Why?
How?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2020 07:26PM by schrodingerscat.

I'll have to think that one over for a bit. That's a big question.

Add to your survey...

What radio station most influenced your sexual appetites?

What R&B band influenced the socks that you now wear?

What kiss most affected your major in college?

What college football game made you believe in sports betting?

What pasta makes the most sense to you now that you’re an adult?

Which sub-atomic particle best exemplifies your taste in a mate?

How come things are the way they are?

It wasn't a book; it was an essay.

"Self-Reliance," by Ralph Waldo Emerson (written in 1841).

Required reading in American Lit one beautiful, gorgeously warm, spring day in the San Fernando Valley--and just about the last thing any of us in that class wanted to read that particular late morning.

I did read it (we all did--in that class we were all on the college bound track), but when the bell rang, and I got up to exit, I was a different person inside than I had been when I entered that class that day.

In a significant way, I think that classroom period is the "moment" when I stepped over the invisible line which separates mental/emotional adolescents from mental/emotional adults.

Thank you, Mrs. Mildred Cline.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2020 08:34PM by Tevai.

Johnnie Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Read it as a teen. The ultimate anti war book.

Perhaps you can tell me whether that was more overt in the book. Christian Science teaches that the material world does not exist--it "exists" only because we "believe" in the "testimony" of the physical senses. Eliminate the senses, and there is no reality in physical matter. In Christian Science "healing," you apply your metaphysical understand and (what they call) faith to repudiate the illusion of physical sensation--and matter.

So the poor guy gets all his senses blown away.

Incidentally, I saw it on my boot leave, right before I left for Vietnam.I was more concerned that I had unwittingly taken my Christian Science date to a movie with a sex scene (1968) than I was with the pacifist content. Weird, huh?

Irony: one NVA mortar landed about 5 feet in front of my foxhole, once. Blew my helmet off my head; it landed ten or fifteen feet to my rear. Five more feet, and I might well have been like that kid.

A complicated way of looking at a basically simple premise. Trumbo was black listed during the appalling McCarthy watch hunt but won awards for screenplays under an alias from abroad.

Didn't he get a posthumous Oscar? Or one of his movies that was written under a pseudonym won an Oscar? I'm sorry - I'm too lazy to look.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/dalton-trumbo-trumbo/1165/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2020 05:58PM by Beth.

I think it was Roman Holiday. He also scripted such epics as Spartacus and Exodus.

Kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Johnnie Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Read it as
> a teen. The ultimate anti war book.

'[Trumbo's] novel The Remarkable Andrew featured the ghost of President Andrew Jackson appearing to caution the United States against getting involved in World War II and in support of Nazi-Soviet pact. In a review of the book, Time Magazine wise-cracked, "General Jackson's opinions need surprise no one who has observed George Washington and Abraham Lincoln zealously following the Communist Party Line in recent years."'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo

The Devils/Demons by Dostoyevsky.

I revoke my respect for that crazy man, Trumbo.

OMG

Freedom by Jeremy Griffith.

It explains why people do what they do and why people are so crazy. IT brought me a lot of peace.

https://www.humancondition.com/

If I'm being serious, I'd have to say "The Body Keeps the Score" by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk.

It explains why/how child abuse and traumatic events can ruin a person's wellbeing long-term and what you can do about it. It helped me forgive myself for my own judgment that I had not lived up to my full potential.

Now for the EOD survey:

KUPD in Phoenix, AZ, because you couldn't be a Sex Machine without your red card when I was growing up.

Earth, Wind and Fire, because I knit my own socks while listening to my kid sample them into his DJ sets and it makes me feel allllriiigghhht

A kiss with a fellow MicroBio major. I married him, so I changed my major to 'drop out of school, join a cult and make babies".

NAU football vs. I can't remember who, but I bet a friend NAU would be shut out and I won a Butterfinger bar.

I would have to say ravioli, because everything's neatly encapsulated, but then you can top it with more everything, so...bonus.

I would say the gluon, because spouse and I are strongly paired and very colorful.

Because things be how the universe do. Then we get ideas about it and then all a-sudden, it is what it is.

:-)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2020 10:06PM by ptbarnum.

Thanks for playing!!

The book that most affected my life has to be the buy-bull. It's the book christers use to bludgeon me.

Definitely the BoM. That book ruined everything.

"Dick and Jane"

Learning to read---the gateway to everything.

Oral history has its limits but the printed page records, imagines, and changed communication forever.

I can't say I've read anything that profound.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2020 11:09PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

If I have, I sure as shit forgot it.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I read it at 11 when I had no direction

It opened my mind to logical thinking and seeing things from others point of view

Way to Grok!

The word "grok" is also used frequently in

***drum roll, please***

The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.


Is there something you haven't told us, EOD?

What I haven't told you is what I didn't know to tell you! I've never heard of this trilogy, as ghawd is my witness, and when have you ever caught him lying straight-faced 'til you cried?

I read the majority of the Wikipedia entry and decided that the list of primary characters would get the point across:

"Taking place in Unistat, which is the novel's parallel to the United States, the novels have intertwining plots involving a wide array of characters, including:

Epicene Wildeblood, a.k.a. Mary Margaret Wildeblood, a transsexual woman who throws great parties
Frank Dashwood, president of Orgasm Research
Markoff Chaney, a prankster
Hugh Crane, a.k.a. Cagliostro the Great, a mystic and magician
Furbish Lousewart V, author and President of Unistat
Marvin Gardens, author and cocaine addict
Eve Hubbard, scientist and alternate President of Unistat"

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Cat_Trilogy


Wikipedia also states that this trilogy is a continuation of some of the themes found in an earlier trilogy, "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" described as a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975.[1] The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism."


Anyway, Wikipedia sort of flies off the handle in their definition of grok: "'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man."

Here's what Google says was RAH's meaning: "Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as "water", "to drink", "life", or "to live", and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because of its assumption of a singular reality."


So there...

Long time ago, when we were just barely out of the cult, we were having dinner with the TBM family and one of the siblings was getting longwinded about some irritating TBM twist on everything wrong with society. which was just thinly veiled passive aggression insinuating thar the two exmos at the table were lower than dirt, and my husband finally cut them off. "We get it. Totally capice. Understood, read you loud and clear, 10-4, we grok the fullness, okay?"

MIL's face got red and she invoked the angry mother usage of her child's full name. "What filth did you just say about groping?"

I snorted, couldn't help it. Of course she wouldn't know the word grok, and of course she would think it was something dirty.

FIL was a retired English teacher, and he thought it was funny. "It's just a Heinlein quote, Mamasan. It's not vulgar."

"Who's Heinlein?" my MIL asked.
"A science fiction author, real far out guy," my FIL said.
"You've read him?" MIL asks FIL.
"Oh yeah," says FIL. "Real Jack-of-all-trades man's man hero adventure, with spaceships and bimbos. It's the pulps like Conan, redone for hippies. Entertaining and brow popping, but he was no Asimov."

I grew some respect for FIL here. That isn't an unfair assessment of Heinlein and totally not what I expected from him as a quiet guy who seemed totally dominated by his cult and his wife. I didn't expect him to have opinions outside cult mandated groupthink. So he and the husband and I had a nice few minutes comparing what we've read and the ideas of sci-fi, both in books and movies/TV. We did not mention the free love themes in "Stranger", of course.

MIL didn't like it. She was prissy and snappish the rest of the evening at all of us. Looking back I can't figure out if she was resentful because, not being much of a reader, she was shut out of the discussion, or if she was mad that her Peter Perfect husband read things that fell outside the TBM comfort zone, or that he had a side to him that she didn't own. There is no grokking some people, I guess.

The Lost Book of Enki

How come it's not titled "The Found Book of Enki"?

Bedause it was one translated by Zecharria Sitchen from recovered ancient Sumerain Cuneiform tablets that had been lost for thousands of years.
there is nothin facetious about it. It is a serious treatise on history not to be made fun of



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2020 08:10PM by thedesertrat1.

>It is a serious treatise on history not to be made fun of


About as serious as the BOM or BOA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin

http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/sitchinerrors.htm

https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/zecharia-sitchin-and-mistranslation-sumerian-texts-009442

The question was what book affected your life
Enki was my answer
No-one can dispute what affects my life. Whether you agree with the book or not Has no bearing on how it affected my life.
So my thought is "stick with the question!"

I don't object at all to the statement that it affected your life.
I object to the statement that it is a serious treatise on history. It is pseudohistory and pseudoscience in its entirety. It is just as completely made up as the BOM and BOA.

If your life is seriously affected by a work of fiction, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the Lost Book of Enki is not historical.

The Book of Mormon

> How? & Why?

I don't have the time to fill pages with this information. Suffice it to say I was a precocious child who learned to read early and devoured The Book of Mormon. For me it wasn't chloroforms because I was a kid. I fed on it and if you look at any Mormon who is a fan of The Book of Mormon there is bound to be a strongly childish attachment to its absurd stories and progressive 19th Century sermonizing.

The day The Book of Mormon died for me was when I realized my favorite prophet was Korihor after cycling through many in my childhood and early adulthood.

I was atheistic in my teens but prone to mysticism. I loved reading Carlos Castaneda. I actually tried some Crowley Sex Magik as a teen. My return to Mormonism was much promoted by my soft spot for The Book of Mormon. I remember once on a bad acid trip clutching it and feeling some relief.

But now, it still holds primacy but in a polar opposite way. It is a sign of how the written words of humans can so derail human lives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2020 06:01PM by Elder Berry.

Around the World with Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis.

Why did this particular novel affect me so much? I encountered Patrick Dennis when I was 13 and starting to feel the usual angst and alienation from conventional behavior/mores that comes during adolescence. I immediately fell in love with Dennis' biting social satire, which had an undercurrent of idealism that was very compelling to me. After reading the above-mentioned book, I went to the library and found most of his other novels, and proceeded to devour them. Over the ensuing decades I scoured used bookstores, library booksales, and second-hand stores trying to find copies of all his books (most of which were out of print at the time) and managed to collect all but two of the 16 he wrote. I'm 68 years old now, and I only recently donated my Dennis collection to my local library - I realized I was probably not going to ready any of them again, and I wanted to pass them on in the hopes that some other young person would discover them and fall in love as I did.
There have been many other books that have affected me greatly, but this Patrick Dennis book (and subsequently, all his others) are the most memorable and long-lasting.

"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

It's been years since I read that book, but I think of Dennis's statement, all the time, now that I'm older. In fact, this was my mantra, when I was leaving Mormonism, and beginning to see all the beauty, love, and great opportunities the real world had to offer me, just for the taking! It's not about over-indulgence, at all, but rather about appreciation. For me, this has been life-altering paradigm.

Probably the Book of Mormon, not because it's a good read, but because when I graduated highschool I was almost illiterate. I was on about a 8th grade reading level. English was never my talent, I always got Cs despite the fact that I did every assignment, never missed a day of school, was contentious, encouragable, and thorough... I just wasn't that smart.

Literacy is a complex issue affecting boys, Our public school teachers are completely failing doing what they are suppose to do which is get everyone to proficient at literacy, no child left behind is leaving behind half the population. They are especially failing with immigrants and 1st generation boys and minorities. How we can be spending $10,000 a year per kid and get such dismal results is astounding. Teachers should be embarrassed.

The way I got literate was that I read that the BOM seven times, and studied each word very carefully, after that I could read well enough to comprehend what was going on.

Parents also play an important role . Turn off the TV . Set some boundaries . Teachers can only do so much .

I agree. Speaking as someone who shouldn't have been a parent. We parents have the freedom to indoctrinate our children but expect public school to teach them everything else.

"Another Roadside Attraction" by Tom Robbins.

I was a rebellious teenager at the time. It struck a chord concerning living, and viewing the world, in ways beyond the forced conformity of living in a small redneck town.

'As a Man Thinketh',by James Allen. This book was found in most LDS book stores in the early 1980s but is not Mormon specific nor overly religious. It's more philosophical and seemed to put a lot of order to my life and direction at the time.

azsteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 'As a Man Thinketh',by James Allen. This book was
> found in most LDS book stores in the early 1980s
> but is not Mormon specific nor overly religious.
> It's more philosophical and seemed to put a lot of
> order to my life and direction at the time.

This used to be a staple of Unity church bookstores, and the bookshelves of Unity families, too.

When my maternal relatives died, I inherited three copies.

Not that there were any particular lessons or guidance in that book but I read it as a senior in High School and I remember it as a kind of pivot point to adulthood.

It made clear some of the differences in people - their circumstances, attitudes, obsessions and heartaches. I saw the perils of giving in to an impulse that would affect the rest of ones life.

It was the first book for which I put a marker in place, closed the book and sobbed. (Fantine allowed her beautiful front teeth to be pulled for money to support her child.)

Whatever happy ending the daughter, Cosette's story had I don't recall. I only remember Fantine's tragic one.

I read a lot of science fiction when I was a teen. It opened my mind to a whole bunch of "what ifs".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2020 12:11PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

I did the same thing, Ron. Robert A. Heinlein alone!!!!

Podkayne of Mars
Have Spacesuit, will Travel
The Rolling Stones
The Puppet Masters
Citizen of the Galaxy
Methuselah's Children
The Door into Summer
Tunnel in the Sky
Farmer in the Sky
Revolt in 2100
Between Planets
Star Man Jones
Beyond this Horizon
The Star Beast
Glory Road


Did you ever read any of the Retief stories/books? I still get a kick out of them!



Maybe there are situations where one book creates a fundamental change, but I believe that it's a series of readings that move you from one way of thinking to a different way of thinking, but then something else comes along and you change again. It's not like many of us would postulate that there is only ONE right way to think and be...

You forgot that amazing collection of short stories, the Past through Tomorrow.

I loved Heinlein, and Bradbury and Clarke and Asimov and so many others!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2020 03:02PM by Lot's Wife.

No love for Ursula K. Le Guin? Typical.

https://youtu.be/Et9Nf-rsALk?t=40

Best speech ever (not really, but I like it).

It's a taste thing. I preferred Andre Norton over Ms. Le Guin. I used to get these cheap paperbacks that had a book under each cover. In other words, holding it to look at one cover, there was a novel and then when you flipped it over, to look at the other cover, IT was a different novel! Two for the price of one.

For me, it was Methusaleh's Children, Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. I read them as a juvenile.

Splendid books by Heinlein. I also read many of his short stories, and I liked his future timeline, which predicted a religious revival in the early 21st century. Upheaval, actually. And here we are.

Holy crap! I read Retief. Favorite, "Retief's Ransom."

Encyclopedia of Mormonism

I was 20+ when I first read it, thought it was very profound - much more than anything I'd heard in the mormon church.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" really caused me to back away from the Book of Mormon, and later, the church. Jared Diamond is, in fact, "only" an ornithologist, and not an anthropologist, and may have gotten a couple of things wrong. But not much. I have a firm testimony that his book is true.

Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. Was the start of my journey out of the church. I was trying to be more faithful and do extra study and my eyes were opened. :-)

Probably "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. I had just started to seriously question the church. His discussion of the scientific process, and of testing a hypothesis with reproducible results hit me hard.

I had read the B of M at least 18 times, with various combinations of fasting and prayer, and didn't get an answer even one time. I realized that not getting an answer to prayer WAS my reproducible result. It was a result I had gotten over and over again in my life, in nearly every case when I prayed for an answer, no matter how important the question.

In the end, it was dead silence in answer to prayer that WAS my answer.

"Gilead" is the one that pops into my head.