Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener. Winner of the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Made into a great play and pretty good movie. | |
| This Island Earth by Raymond Jones. A book built from a serial in Thrilling Wonder Stories it became the first science fiction movie about intersteller travel. Miss the movie if you can, read the book though. It has a bit more appeal to engineers and techies than a lay audience but it is still a great book. Sadly Amazon only seems to have the movie. | |
| Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty")—the offspring of Dinah, Alice's cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—when she ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up on the fireplace mantel, she pokes at the wall-hung mirror behind the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she is able to step through it to an alternative world. In this reflected version of her own house, she finds a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. She also observes that the chess pieces have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up. | |
| Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. Heinlein's best book by far. In this book he revisits his Lazurus Long character. Laz is now 2200 years old, ill and in the hospital. Death with dignity is a right in the future and his bed is equiped with a button to terminate his own life. Friends and family are asking him not to. He asks them to give him one good reason. He then begins reflecting on his long extrodinary life. | |
| A Time to Kill by John Grisham. John's first book and IMO the best. Set in Mississippi. A 10 year old black girl is abused by two drunken, worthless men. Her father gets an assault rifle and takes it upon himself to deliver justice. The mostly white town which had been shocked by the first crime now descends into more racial violence. This is a book about the law and the politics associated with it. There are many minor characters to be enjoyed along the way. | |
| The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. Why did crime in New York drop so suddenly in the mid-90s? How does an unknown novelist end up a bestselling author? Why is teenage smoking out of control, when everyone knows smoking kills? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? Why did Paul Revere succeed with his famous warning? In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point. | |
The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life/Work Planning by Richard Nelson Bolles. Bolles' What Colour is Your Parachute? has become a classic in how to find a job. The Three Boxes is a related but rather different work. The author takes on the broader issues of life planning, which includes not only career, but also educational and personal planning. In some ways, this book is a rebuttal to the traditional college/career/retirement paradigm by showing that people don't have to (and,for that matter, won't even if they wished to) live their lives in the traditional career path straitjacket. The tone of the work is thoughtful but practical. A lot of self-help oriented material nowadays seems to focus on mustering your potential to achieve your dreams. These works have their place, but they fail to answer a preliminary question--how does one know what one wants from life? The Three Boxes is about the task of actually figuring out what you want, and then implementing what you want. It's remarkably free of needless fluff about the inner person, while filled with practical ideas on "breaking out" of the "traps" of modern career life. This is a book to own. It's an easy and thought-provoking read, presented in light style with interesting graphics. The book's title should be The Four Boxes, but the last box is death and not a subject everyone wants to consider. Any way you read it, it is about being prepared for the next phase of your life. | |
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer's best friends include Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom's infatuation with classmate Rebecca "Becky" Thatcher is apparent. He lives with his half brother Sid, his cousin Mary, and his stern Aunt Polly in the (fictional) town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. In addition, he has another aunt, Sally Phelps, who lives considerably farther down the Mississippi River, in the town of Pikesville. Tom is the son of Aunt Polly's dead sister. | |
| The Traveler by John Twelve Trees. This is a nonstop action adventure trilogy. There are few good guys and lots of bad guys. However, the bad guys think that they are the real good guys. Neither side cares much for world governments. It is all on the line. This is a page turner. Beware this is book one of the trilogy. Book two is even better. Book three is good but you are left with the feeling that there might be more in the future. | |
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Island has enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. Another favorite book from my childhood. | |
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the United States. Its publication in 1961 in the U.S. led to obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography in the early 1960s. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the book non-obscene. It is widely regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th century literature. My first college English teacher tried to impress on my the power of stream of consiousness writing. As an engineering student, it seemed wrong headed. Recently I tried it again. The words just fly out and writing takes on a life of its own. It is fun! |
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