Book Lists

Nobody asked but …

When you task a dozen people over 50 with the idea of each picking her or his favorite novel, you need to get ready to get dozens of titles added to your reading list.  Most of us, between 60 and 90, come from some of the last reading generations.  We were raised in households where we saw the arrival of television, where it hadn’t been previously.  We were  raised with radios that were tethered by the length of an electric cord to one of the few electrical outlets available.  Entertainment was not portable but for books.  We have read tons of books.  Most of the movies we’ve seen were based on books.

Here are only a portion of the list we made at Friday’s Lifelong Philosophy SIG:

· Pride and Prejudice

· Lonesome Dove

· Cry the Beloved Country

· To Kill a Mockingbird

· All the King’s Men

· Malabar Farm

· The Hardy Boys

· Huckleberry Finn

· Far from the Madding Crowd

· The Stand

· Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear

· Things Fall Apart

· Buddwing

· What Are People For?

· Atlas Shrugged

· The Fountainhead

This list is heavily slanted for novels, because the question was, “what is your favorite novel, and why?”  Dear reader, what is your favorite novel, and why?

I began to think yesterday that the novels I had listed were mostly read before I knew I was a voluntaryist, but when I thought about that it occurred to me that none of my favorites violated my principles as a voluntaryist.  So then the question, was I a voluntaryist because of what my favorite novels taught me, or were they favorite novels because they had heavy voluntaryist messages that accorded with my natural bent?  Chicken and egg — I do not know.  It is probably complex.

— Kilgore Forelle