Your favorite book

[Jeff]

How about this as a starter topic: Write something about your favorite book that will convince those of us who have not read it to do so.

[Dan]

'Survivor' by Chuck Palahniuk

After watching 'Fight Club' for the second time I decided that I should really read the book. I loved the film, the dark humour and the fast pace of plot had me hooked. Not to mention David Fincher's excellent sense of imagery. I wanted to see what the book would have over it. The book has a LOT over the film (when is it not the case?), the plot goes deeper, more emphasis is placed on the nihilistic thoughts and actions of the characters, "worse" (and funnier) things happen that you can't get past film censor boards, etc.. I loved Chuck's writing style, it may piss some people off but it is very cutting and distinct. His dry, black-as-the-night humour is delicious and the sporadic flashes of detail, bordering on obsessive-compulsive, helps draw you into his cynical, seperated response to the world. After falling for the writing I went and got 'Survivor', A book about the last survivng member of a Creedish Death Cult named Tender Branson. He feels the need to tell the world his story and, since he has reasons not to turn to help-lines, he hijacks a plane in order to speak into the black box recorder. For me, it surpassed 'Fight Club' in delivery, tone and conceptual content. It's an incredibly dark book with the usual hallmarks of nihilism in the characters. Chuck himself states that he isn't a nihilist but a romantic. I think this book shows that side a little more than his other works and for that, I love it.

[rickus]

Wow Dan. That sounds like a great book. I too loved the movie Fight Club. And thought I would love the book more. Sadly it wasn't the case. But I think I would like very much Survivor. Thanks for the wright up.

[Tyler]

I wouldn't read Fight Club or watch the movie again (still haven't) for years just because it expressed so exactly the hormonally driven section of my brain. It was a convincing argument and I was afraid it would... convince.
As you have done concerning Survivor. I will be reading it post haste.

[amanda mcbride]

Concurrently with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, of course... right? Right? ;D

[Betterout]

One of my favorite books is "Language, Thought, and Reality," a book attributed posthumously to Benjamin Lee Whorf. For those of you who don't know who Whorf is, he is quite a character. He was a chemist who worked for the Hartford Insurance Co., in the early 20th century--he worked just a few desks away from the poet Wallace Stevens, actually. He was also an amateur linguist who studied Native American languages in his spare time. His studies evolved in complexity, and he eventually became one of the founders of a movement known as Linguistic Relativism. Today his ideas are widely discredited, and for good reason. He violates the cardinal rule of objective linguistic analysis: He translates a language into English, and then anaylzes the English. In the end, his analysis says very little about the language he's studying, apart from the fact that it handles concepts differently. BUT... what he did say is that language influences thought, and culture influences language. More specifically he says that our perceptions of reality are largely shaped by the language(s) we speak. This idea is often called the Whorf-Sapir (or Sapir-Whorf, depending on whom you ask) Hypothesis, a term destined to draw no end of rolled eyes from modern linguists--primarily because Edward Sapir really didn't have much at all to do with it!

The book "Language, Thought, & Reality" consists of a series of essays and articles, some of which are unfinished, compiled after Whorf's death. I've honestly never read it cover to cover, but I believe that in my lifetime I've read the whole thing. It was given to me by my friend Chris McKenzie, who had just taken a linguistics class wherein it was used as a textbook. Chris gave it to me as a Christmas present during our Fortinmen Day '92-'93 celebration. I started reading in the car on the way home the next day. It struck me as so new, so different, so unlike anything I'd ever considered. For instance, in one essay, Whorf states that Latin, Greek, French, and English, have always been languages ill-suited for scientific study, because they lack the basic vocabulary to describe observable scientific phenomenon. He said that Hopi, a langauge spoken in the desert Southwest, is a much better candidate, as it seems much better equipped to describe the small and large, the periodic and the chronic, the known and the unknown, etc. In another essay, "An American Indian Model of the Universe," he described continuative-punctual aspect langauges in contrast to languages that rely mostly on verbal tense, and set up a way of looking at reality based on the aspect languages in a way that seemed utterly alien to me at the time I read the article. Utterly alien, it was as if he was describing space creatures.

Nowadays, I am fairly aware of where Whorf gets it wrong and where he hits close to the mark. But for awhile, this book completely turned my life around. It got me thinking of the philosophy inherent in language, and subsequently, the nature of self with respect to world, and ultimately to self and world with respect to God. It was truly a life-altering read for me. Thanks again, Chris. Plus, you gotta love it when you read a book title that suggests the author is prepared to explain reality!

I don't really like to contribute to Amazon, but I find that I do a lot. For those of you who may be interested in obtaining a copy of this book, here's a link to its page on Amazon:
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262730065/qid=1121878880/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4470044-7733604?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[rickus]

I can't claim to have very many books. In fact I keep a list of every book I've ever read (assigned reading excluded). NO. I'm not going to tell you how short it is. It is short though. Any way, that I read any book is amazing. If I pick it up twice to read it through is nothing short of miraculous. If I pick up a book to read it a third time, it's called Candide by Voltaire. The only book I've ever read cover to cover more than twice. Of course it's a wonderful read. And the fact that it's not at all long is probably a big contributer to my liking of it.

I'm quite sure all of you are more than aware of this book. In 1759 Voltaire knocked it out in three days as a satire aimed at the philosophical society at the time who resolutely stated with blind adherence (or so says the introduction to my copy,) that "This is the best of all possible worlds," as characterized by "the Good Dr." Pangloss. The innocent victim of Voltaire's proof against of such absurdity is Candide, who by rite of unceasing pain learns otherwise. But it is Voltaire's wonderful storytelling that keeps me coming back. He walks a tightrope between 'the fantastic' and 'the absurd.'

If for some strange reason you haven't read this book you should pick it up and do so. And if you already have, trust me it's worth a second and even third reading.

www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/index.html

[rickus]

dan said:

'Survivor' by Chuck Palahniuk

After falling for the writing I went and got 'Survivor', A book about the last surviving member of a Creedish Death Cult named Tender Branson.... Chuck himself states that he isn't a nihilist but a romantic. I think this book shows that side a little more than his other works and for that, I love it.

Several weeks back Katie bought this book for me after I said, "That book Dan talked about sounds good." It is good. Very good. At times it verges on the brink of absurd... Oh what am I saying. At times it is incredibly absurd. But the imagery in the book is great. I think what I like most about Palahniuk, are his heroins. These dark fall angels, that help the protagonist through their "problems" while enduring the and even embracing the grimier parts of the world and what it dose to them. Good book! If you'd like to read it I'd be happy to loan out our copy.