Recommended Reading
Other topics:
Literature
Authors who aren’t afraid to show a little shadow in their work:
 |
Sherman Alexie | Ursula K. LeGuin |  |
| Margaret Atwood | D.H. Lawrence | ||
| Joseph Conrad | Herman Melville | ||
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Joyce Carol Oates | ||
| Dave Eggers | Flannery O’Connor | ||
| Louise Erdrich | Edgar Allan Poe | ||
| William Faulkner | Toni Morrison | ||
| Nadine Gordimer | Annie Proulx |
||
| Nathaniel Hawthorne | Wallace Stegner | ||
| Franz Kafka | John Trudell | ||
| Stephen King | Alice Walker | ||
| Barbara Kingsolver | Edith Wharton |
…and Specifics
1984, George Orwell.
For $2.95—thousands of used copies exist on the
Internet—you can have one of the best books ever written. How Orwell knew
in 1949 what many places in the world would look like today is one of the great
artistic mysteries. And the mid-book explanation of ‘why there must always be a
war’ is worth any price. You cannot pretend to be educated until you’ve read this
book. There’s a film version of 1984 starring Richard Burton as the bad guy.
Always Coming Home, Ursula K. LeGuin. Harper & Row, 1985.
First off,
LeGuin is my hero. She’s written close to 40 critically acclaimed books while
raising a family. And versatile doesn’t begin to describe her work: novels,
short stories, science fiction, criticism, poetry, children’s books. The common
thread in them all is the way LeGuin bravely explores the innermost reaches
of what it means to be human—this woman writes soul fiction. The Left Hand
of Darkness, Four Ways to Forgiveness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven,
Searoad, The Wizard of Earthsea series (listed below). This particular book,
Always Coming Home, is a Utopian novel that takes place in Northern California
several thousand years after an apocalyptic meltdown on the planet Earth.
Appropriately, it’s written in experimental form. You can read it straight through,
or you can skip around. Either way, when you’ve finished the book your only
question will be, “How do we get to Kesh?”
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown. Doubleday, 2003.
And why not? A rip roaring
mystery that re-introduces symbology, teaches quite a bit of history, and poses
some interesting questions.
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Poems for Men, Anthology, edited by
Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade. HarperCollins, 1993.
Poetry by
men and about men collected from all over the world by three renowned author/titans of the men’s movement. Poignant, powerful, heartbreaking, inspiring…
just about everything you need.
SHADOW Searching for the Hidden Self, Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious, Vol 1
Described in the first section above.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson.
Another
instance where you can have a great book for pennies by looking on the Internet.
There are also several film versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The truest to the
spirit of the book is the version starring Fredric March.
The Wizard of Earthsea, series of six books: The Wizard of Earthsea, The
Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, The Other
Wind, Ursula K. LeGuin.
From the first book in the series, where a headstrong
young wizard has to confront his own shadow in order to survive, to the last
book in the series, which brings the feminine principle in Earthsea back into
power and accord with the masculine principle, these books are absolutely
awesome. Tonic for the soul. If you’ve never read LeGuin, start with this series.