This thing is spreading like head lice at an A.N.S.W.E.R. rally, but how can I decline
a friend who honors me with his request? The problem here is that I can’t stick with only five books.
How Many Books Have I Owned?
Tough question. In my father’s house and in mine, all property belonged to one Marxist-Leninist anarcho-syndicalist commune. Even in the lowest ebb of our poverty in South Dakota, we had at least a thousand books in the house, and I passed plenty of cryogenic winters picking through or reading most of them (we carried home boxes of fifty-cent books from the public library, including an English navigation treatise printed in 1763). Then came the Army, when I streamlined my possessions down to only the portable essentials, and only the books that mattered most to me–and which my older brother hadn’t already taken–came with. Oh, and Al Gore invented the Internet, which is where I do most of my reading now. On the plus side, I’ve acquired several hundred Korean-language volumes on C++ programming and urban planning, courtesy of Mrs. OFK. Not counting those, probably 2,000 that I “owned” in the sense of having seriously picked through them or read substantial parts. Most of what I read is non-fiction, so I tend to read the parts that interest me and never finish the rest.
Last Book I Bought
Marcus Noland’s Korea After Kim Jong-il . . . and if anyone knows where I left it, I’d be much obliged. Next book I plan to buy: Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime.
Five Ten Books That Meant the Most to Me
I don’t think I could make sense of some of the malignant and nihilistic things we see in this world today–or of the people who passively glorify them–without having read Eric Hoffer’s
The True Believer. It is easily the most insightful book I’ve ever read. It explains the motivations and thought processes of fanatics and how those motivations shape mass movements, including those whose impact is mostly benevolent. Wikipedia has
a superb page on Eric Hoffer and his ideas. There are also
several pages kept by Eric Hoffer readers.
Number two is Orwell’s 1984 (for an anthropomorphic history of Stalinist Russia, I strongly recommend Animal Farm).
Two of my favorite fictional works were written by commies–Jack London’s The Sea Wolf (which is more allegorical diatribe than fiction) and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, the only book that ever actually inspired me to get on a plane and fly somewhere (in this case, Saigon). The first “real” book I read was London’s White Fang . . . and I still have the same copy. Call that one an “honorable mention.”
Paul Johnson’s Modern Times has to be the best book on 20th Century history I’ve ever read. Honorable mentions for Johnson’s History of the Jews, which was interesting given the author’s devoutly Roman Catholic perspective, and Intellectuals, which is good factual support for Eric Hoffer’s thoughts on that subject.
Number eight (eight, right?) is Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history novel about America after an Axis victory and occupation. Number nine is Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which really should have been number three or four.
Number ten is
We Are the Clay by Chaim Potok. Potok was a Jewish chaplain during the Korean war and wrote a book so perceptive of, and sensitive to, the Korean soul that he had me blinking away tears on the Metro. You could make a film from this book, change the setting from the Korean War to the Great Famine of the 1990s, and it would do for public understanding of North Korea what
The Killing Fields did for Cambodia. In that vein, honorable mention goes to Kang Chol-Hwan’s
Aquariums of Pyongyang.
Finally, the worst book I’ve read cover-to-cover: Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. A few months after I read it, I probably felt the same way about it that McCauley Culkin feels about Michael Jackson these days. Only then did it occur to me what a load of phoney, self-parodying pablum this thing really was. I would add that the worst-written book that was worth reading anyway was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Gratuitous Entries
Music–Prokofiev’s third, fifth, and sixth symphonies; Carl Nielson’s fifth; Aram Khachaturian’s second; Henryk Gorecki’s third; Shostakovich’s fifth, seventh, and eleventh. Also anything bluesy by Jimi Hendrix, some of the more pretentious stuff by The Doors, and pretty much all David Allan Coe’s work, except for the stuff that even he is ashamed of today (the last verse of “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” is the unofficial password to red-state America). I like almost anything by Merle Haggard (“Wish a Buck Was Still Silver” and “If We Make It Through December” can still make me weepy). I harvested dozens of old Marlene Dietrich songs when Napster was still free and I thought I’d be assigned to Deutschland. I don’t for the life of me understand why more Americans haven’t taken to the music of
Stan Rogers, whose work was permeated with the man’s character, depth, and substance. I think my Jimmy Buffett stage is over. Films–
Lawrence of Arabia; Apocalypse Now; Empire of the Sun; Lonesome Dove; Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Judgment at Nuremberg; the second
Austin Powers movie;
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Still haven’t seen
Team America.
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