Books That Can Change Your Life.... I Need A Reading List

Books are important to me. Not just Great Books, but most books -- every day, ordinary stories, DIYs, cook-books, you -name -it -I -want -it -on -my -shelf-books. (yes, I love libraries) I like books with tiny words, big words, pictures and indexes. Leather bound, cardboard, metal --- all good.

Did she just say metal? Yes, I did. I have a 1938 cook book which consists of a set of recipe cards enclosed in a metal six-ring binder.

I like old books, new books, and magazines. I like reference books. I like, most of all, that I can find meaning in a book that pertains to my life at any given junction. I don’t expect that I will ever write or publish my own book, although I would like to do just that. I don’t love to write as much as I love to read.

However, as part of my effort to keep the brain working and to understand myself, I write about what I read. I do this to help digest what I have read. I do this because when it was the time in my life when I was meant to read and absorb great ideas from great books by great individuals, I was too self-absorbed. I often wonder if my sense of failure as a human comes from not imbibing the knowledge back then……

I will not dwell on it. I have probably 50-60 more years to make use of and I want to do something great. So, I am starting from scratch in asking and finding answers to eternal questions. But the benefit of starting from scratch a second time, is that you remember the pros and cons, the benefits and drawbacks, what worked and what didn’t that you learned from the first time and if you are smart, you remember to use this knowledge the second time.

I took many things at face value for a long time. Maybe not the extent as some as I usually needed to know history or background as to why we came to a certain conclusion. But when it comes to the first eternal question asked by so many, I have already formed some of my answer. The question is God? Does God or do gods exist? What is the divine and does it care about humans?

By the way, these eternal questions asked by nearly everyone at some point were defined by Professor J. Rufus Fears from the University of Oklahoma. With a Ph.D. from Harvard, numerous awards and many books under his belt, I at least feel he is someone who can guide me on my quest for understanding as I make my way through a self-led course from The Teaching Company entitled Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life.

Question number 2 is about fate, number 3 about good and evil and the last question relates to discovering how we should live. In the history of civilizations, written language developed to pass the answers of these same questions from generation to generation. But I see where it has be perverted and used for evil to create people that are lost and with out a real sense of self --- those blinded by being unable to “think for themselves” or deceived into believing that they do think for themselves but are so brained washed. I don’t really know what I am trying to say here, but I am not be condescending. I just think there is so much more out there and that people don’t challenge the status quo because they just can’t. They can’t. They just can’t.

So… following Professor Rufus, I am off to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, along with some supplemental texts. Can’t wait to see where this takes me.