Books

September 19, 1996




Sometime yesterday afternoon I decided to make a list of 100 books that have influenced me. Not necessarily my 100 favorites or the 100 best, but the ones that have changed something inside me, caused me to take action, made me think in a new way.

  1. Narrow Road to the Deep North, Matsuo Basho
  2. A Coney Island of the Mind, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  3. The Joy of Lesbian Sex, Bertha Harris
  4. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  5. 1984, George Orwell
  6. Brave New World, Aldos Huxley
  7. Steam, author?
  8. Plant Dreaming Deep, May Sarton
  9. The Education of Harriet Hatfield, May Sarton
  10. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, May Sarton
  11. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
  12. The Man Who Walked Through Time, Colin Fletcher
  13. Project Man High, author?
  14. Economics, Paul Samuelson
  15. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
  16. The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
  17. Sal Si Puedes, Peter Matthiessen
  18. Why We Can't Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr.
  19. The Education of a WASP, Lois Mark Stalvey
  20. A Choice of Weapons, Gordon Parks
  21. The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
  22. Native Son, Richard Wright
  23. Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich
  24. The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh
  25. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
  26. Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson
  27. Quality is Free, Philip Crosby
  28. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
  29. The Greening of America, Charles Reich
  30. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvior
  31. Fat is a Feminist Issue, ???
  32. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
  33. The Religions of Man, Huston Smith
  34. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
  35. The Winter Beach, Charlton Ogburn
  36. The Family of Man, Edward Steichen
  37. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
  38. Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, Isaac Asimov
  39. Small is Beautiful, EF Schumacher
  40. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, The Kerner Commission
  41. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
  42. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, Henry Miller
  43. Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
  44. AMC White Mountain Trail Guide
  45. The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
  46. Are You Running With Me, Jesus?, Malcolm Boyd
  47. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
  48. PDP-8 Handbook, Digital Equipment Corporation
  49. Writing for the Reader, John O'Rourke, Digital Equipment Corporation
  50. An Artist's Letters from Japan, John LaFarge
  51. Stranger in a a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
  52. Dune, Frank Herbert
  53. Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH
  54. My Side of the Mountain
  55. Island of the Blue Dolphins
  56. Cry the Beloved Country, Paton
  57. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  58. Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut
  59. The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith
  60. A Nation of Strangers, Vance Packard
  61. Candide, Voltaire
  62. Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu
  63. The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
  64. The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin
  65. The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin
  66. I and Thou, Martin Buber M
  67. Time on the Cross, Robert Fogel
  68. Mexico City Blues, Jack Kerouac
  69. Working Ourselves to Death, Diane Fassel
  70. Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, Ed Yourdon
  71. Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, Donald Hall
  72. The Museum of Clear Ideas, Donald Hall
  73. An Unknown Woman, Alice Koller
  74. Flatland, Edwin Abbott
  75. The Art of Computer Programming, Donald Knuth
  76. The Joy of Sumo, David Benjamin
  77. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin
  78. The Disposessed, Ursula LeGuin
  79. Lesbians at Midlife: The Creative Transition, Sang, Warshow, and Smith, eds.
  80. An Actor Prepares, Stanislavsky
  81. Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg
  82. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
  83. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  84. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
  85. The Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chodron
  86. The Three Pillars of Zen, Philip Kapleau
  87. Being Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh
  88. Howl, Allen Ginsberg
  89. The Dragon Doesn't Live Hre Anymore, Alan Cohen
  90. Man for Himself, Erich Fromm
  91. Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
  92. Though Shalt Not Be Aware, Alice Miller
  93. Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
  94. All the Strange Hours, Loren Eisley
  95. The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson
  96. Thomas' Calculus
  97. Fowler's English Usage
  98. How Does a Poem Mean?, John Ciardi
  99. VT100 User's Guide, Digital Equipment Corp.
  100. Systems Programming, Donovan
  101. The Blue Estuaries, Louise Bogan
  102. The Anarchist's Convention & Other Stories, John Sayles


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