George Orwell fascinates me on a number of accounts—his mastery of language, his prescience, and his outlook about politics. While I was faculty president, I gave copies of his book to people as a reminder of the chilling threats and effects of totalitarianism and doublespeak on this campus.
Lewis Carroll, though more playful, also is masterful with language and with alerting us to the the dangers of when illogic becomes the norm and when language is misused.
I find Carroll’s decisions a few year’s ago (process and outcome) to eliminate the word “department” from our Carroll argot and the more recent changing of our name from “college” to “university” Orwellian and Humpty-Dumpty-like.
Still, the joy of teaching remains and the truth will set us free.
Edison2’s comments on the two works by Ray Bradbury and J. D. Salinger speak both to why why one reads and why one should read.Fahrenheit 451, 1984, A Brave New World, Little Brother, Canticles of Leibowitz—all are wake up calls alerting us to the consequences of ignoring history and threats to free speech, independent thinking, and unbridled technology.Catcher in the Rye, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and again Little Brother probably attracted me originally because I can readily identify with the main character as (s)he struggles with issues of identity and rebellion.
I hear this wish a lot and I need to be reminded how truly busy people are. Thanks for the heads up on two books I have not read, but now (thanks to you) plan to.Reading, for me, is as important an activity as eating. As I begin to grapple with issues of mortality it’s an enigma how I best should spend my remaining time.
Although I cannot choose just one book that has influenced me, I would say that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has really had an influence on my thinking. I like its predictions of a corrupted America and the banning of books because I think it was a fair prediction of the present day. It is scary that today we have a “banned books” list, even after one novel depicts the horrors of censored society. This brings me to another favorite book of mine, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I might have enjoyed this book so much because it was banned from my high school, and I was rebelling against them by reading it. Maybe I enjoyed the book because I was influenced by its storyline of a teen’s quest to rebel and by reading this book, I was fulfilling my own quest to rebel…or maybe I just liked the book.
Oh how I wish I had the leisure time to read novels outside of school! Although my reading-to-do list keeps getting longer (I now have three more), I do have a few recent favorites. While they are not fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle this past summer. Tolle provides his own philisophy toward religion and spirituality. Even though this was already a topic that I found interesting, I would recommend this book to any reader and I would like to note that the book greatly influenced me in a very positive way. Another book that I will admit I read for one of my classes is, The Road to Whatever by Elliot Currie. This book describes the changing of American values and ideals and the negative impact this has on today’s middle class youths. It is a very interesting read and I think very relevant to today’s society.