BOOKS of Interest

If I had the power to give everyone only one thing, well, aside from excellent health and an excellent safe peaceful environment in which to live, would be that we could all read in every and any language and that we could all write well to express our ideas to boot… There is little that can take the place of being transported into another world created by another human being out of necessity to free his mind and/or out of a desire to entertain… or, to instruct… although I don’t think there is much that can be taught about creating and ideas and individualism, only instruction on how to get to them and how to be ready to harness them to share if the elements all fall into place and it can be so done… Of course, once that is done, then there are other templates, such as these blogs etc., which give the potential of a world wide audience so if someone puts out an idea, it can be expounded upon or recognized and further dialogue can ensue whereas, without this cybertool, I cannot think of how else it could be done so efficiently and effectively (although, this space is too becoming so commercialized that it will collapse under the weight of all the gold that we will have to carry for those who would choose to make money off of it all rather than just share one of the wonderful gifts of life, i.e., making a connection with another human being — or many of them… Anyway, off my soap box now…)

Here then, as inspired after reading my cyberfriend’s list of book titles on his MySpace, almost none of which I recognized (!), is an initial list of my own…of a few titles that popped into mind, in no particular order of importance, although I will try to list them alphabetically by title at some point…and to add to it as and when I remember more titles AND I happen to be near a computer!.…

Selling Sickness: How The World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients by Ray Moynihan

Almost Human: Making Robots think by Lee Gutkind

No Place to Hide by Robert O’Harrow

Journalism: Truth or Dare? By Ian Hargreaves

Here be Dragons: Telling Tales of People by Peter C. Newman

Trivia Pursuit: How Showbiz Values are Corrupting the News by Knowlton Nash

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Fountainhead, The by Ayn Rand

Call of the Wild by Jack London

Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Eloise at Christmastime by Kay Thompson, Hilary Knight ?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The by C.S. Lewis

Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

Primal Scream by Arthur Janov

Seven Daughters of Eve, The by Brian Sykes

Language Instinct: How the mind creates Language, The by Steven Pinker

End of Work, The by Jeremy Rifkin

Great Gatsby, The by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

No Logo by Naomi Klein

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (my very first ‘adult’ book all those years ago when I was still an adolescent; such trash but so deliciously trashy as I knew I was reading something I was not really supposed to… How tame that book would be these days – laughable..Ha!)…

…basically, I read whatever catches my interest… Of late, because I cannot concentrate and retain as much, I find little snapshots are fine, i.e., online, news articles, magazines articles, blogs etc…. I have a wide variety of interests but, over the years, have only focused on a few of them (or, at least, at few of them at a time)…..and, now, in an interim period of sorts, where I am changing and widening the ‘net’ yet again, so to speak, my interests are beginning to include Politics and Commerce – like some lightbulb went on and CANNOT be dimmed – two subjects which have NEVER interested me before but that is something I pay much more attention to these days (yes, I am devolving – I know, I KNOW! – but a necessary evil, I suppose, if I am to remain an active part of society and maybe even contribute in some positive way (that is different from any of the ways I contributed up until now)… oh yes, and I am sort of taking another look at science fiction in recent years… very geeky in my old age, I know, but, hey…=)

Otherwise, (depending on my mood and energy level), I tend to like any general reference book on any topic whatsoever, as it gives me a basic framework from which I can then pick and choose the subtopics or related subjects on what I would like to focus more.. and books on etymology, slang, idioms, clichés, euphemisms, double-talk etc etc – basically anything to do with the templates of communications rather than the actual communications themselves… and psychology, mythology, sociology, philosophy, history, supernatural, IQ, humour, teaching, categorizations of any kind, effects, causes and effects of anything but mostly between people, DNA and the origins of man – and, of course, our collective and individual purpose/s on earth or how much of that is just bunkum meant to control the masses – , effective teaching, health, etc.etc…..

Basically, I am normally always intrigued with anything that loses me from the real world, anything which can entertain or instruct for a few hours is fine…