BooksThat Made Me Think

Sophie's World: a novel about the history of philosophy by Jostein Gaarder
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

and

Opened Ground: selected poems by Seamus Heaney

I read V. Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway in a grad class and I loved it and re-read it almost immediately afterward. It made me think about what we don't know of the interior lives of others around us. J. Heller's Catch-22 is also an interesting read. Makes one think of all the Catch-22s in life... I read somewhere that the idea for the film and the series M.A.S.H. was actually sparked by this book.

I LOVED The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The characters and the issues he wrote about really stayed with me long after I closed the book.

well, I'll bite. #1 What did these books make you think *about?

I'll admit that I tried reading Sophie's World: a novel about the history of philosophy and just couldn't finish the bloody thing. I think I thought it was way over my head.

Given that I first read Main Street by Sinclair Lewis in eighth grade and have re-read it multiple times in the intervening 30 years, I can say that the character of Carol Kennicott has caused me to think more than once about how best to introduce change into situations where others represent a barrier to change.

Confessions, by Augustine. I regularly keep a notebook handy so I can write down quotes that I like or stuff that gets me thinking and it took me forever to read this book because I wanted to copy down half of it!

One of the books that made me think is Racial Matters by Kenneth O'Reilly its a book about the workings of the FBI and its relentless drive to destroy the civil rights movement and its most visible leader. Also the depths they would go having the "undercover agent" plan and implement illegal acts and then arrest others for committing the acts. The depths of racism embedded is overwhelming to me still.

One book that made me think was Metamagical Themas, particularly the pieces on innumeracy, probability, and bias.

I think its best part was A person paper on purity in language, which is also available online.

However, I no longer agree with its point and I think it advocated a tragic mistake, one that may no longer be fixable -- at least, until such time as Finland becomes culturally dominant in the world.

Borges played some interesting intellectual games in his stories.

Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Message 10: RitaSchiano
I loved that one! It made me think about psychology in a different way. In my work I hear people in seemingly hopeless situations and I hear people with no hope and I tell you, hopeless people are far worse off.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. That one is never returned to my collection when I loan it out, but I always have a copy :) I reread it when I feel like my life needs a bit of guidance.

The Story of O by Pauline Reage is also one that I have reread a few times... the psychology behind the motives in that book boggles my mind.

And last, but not least, Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber just because I love folklore and this particular book just never seems to get old.

The River of Doubt - but not so much due to its subject matter, which is a rather straightforward, enjoyable, telling of Teddy Roosevelt's exploration of an unknown tributary of the Amazon in Brazil.

What made me think was one of his companions, a Brizilian Colonel Rondon, who spent much of his career exploring unknown reaches of the Amazon rainforest and establishing telegraph lines for communication. Rondon apparently took great (often physical) pains to establish a sort of first contact with indigenous tribes no one had heard of in a way that minimized bloodshed and established trust with other unknown groups via word of mouth.

Of course, by the end of his career, the telegraph lines that he and those under his command so arduously connected became relatively obsolete with newer communications technology.. and many of the indigenous tribes he made contact with were effectively impoverished with further inroads into the Amazon... but ...

What was amazing was the description of Rondon's unwavering commitment to his goals of communication - both through the telegraph lines and with first contact -- and that despite these, he has faded into obscurity.

The Black Swan by N.N. Taleb has been no doubt the book that has made me think if you consider the last years. Not only entertaining, but above all making me think of other points of view and the danger of fallacies.

Read it! ...and then say what you mean about it. It takes time to read it and I am reading it for the second time.

Just got The Black Swan as a Christmas gift! Will be gobbling that down, on top of all the Christmas stuffings... ;)

All books make me think..........sometimes badly, sometimes well, sometimes shallowly, sometimes profoundly, sometimes about myself, sometimes about others.

All books also make me feel..............way too many feelings to list here.

Light in August... Faulkner... I'm still thinking...

I read Catch-22 also, a long time ago. I was freshly out of high school, however, and needed more life experience to press the points home. Good book!

A book that does not make me think about SOMETHING is - perhaps- not a very good book. On the other hand, sometimes what I think is that it was a waste of time reading it...

Has anybody here read, "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini? It's themes of redemption, forgiveness, and the effects of war on children brought me many insights to myself and others.

A book that spoke to me was Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

I have recently finished reading Wild Swans which is about three generations from the same family in China during the Cultural Revolution there. This made a fascinating read for me before this year's Olympics. Now I'm enjoying my National Geographic magazine about China today.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Made me think about society and humanity and the "grand" scale. One of the best Non-Fictions I have read.

The Kite Runner was also a book that stayed with me long after I put the book down. I am now waiting to read A Thousand Splendid Suns. My daughter just finished this book and she tells me it's also a great read.

I started off hating, and then grew to deeply, deeply love Blindess by Saramago. I still think of it - it caused me to really question the fundamental nature of man - are we inherently good? evil?- all that sort of stuff!

This is in regard to the Kite Runner, which is a book that made me think. I read the book several years ago in a book group and came away with thinking it was a good book but not a great book and i could not figure out what all the fuss was about. I did here the author speak a few times and I really enjoyed listening to him speak.

THen the other night I watched the movie version. Watching the movie i realized something that i had missed before. Its the seen in the movie where he learns that his father "slept with the help" so to speak. The adult son gets angry upon learning this he says his father lied to him. It is after this point in the film that he finally gets a backbone. The point that I got from this was that as long as he saw his father as a "god" or perfect he was doomed to remain a boy but once he came to realize that his father was just a flawed human being like the rest of us he could then take on the responsiblities of being a man.

does anyone else have a thought on this?

The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block for its study of Alzheimers and the myriad impacts the disease has on the younger generations of a family who grow up with the fear of having the diseased gene inside them.

dperrings, you brought up an issue I hadn't considered. Thanks. The protagonist is better able to forgive himself and do what he needs to do once he realizes that he is not the only person to make mistakes.

For myself, the most relevant meanings which came to mind were that it's never too late to try to make amends, and we must cherish and be true to the people who bring out the best in us.

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. Is civilization that fragile? This book didn't do much to improve my view of humanity, especially the part about the library being abandoned.

The New Jerusalem Bible
Witness by Whittaker Chambers
Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

Almost anything by Jeanette Winterson, especially The Stone Gods. I just can't get over how her books can scare the shit out of me and make me believe in things again. The Stone Gods was really, really intriguing for me because it details what we do to destroy ourselves, and how we *keep on doing it*, and what we can still salvage from our stupidity. It's a wonderful read.

Thanks for the description re. The Stone Gods..one more added to my huge pile of to be read.

One of the books that made me think is an all-time classic To Kill A Mockingbird. In my opinion this is the best book ever written!

Yes I am a huge fan of To Kill a Mockingbird. It was such a great privilage to have been able to read that book. Few books have left me with the same feeling as that book.

dperrings

I read To Kill a Mockingbird in h.s. and really liked it. However, it has been a LONG time since I was in h.s. My husband and I listened to it on CD this summer while driving on vacation. Sissy Spacek did a great job narrating. And a couple of nights ago, I watched the movie with Gregory Peck. It really is a great book and wonderful movie too.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird in h.s. and really liked it. However, it has been a LONG time since I was in h.s. My husband and I listened to it on CD this summer while driving on vacation. Sissy Spacek did a great job narrating. And a couple of nights ago, I watched the movie with Gregory Peck. It really is a great book and wonderful movie too.

More recent books that made me think:

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Staying Alive: Real Poems For Unreal Times ed. Neil Astley

I am repeating in books that change the world but...

"In my middling teenage years, reading Ayn Rand "The Fountainhead" and then "Atlas Shrugged" had a profound effect on my thinking. "Atlas Shrugged" more so. I remember being thrown into a bout of contemplative rapture, if you will, where the books, their stories, their characters became the lens by which I saw others in relation to myself and vice versa.

My curiosity was intensified in a way, my pursuit of this elusive curiosity fevered, and I seriously began to believe that the sublime glimmerings and phantasms that rarely made their tantalizing appearance were somehow within my reach if I were to approach them a certain way. Ayn Rand seemed to crystallize these scenarios and bring real contours and form to abstract thinking.

I could no longer read other books like I once used to. I switched into more complicated written works including Carl Jung, Nietzsche, anything Mythology and Anthropology. Books like Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus followed along with endless gazing at artistic forms, the reading of biographies, understanding the art of dreams and the paradigm of philosophy and thinking.

My sister had a similar experience. She said she was a bit afraid of finishing "The Fountainhead", because it made her think a certain way and she wasn't sure if it was right for her. Perhaps it cannot change the world, but it certainly shook mine given the other catalyzing forces in my life. Makes me think of Bibliotherapy a bit, but don't think I want to dive into why it had such a transformative effect here on Library Thing.

This book made me think of how a person can maintain his personal dignity in nearly any situation: A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by A. Sholzahenisyn (my spelling). How this man kept his "rules" after 8 years in this prison was more than I could do.

"Civilization and Its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud
Because it is about the self and the outer world, where does each begin and end. Do we create culture, or does culture create us? However, I have only read about 40 pages so far.

I never had a favorite author, until I read Le père Goriot by Balzac and was so moved I couldn't get it out of my mind. (I have since had a book of la Comédie Humaine at my bedside and have the ambition of reading them all - ha!).
I try not to be judgmental and when I catch myself putting people in boxes, I think of Old Goriot.

I select books that can make me think.........

Wow, Cecil,

Old Goriot is the next title for LT's Group Read. With that kind of recommendation, I think I had better join them over there!

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, Loraine Boettner
Discussions of Robert L. Dabney
The One and the Many, Rousas John Rushdoony
The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation, Philip Mauro
The Psychology of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn

The Gift, by Lewis Hyde

Ishmael
The World Without Us
Under the Sea Wind
A Walk in the Woods

War Talk by Arundhati Roy

For Reasons of State by Noam Chomsky

Anything by C.S. Lewis

West With The Night by Beryl Markham

An extraordinary biography by an ordinary person, well 'ordinary' is how she defines herself. I find her eye so clear and her pen so lucid, that her vignettes have stayed the course ever since a librarian steered this book-hungry child to a high shelf, long ago. Or maybe it's just early, pioneering aviators, those who won't take 'no' for an answer, have a different take on life....

Thought I drop in a few of my recent reads that made me think

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I didn't know this is a philosophy book as much as it is about motorcycle maintenance!

Maria Montessori, Her Life Work. Her insights into child education is amazing. It's as relevant then as it is now.

Going to read...

The paradox of choice and Nudge. I think those 2 books should come under this category as well.

I have just finished Peter Gran's The Rise of the Rich. A difficult book, not well written and possibly incoherent to anyone not aware of current academic debates in world history and the development of modernity. But what Gran does is ask a lot of provocative questions, taking contemporary work by investigative journalists, criminologists and so on seriously (terrain where histroians do not normally go), seeing to put faces on the anonymous economic and social trends that seem to rule our lives. All in the service of challenging the dominant paradigm of the "Rise of the West", replacing it with a global "Rise of the Rich", in which class interest trumps national interest everytime. In his world third world rich have impacts on the west as much as western elites have impact on the rest. He hasn't conducted the analysis, but he is provoking others to design research agendas to do the detailed work. An annoying book, but I kept waking up during the night thinking about it, so it has certainly made me think!

When I was in tenth grade, our world history teacher made us read 'All Quite on the Western Front'. The sheer brutality of war and the heartbreaking account of the wasteful loss of young life made me a pacifist. Then, about a year ago, I read 'Johnny Got His Gun', and once again my heart ached for the young, brave men who go off to fight a 'just' war, only to have thier lives destroyed. I think every high school kid should have to read both books.

"The Red Badge of Courage" had that effect on me.

I’ve finally managed to finish a few books which were pending for over 1 month now. I think all of them are good reads, and one of them you can even get it for free!

1. The paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz
2. Free: The Future of a Radical price by Chris Anderson
3. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Peter Kaufman

The first book is about the abundance of choices that we have now and how’s that making our lives even more miserable. Maybe I don’t need a book to tell me that, but sometimes, there are things that we just don’t see. I’m a channel surfer. So imagine what an increase in number of channels do to me… Maybe I’ll just get rid of the television. ;)

The second book is about how “free” services are changing the business model of the future. The most popular free model I guess is Google with free search, free email, free word/spreadsheet software, free photo album etc. I’m also using the popular free Wordpress engine to power my blog at shanglee.com. You can get the book for free as an e-book or as an audio download. Just google it.

The third book is about the wisdom and wit of Charlie Munger (as the title suggests), the partner of Warren Buffett. I like his multi-disciplinary approach to tackle problems e.g. he uses psychology, physics, engineering, economics etc to understand and solve business problems. I also like the quote he used (which was quoted by Benjamin Franklin):

Appeal to interest, not reason.

This is speaking to me louder and louder each day... Hope you’ll enjoy these reads.

I looked at the Library Thing reviews for The Paradox of choice, but I couldn't decide which ones to read...

Anything by M. Scott Peck gives one much to think about. I'm currently reading Denial of the Soul, Spiritual and Medical Perspectives on Euthanasia

It seems like many people are unable to even think about or talk about death and related subjects (not from the book, just my opinion from life experience). At 59 it is especially of interest to me, though at this point I don't seem to be in danger of dying anytime soon. Fingers crossed. :-)

There's a teen book called Thirteen Reasons Why and it really made me wish I could get the word out to teens about how they treat others.

Defenitely: Also sprach Zarathustra, by Nietzsche. A bolt from the blue

I read it when I was in college because I was majoring in philosophy, and I did not like it. It's in no world, no philosophy, no novel. Maybe I had not enough knowledge to enjoy the fiction part of the philosophies expressed in the book.

Yes, it keeps you thinking way after reading it. I remember the week I finished it, I couldn't stop talking about it with a couple of friends who had read it too. I keep saying............why didn't he say anything? and also debating if the main protagonist was good and redeemed himself or not................good novel.

The Lost I, by Choghig Kazandjian

Dear familymoments, if you're referring to Zarathustra, I'm sorry but you understand nothing about philosophy.
You wrote: "It's in no world, no philosophy, no novel". What kind of edition and translation have you read?
VALE

Roots by Alex Haley really made me view the topic of American Slavery differently. I've read many books on the topic, including biographies, but no one book has ever made me truely think about the long term consequences of slavery. Haley does an amazing job of telling the story of his family.

The Artful Universe by John Barrow was a fascinating read that sometimes I only half-understood because I don't quite know a lot of the science he's writing about. This is an absolutely splendid book.

A Tale of Two Cities changed my life. So much to think about here. Revenge, love, adversity, courage...... I can't get enough of this book.

Do They Hear You When You Cry? is a real eye-opener when it comes to the kind of things you thought only happened in third world countries.

A Child called IT. If you can read this book without becoming a child welfare advocate, you don't have a soul. I bawled my eyes out reading it.

The Lovely Bones. Made me think i will never, ever again even think about reading a book that my mother in law recommends to me!

Haha! matluvsbooks.