through the back-door of my dub mind.)
The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
(both by Ayn Rand)
A fading dub challenged me to read these. Both full of forbidden non-JW Ideas like: 1. Selfishness is good 2. Beliefs should be based on logic and reality 3. Producers should be rewarded 4. There is no God.
Read both as a late-teens barely doubting dub. I'm not an Ayn Rand "fan" or "groupie" but she rocked my dub world.
The Stand by Steven King
He's a great story teller and this one wasn't too horribly supernatural. I'm not a big Steven King fan in general.
All right, your turn. Feel good books, thrillers, page turners, etc. are all fair game. Don't feel like it's gotta all be Nietzche & Aristotle.
Open Mind
p.s. If you only have 40 more years to live and only read 4 books a year, (hold on to your calculators...........) you'll only be allowing 160 writers to get inside your head before you're dead.
Life's short. Read lots of good stuff.