For those tuning in, I want to advise something. If you want to be happy, get off the computer.
Remember when the computer first appeared? It was going to revolutionize our lives. We were going to share information and research. We would link the wolrd and share culture.
Now all we do is look at cat pictures.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter have replaced conversations. I have to hold back on what I say on Facebook, lest I have this conversation.
Me: "Did I tell you I saw Iron Man 3 finally?"
FB Friend: "Yeah, saw it on Facebook."
Me: "I rather liked the part where <spoilers>."
FB Friend: "Yeah, I saw your tweet"
Me: "Oh."
That's it. It's worse in person. What do we talk about?
Well, I used Facebook for good, and not evil. I crowdsourced a list of books I am to read, both Classic Fiction and Non-Fiction. The Art of Nonconformity suggests at least 30 of each. Well, I have nothing but time and a Library Card, so let's do this:
First 15 of each:
Non Fiction:
1. Conflicted leader
2. Defending the Crown
3. The Selfish Gene
4. The God Delusion
5. Guns Germs and Steel
6. "Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
7. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
8. The People Who Eat Darkness
9. Hired Swords, the Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan
10. Samurai, Warrior, and The State in Early Medieval Japan
11. The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha
12: The Vikings
13: The Vinland Sagas
14. The Signal and the Noise
15. Freakonomics
Fiction:
1. The Prose and Poetic Eddas
2. Egil's Saga
3. Dispair by Nabokov
4. White Guard by Bulgakov
5. The Pigeon by Suskind
6. Fahrenheit 451
7. Count of Monte Cristo
8. Ivanhoe
9. The Brothers Karamazov
10.Watership Down
11. Anna Karenina
12. Voyage of the Beagle
13. Hojuki
14. The Tale of Heike
15. Dream of the Red Chamber
Thanks to Lorrie, Mike, Chris, Joe-Bear, Lynn, and the restof my literate friends. If a book you recommended isn't listed, then it is in the second part of the series, I have read it, or it's a Bronte sisters' book.
Now I shall take my own advice and get the hell off the computer!
EDIT: I found a list of books I wanted to read. So I have added:
Fiction:
16. A Sport and Pastime
17. The Postman Always Rings twice
18. Tropic of Cancer
19. Revolutionary Road
20. As I Lay Dying
21. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
22-25. Factotem, Post Office, Ham on Rye and Women by C. Bukowski
26. Midnight's Children
27. Lolita
28. Underworld by DeLillo
30. CivalWarLand in Bad Decline
Non-Fiction
16. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
17. Artful Sentences
18. Super Freakonomics.
