Doug Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide series

The Discworld series was the best, so many accurate observations. Also The Little Prince was a sweet book, and the Kahil Gibran one; the prophet, it talks about God but is so poetic, I liked it.

It started with Jonathan Livingston Seagull and spiraled out from there. At times in my life I believed in magical moments but not now. I know too much a scientific information but that book was the beginning for me. It caused a lot of cognitive dissonance and questions about how I was taught to believe and shape my world.

STEPPENWOLF by Hermann Hesse, and a through book on Jean Piaget's work in cognitive psychology.

To kill a mocking bird, Alice in Wonderland, Seven Pillars of wisdom .

Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Tao of Pooh .. Taoism explained simply for kids using Winnie the Pooh characters. Pooh is quite Zen really.

Science books, encyclopedias, documentaries... I somehow managed to stumble upon Darwin's On the Origin of Species fairly young. Mutual Aid is a good one as it touches on a lot of views I had that nobody around seemed to share. Some children's fiction in which characters were openly skeptical...it's healthy for a child to see various perspectives.

Would you believe....comic books?

Comic Books (mostly of the Super hero genera) were what triggered my interest in morality, and when I looked at morality in the bible, it was pathetically lacking.

Would you believe....comic books?

Comic Books (mostly of the Super hero genera) were what triggered my interest in morality, and when I looked at morality in the bible, it was pathetically lacking.

the Vedas and the Upanishads.

Edgar Cayce and Eckhart Tolle and Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda

Early influence: The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her wonderful books illustrate how a pioneer family lived their daily lives and survived sickness, crop failures, blizzards, drought, fire, Indian confrontations and other challenges on the frontier while journeying westward and eventually settling.

The Grapes of Wrath, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities.

Strangely the first book I learned to read was 'Alice -in-Wonderland ' I think it helped me be acceptant of 'strange' because I always was strange myself - (totally off the wall mentally unwell parents.) At an early age I didnt understand that and only responded to it by reading more because if you have your eyes down and nose in a book people rarely even see you so you become an invisible child . Alice in Wonderland demands a degree of acceptance of everything strange that could happen. When I was older 'I read the seven pillars of wisdom' which affected me a lot and was still in the strange arena-

"Man's Search for Meaning"
"Surely You're Joking,Mr Feynman!"
"A Guide to Rational Living"

Jeder ein Genie by Fritz Zwicky and Der Jahrtausendmensch by Robert Jungk.
Jungk led me to read Zwicky and also indirectly caused me to meet Peter Harper who I later did a travelling road show with. Both Zwicky and Harper were interviewed for Jungks' book which I lent to an elderly friend who it turned out was Harpers father. Harper among other things is the guy who coined the phrase "Alternative Technology" . So much of what we were doing all those years ago is becoming contemporary. Ha, kids and I were later featured in one of Harpers books. Small world.

Sir Stephan Hawkin A Brief History of Time

Zen Guitar - Philip toshio sudo
The tyranny of malice - Joseph berke
The stranger - Albert Camus
. Generally, when I was learning to read I was given a set of encyclopedia and a dictionary. That, more than anything influenced my urge to see different aspects of things.

A short history of of Myth by Karen Armstrong started the fire and Ernest Becker's Denial of death threw TNT and gasoline into it !

100 Years of Solitude in my teens pushed me towards existentialism. And later on, Sagan and the like, in terms of placing science into a wider context of humanity (I have a degree in Physics, so it wasn't about learning the science side. More about the bigger picture).

DeProfundis Oscar Wilde

I read tuesday with morrie when I was really young. It really did not change my life itself but open my eye to discovering what is out there. It deals with mortality and how to deal with it. I also read siddhartha and it started pointing me in the direction of buddhism

Funny you would ask. I just wrote out a good part of that list: [theratseyeblog.blogspot.com].