Unrelated Content: Influential books of fiction
by Winfield Featherston on Mar 31, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
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PrintI'm going to be honest. I am tired of writing about Paul Hewitt and Georgia Tech basketball. The horse has been beaten to a pulp and I'd like to go on a completely different path and get some interaction from you out there.
A few weeks ago, Chris from SmartFootball went completely unrelated and talked about his top-ten most influential books. DawgSports also continued the trend. It's a good and fun idea, so I thought I'd bring it over to our site and see what the "techies" think.
For me, most of the books I have read are mainly fiction because that is what I tend to enjoy the most and I think you'll see a trend in the themes of the books on my list. What kicked off all my reading was one day in high school I saw the "banned books list" from some time in the past and picked books off that list that I wanted to read for pleasure. Reading off that list opened my eyes to subjects and worlds that were shocking and astounding and well worth the reads. Still the stereotypical engineer today, I continue to look for underlying themes in the books I read. I try to find the symbols and motifs and analyze and dissect the author's meaning.
My least favorite books, books that absolutely drain the soul out of you are: Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter, and The Great Gatsby. Those are horrible books and not surprisingly were all assigned books.
So, in no particular order, here are my top 10 favorite fictional books:
1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I love satire and this story reeks of it. Catch-22 is by far my favorite book. I have read it at least 5 times. Humor and biting sarcasm are both evident and it all wraps into a story that comes together in the end and makes you feel how bad war really is.
2. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I read this book by choice a long time ago and enjoyed it (some people just can't stand the book). I think it was the whole living on an island and surviving aspect. This book was also one of the first novels that opened my eyes to the art of symbolism such as all the characters represent a form of government that Great Britain was dealing with at the time of publication.
3. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I was first introduced to William Faulkner when I read the short story "A Rose for Emily" where the protagonist poisons the man that she fancies. Faulkner's use of death and just absolute weirdness in the South is just what I said, weird.
4. Candide by Voltaire. Satire! Satire! Satire! You have a priest that has syphilis, Amazon women who have monkey-lovers all mixed in with the Spanish Inquisition just to name a few. What more can you want?
5. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Say what you want about stereotypical "coming of age" book or South Park's show about it on Wednesday, but hey I enjoyed it. I think it was the first time I saw the F-bomb in print.
6. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. Satire rears its ugly head again! Weird and funny in a sick manner. Then it makes you think. The background to Vonnegut's books are interesting as well. They all have the same theme and revolve around his real-life experiences of WW2.
7. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway wrote about "manly men" in these stories. The outdoors, war, and women are all included.
8. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is my favorite author because of his completely unique sense of style. Ex: The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. This is all one sentence because IT'S ALL HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME!!! So random but yet I love how he does this.
9. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. Great book. Absolutely fantastic.
10. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Written from the German point of view about WW1 and the horrors of it.
I just picked up Orwell's 1984 for the first time and we'll see where that book stands.
What books do yall like to dust off and read again and again? Or am I one of the few engineers who read? Did you agree with the theme in your book or do you honestly just like the story?
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I read mostly nonfiction histories
last book I read was about the CSS Shenandoah, the ship that fired the last shots of the Civil War.
If the Ramblin' Reck burns the nationwide average of 1.61 gallons/day, it produces 14 kg of CO2 equivalent per day. 14 kg/day is less greenhouse gas emissions than those produced by a single cow or horse. There is a proverbial herd of mascots in I-A football that is more polluting than the Ramblin' Reck...
I was going another direction until
you said the word “fiction.” I will have to recalculate. I was thinking influential books by people like Darwin, Freud, Niebuhr and others. I will get back to you on the fiction.
by Atlanta's original team on Mar 31, 2010 9:21 AM EDT reply actions
Don't worry
Non fiction will come shortly. It’s a long summer
by Winfield Featherston on Mar 31, 2010 11:41 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Good List
I’m a big time fan of both “As I Lay Dying” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” for starters. “Lord of the Flies” is another great one. Regarding “1984” I liked it but not as much as “Fahrenheit 451.”
As I said to you on twitter my all time favorite is “Where the Red Fern Grows” and in that same meme I’ve enjoyed “Sounder” on a lazy afternoon a few times.
Not a Hemmingway fan, his writing never did much for me.
Yeah BoYeeEEeeE
by InTheBleachers on Mar 31, 2010 9:33 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
Killer Angels
Stunningly good.
Also anything by Martin Cruz Smith-“Gorky Park”, “Wolves Eat Dogs”," Stalin’s Ghost". Detective Arkady Renko is one of the best characters in Fiction. “December 6” is Casablanca in Japan.
I also went through a Trevanian rave-“The Eiger Sanction”, “The Loo Sanction”, “Shibumi”
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Mar 31, 2010 10:29 AM EDT reply actions
O.K., Fiction it is
One of the things I have to keep in mind is that a book may have a huge impact earlier in life but later seem dated or not quite as sensational. I still consider such books my friends however.
That being said I would have to agree with several of your choices.
“A Farewell to Arms” was read while I was in the midst of my first great love relationship making that book all the more poignant. “Slaughterhouse Five” is a profoundly entertaining and disturbing book. I rate it Vonnegut’s best. I read “Lord of the Flies” at just the right age, loving the idea of children being on their own and then totally being caught off guard by the descent into barbarism.
Where I disagree with you is on “The Great Gatsby,” of course it raises the old literary debate about whether one can be a Hemmingway fan and a Fitzgerald fan since they had completely opposite opinions about writing and style. I still think some of the pages of that book are shear poetry. But then I “beat on like a boat against the tide.”
Here are some others that I read at just the right time. “The War of The Worlds” and “The Time Machine” are great reads if you have not had the plot spoiled by too many movie or TV versions. Both raise fasinating philosophical questions in the context of a great adventure story. Both have great last pages that leave you with that warm feeling that you have been on a great trip of significance and meaning.
“Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintanence” may seem dated to some but it is a wonderful detective story, romance and discussion of classical philosophy rolled into one.
I would also recommend “Henderson the Rain King.”
Also, if you like hiking you must read “A Walk in the Woods,” one of the funniest laugh-out-loud books I have read in some time.
by Atlanta's original team on Mar 31, 2010 11:06 AM EDT reply actions
I like your style, used to read a lot of fiction in high school
Haven’t read a lot of books since I’ve been at Tech though. “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a favorite. And I read “Watchmen” before they made the movie and sure it’s a comic, but it’s one of the best narratives I’ve read. “1984” is good too.
I read “Breakfast of Champions” which is the only Vonnegut book I’ve read and thought it was ok, but just looking it up it’s apparently not his best work so I’ll have to check out “Slaughterhouse-5” and some of his others.
“The Power of One” is a good story too, about a young, white boxer growing up in apartheid South Africa.
Yay for fiction
I love a lot of the classic fiction books, especially of the sci-fi variety. “Citizen of the Galaxy” by Robert Heinlein is by far my favorite and also one of the most underrated novels by Heinlein.
My favorite book of all is “To Kill A Mockingbird”. I have four different copies of it and have probably read it at least 15 times. Right now I am reading the Furies of Calderon series by Jim Butcher, the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, and the Vampire Hunter D series by Hideyuki Kikuchi.
I’ve never liked analyzing underlying meanings in books. I understand that they exist and have value, but throughout school it’s always forced and that to me kills the true point in reading the book to begin with, especially regarding fiction. I’ve always argued with all of my literature teachers, “Why can’t the book be simply that, a book, and why can’t we just simply enjoy it?” So, when I read, I like to let the author and the story take me away and I fully immerse myself into that story’s world.
"Big Ten can have this challenge. Duke loses, we all win..."
-Marcus Ginyard, G - UNC
1984, Old Man and the Sea, The Waste Land, Huck Finn, 100 Years of Solitude, Catcher in the Rye, everything Robert Frost.
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