i'm looking for a good book to accompany me during some solo travel in the next week.
it doesn't have to be architecture related, but if an architecture book changed your life, i'd like to hear about. for me, i'm looking for books about some kind of introspective personal journey e.g. the catcher in the rye or the wind up bird chronicle.
soooo, what are some of the books that changed your life? and if you are so inclined, why?
although not a popular book for alot of ppl. The Fountainhead DID change my life.
it got me motivated and back into architecture school after a 4 year break.
other books that i find 'important' in adding something to how i look at things now...
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Atomised - Michel Houellebecq
"blue like jazz" is really good. "catch 22" is just cool if you werent forced to read it in grade school. its kind of like a tarintino movie but a book. "conversations with students" a quick archi read. my first rem book. ill think of some more. so where are your travels taking you dot?
i'm sure you'll get a wide range of responses, but i'll toss out three to consider...
first book to radically change my life was the boy scout handbook. no joke. working through that thing at the age of 12 - i'm telling you, i actually felt like i was prepared for any situation imaginable. how to make a tourniquet out of raspberry bristles? no problem...
second book to make a dent, unfortunately, was literally catcher in the rye. made me believe i would be ok in the end...
third, and architecturally speaking, you'll probably get zumthor's 'thinking architecture' or 'atmospheres' (and they're great books -small but dense with thought). i'd take a small flier though and try to pick up a copy of bernard tschumi's 'questions of space' it's a little leatherbound edition from the aa in the late 80's and may be tough to find. but for all of my misgivings about him as an architect proper, it's a really, really good book. no real work - just musings on how we perceive space. it's certainly about his introspective journey as a thinker...
Tim, I've gotten into Kerouac and other Beat writers in the last year. It's great for that post-graduation optimism/emptiness.
Start with "On the Road," particularly if you're traveling. Jack excels at describing places without even a mention of the physical appearance of place, relying only on descriptions of the people to help you build your image. Very refreshing.
After that, move on to Dharma Bums. It'll make you want to move to a mountaintop and contemplate stuff. Or at the very least, go for a hike.
Right now I'm working my way through The Subterraneans, which is pretty much written as a stream of consciousness piece, which makes it not quite ideal for reading with all of the distractions of travel going on around you.
im currently rereading calasso's the marriage of cadmus and harmony. very very nice. its got so many crooks and crannies. its actually perfect re-re-read material. and what a lovely comfortable place his reader occupies. and an unravelling of journeys.
with it, i'm juggling a kurt vonnegut book; for depressing material, its so light hearted. definitely not 'self discovery' though.
oh...and just concluded neil gaiman's american gods. his best book. would be just perfect for a journey through usa.
and if its a journey through life....v.woolf's the waves. its depressingly beautiful. but these are all recent, i have such a poor long term memory.
personally, reading zumthor = listening to elevator music
for a charming film with journey subject matter, i saw it on tv yesternight, Nuovomondo. charming charming charming. oh i want to give everyone a flower now.
agree with mmatt with taking Kerouac along with you 'on the road'.
and maybe not life changing but i enjoy a dose of bukowski to bring things back to the basics - women and booze.
"Catch 22" may well be the funniest book ever written, I'm 2/3rd through it and i get stares on the subway when I make an audible laugh on the morning commute.
"Confederacy of Dunces" is also another very funny book.
"Wind Up Bird Chronicle" was awesome, but chances are you'll see someone else reading it (most likely female) while you're reading it. This may work as a pick-up technique if you're a straight male.
"The Master and Margarita" of the 2 Russian books I've read (Crime and Punishment was the other) this one was by far the best. It is an immensely fantastical novel about the Devil visiting Stalinist Russia.
"Fight Club" as much as so many people hate it and its author, really did help shape my worldview mostly its because I agreed with every word out of Tyler Durden's mouth.
"White Noise" I had to read in high-school but its one of my favorite books. Mostly its just observations on modern life, but they're pretty heavy none-the-less.
"The Elegant Universe" is easily the best written physics book i've read. Its substance matter is incredible deep but if you can read it you will see the world differently, especially in the way its author describes relativity. I literally felt clairvoyant for a spell after reading it.
"1984" I never read in grade school but reading it as an adult, it scared the daylights out of me as to how easily our world could become the world in "1984" and in so many ways it has.
betadineligatures - That book is incredible; I have never read anything quite like it. The introduction is just perfect and will stick with me forever.
I'm reading Wind up Bird Chronicle at the moment and it is a beautiful book, but I can see why it has a mainly female readership - yet to use it to pick up women though, but I bet it would be ideal!
I'd add to the list maybe some Hemmingway and Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct is particularly good if you fancy some non-fiction). J G Ballard is awesome too.
magic, Kerouac is one of those writers i always hear about, but never got into. sounds about what i need to read.
poczatek, that book cover is amazing. i need to email that to all my friends immediately...but which one is the cougar?
harp, nietzsche is probably too thick for this kind of trip
apu, i've read most of those books, the elegant universe is very readable book, made me feel smart because all the complex theories made sense in the end, but that is more to the credit of the writer than my limited brain.
p.s. it's true about the wind up bird chronicle. murakami has struck some kind of chord with the ladies. even though the main character is a dude, but i agree, the book is a total chick magnet (i've tested it).
Your photo stream depresses the shit out of me p2an. What a beautiful office and there is actual creative work going on in it!
Here I sit in a practically windowless office on a saturday drawing more bathroom elevations full of ugly stuff I could never afford for Manhattan clients who have more money than brains.
Oh, and your pad's pretty sweet by the way.
Offices with models and drawings all over the place make me sad in general, my boss hates clutter and we never have time to do any designing because we're too busy cranking out more ugly stuff for more loaded clients.
Apu, your list above is nice and good little insights into all the books on it.
Confederacy of Dunces is an incredible and fun book, but not so much about a journey.
The River Why by David James Duncan is very literally a story of a personal journey, but tons of Philosophy 101 stuff thrown in, and memorable characters as well as being a love letter to the Pacific Northwest.
Being too lazy to provide proper descriptions for all of these, I'll list my Top 5 changed-my-worldview books, in no order:
Skinny Legs and All - art, sex, and Middle East relations, very, very funny
Vineland - crazy and sprawling and hilarious, but very much about America's immense moral decline in the 80s
A Prayer for Owen Meany - beautifully written, sad, about being different, and lots of religious criticism
The River Why - as above, one young man's journey
Geek Love - stunningly unlike any story I've ever read, about circus freaks and the power of being a freak, i.e. freakism as a desirable trait, including self-mutilation to get there, but also about family bonds
It's not super super deep but it's thoughtful, thought-provoking, interesting, and a great read for a traveler: Life of Pi
Also, I just finished Crashing Through, which is a fascinating story about a blind man who gets a very very rare new surgery and actually begins to see. It's well-written, but more interestingly it chronicles this man's journey not to biological sight, but to understanding perception--as it turns out, vision is so impacted by our brain's perception that even when he technically gets his sight back, he still has to learn how to perceive. It's fascinating. Leaves you thinking about what it truly means to be blind v. sighted, and about perception v. vision for weeks after and also raises the question of blind architects... which it turns out, exist.
And anyone who hasn't read Middlesex should read it immediately. Now that's a journey... not to mention hilarious and un-put-down-able.
Also, I personally much preferred 'Kafka on the Shore' to 'the Wind Up Bird Chronicles'... I find it a much more interesting story. Couldn't stop thinking about that one after reading it.
I haven't seen much Murakami in the UK, so I guess his ubiquity is a US thing.
p.s. Chocolate and a chilli was an aztec thing - it was a hot chocolate drink, really bitter as well. I tried some, it was not so nice.
Sep 20, 08 3:00 pm ·
·
The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion
Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
fine line, i can't imagine anymore overlooked book in the 20th century, i never heard of Invisible Man, until college, and when i realized that it was 600plus pages, i was cursing my prof, but after i started reading it, i was riveted. all students should have that book on their list in senior year...
while I can't really say it changed my life (I'm kinda beyond that at this point) I think Rebecca Solnit's "Field Guide to Getting Lost" would be a GREAT book for such a journey as you're describing.
The book that changed the course of the way I looked at things for the rest of my life was Jiddu Krishnamurti's "Think on These Things". That hit me like a ton of bricks back in high school. Although when I read it now as I got older it doesn't have the same impact cause I guess I'm older and moved on to other teachers more relevant to this period of my life. But as a teenager, great eye opener.
for me it has to be reading Old Man and the Sea in middle school. it was the first time i really hated reading and found tv to be so much more enjoyable.
life-changing books
i'm looking for a good book to accompany me during some solo travel in the next week.
it doesn't have to be architecture related, but if an architecture book changed your life, i'd like to hear about. for me, i'm looking for books about some kind of introspective personal journey e.g. the catcher in the rye or the wind up bird chronicle.
soooo, what are some of the books that changed your life? and if you are so inclined, why?
the bible.
although not a popular book for alot of ppl. The Fountainhead DID change my life.
it got me motivated and back into architecture school after a 4 year break.
other books that i find 'important' in adding something to how i look at things now...
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Atomised - Michel Houellebecq
"blue like jazz" is really good. "catch 22" is just cool if you werent forced to read it in grade school. its kind of like a tarintino movie but a book. "conversations with students" a quick archi read. my first rem book. ill think of some more. so where are your travels taking you dot?
i'm sure you'll get a wide range of responses, but i'll toss out three to consider...
first book to radically change my life was the boy scout handbook. no joke. working through that thing at the age of 12 - i'm telling you, i actually felt like i was prepared for any situation imaginable. how to make a tourniquet out of raspberry bristles? no problem...
second book to make a dent, unfortunately, was literally catcher in the rye. made me believe i would be ok in the end...
third, and architecturally speaking, you'll probably get zumthor's 'thinking architecture' or 'atmospheres' (and they're great books -small but dense with thought). i'd take a small flier though and try to pick up a copy of bernard tschumi's 'questions of space' it's a little leatherbound edition from the aa in the late 80's and may be tough to find. but for all of my misgivings about him as an architect proper, it's a really, really good book. no real work - just musings on how we perceive space. it's certainly about his introspective journey as a thinker...
The Golden Bowl
steppenwolf sounds appropriate for this itinerary: amsterdam, basel, vals (zumthor), stuttgart (mercedees benz museum), and back to rotterdam.
i'm afraid i'm in the anti-fountainhead camp. blue like jazz i'll have to check out too. others i've read...including the bible!
Tim, I've gotten into Kerouac and other Beat writers in the last year. It's great for that post-graduation optimism/emptiness.
Start with "On the Road," particularly if you're traveling. Jack excels at describing places without even a mention of the physical appearance of place, relying only on descriptions of the people to help you build your image. Very refreshing.
After that, move on to Dharma Bums. It'll make you want to move to a mountaintop and contemplate stuff. Or at the very least, go for a hike.
Right now I'm working my way through The Subterraneans, which is pretty much written as a stream of consciousness piece, which makes it not quite ideal for reading with all of the distractions of travel going on around you.
.mm
or The Golden Bough
im currently rereading calasso's the marriage of cadmus and harmony. very very nice. its got so many crooks and crannies. its actually perfect re-re-read material. and what a lovely comfortable place his reader occupies. and an unravelling of journeys.
with it, i'm juggling a kurt vonnegut book; for depressing material, its so light hearted. definitely not 'self discovery' though.
oh...and just concluded neil gaiman's american gods. his best book. would be just perfect for a journey through usa.
and if its a journey through life....v.woolf's the waves. its depressingly beautiful. but these are all recent, i have such a poor long term memory.
personally, reading zumthor = listening to elevator music
for a charming film with journey subject matter, i saw it on tv yesternight, Nuovomondo. charming charming charming. oh i want to give everyone a flower now.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
thus spoke zarathustra
beyond good and evil
will to power
agree with mmatt with taking Kerouac along with you 'on the road'.
and maybe not life changing but i enjoy a dose of bukowski to bring things back to the basics - women and booze.
"Catch 22" may well be the funniest book ever written, I'm 2/3rd through it and i get stares on the subway when I make an audible laugh on the morning commute.
"Confederacy of Dunces" is also another very funny book.
"Wind Up Bird Chronicle" was awesome, but chances are you'll see someone else reading it (most likely female) while you're reading it. This may work as a pick-up technique if you're a straight male.
"The Master and Margarita" of the 2 Russian books I've read (Crime and Punishment was the other) this one was by far the best. It is an immensely fantastical novel about the Devil visiting Stalinist Russia.
"Fight Club" as much as so many people hate it and its author, really did help shape my worldview mostly its because I agreed with every word out of Tyler Durden's mouth.
"White Noise" I had to read in high-school but its one of my favorite books. Mostly its just observations on modern life, but they're pretty heavy none-the-less.
"The Elegant Universe" is easily the best written physics book i've read. Its substance matter is incredible deep but if you can read it you will see the world differently, especially in the way its author describes relativity. I literally felt clairvoyant for a spell after reading it.
"1984" I never read in grade school but reading it as an adult, it scared the daylights out of me as to how easily our world could become the world in "1984" and in so many ways it has.
apu, i just bought 1984. plan to read it soon. but i got all kinds of stares reading catch 22 also. its just crazy some of the stuff in there.
i agree with fight club. but anything by palahniuk is going to be good. i personally enjoyed "rant" the most followed by "lullaby".
douglas coupland is great too if you like chuck. hes a little more sedate but still well writeen.
betadineligatures - That book is incredible; I have never read anything quite like it. The introduction is just perfect and will stick with me forever.
I'm reading Wind up Bird Chronicle at the moment and it is a beautiful book, but I can see why it has a mainly female readership - yet to use it to pick up women though, but I bet it would be ideal!
I'd add to the list maybe some Hemmingway and Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct is particularly good if you fancy some non-fiction). J G Ballard is awesome too.
all great recommendations.
magic, Kerouac is one of those writers i always hear about, but never got into. sounds about what i need to read.
poczatek, that book cover is amazing. i need to email that to all my friends immediately...but which one is the cougar?
harp, nietzsche is probably too thick for this kind of trip
apu, i've read most of those books, the elegant universe is very readable book, made me feel smart because all the complex theories made sense in the end, but that is more to the credit of the writer than my limited brain.
thanks.
p.s. it's true about the wind up bird chronicle. murakami has struck some kind of chord with the ladies. even though the main character is a dude, but i agree, the book is a total chick magnet (i've tested it).
in the beauty of the lillies - updike
look homeward angel - wolfe
yeah ballard is always good, though once you have read 5 or 6 of his you kinda know where its going
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artifice/2062232997/
i am also a big fan of coupland. always a nice easy read, sweet but with something going on deeper...
Your photo stream depresses the shit out of me p2an. What a beautiful office and there is actual creative work going on in it!
Here I sit in a practically windowless office on a saturday drawing more bathroom elevations full of ugly stuff I could never afford for Manhattan clients who have more money than brains.
Oh, and your pad's pretty sweet by the way.
Offices with models and drawings all over the place make me sad in general, my boss hates clutter and we never have time to do any designing because we're too busy cranking out more ugly stuff for more loaded clients.
Apu, your list above is nice and good little insights into all the books on it.
Confederacy of Dunces is an incredible and fun book, but not so much about a journey.
The River Why by David James Duncan is very literally a story of a personal journey, but tons of Philosophy 101 stuff thrown in, and memorable characters as well as being a love letter to the Pacific Northwest.
Being too lazy to provide proper descriptions for all of these, I'll list my Top 5 changed-my-worldview books, in no order:
Skinny Legs and All - art, sex, and Middle East relations, very, very funny
Vineland - crazy and sprawling and hilarious, but very much about America's immense moral decline in the 80s
A Prayer for Owen Meany - beautifully written, sad, about being different, and lots of religious criticism
The River Why - as above, one young man's journey
Geek Love - stunningly unlike any story I've ever read, about circus freaks and the power of being a freak, i.e. freakism as a desirable trait, including self-mutilation to get there, but also about family bonds
apu, things always look better in the fotos, trust me!
p2an, Chilli chocolate is amazing...
i didn't mean to hijack this thread, but yes! chilli choc is bloody brilliant! who ever thought of that?
^i think the aztecs, chocolate was originally favored with chili
*flavored
It's not super super deep but it's thoughtful, thought-provoking, interesting, and a great read for a traveler: Life of Pi
Also, I just finished Crashing Through, which is a fascinating story about a blind man who gets a very very rare new surgery and actually begins to see. It's well-written, but more interestingly it chronicles this man's journey not to biological sight, but to understanding perception--as it turns out, vision is so impacted by our brain's perception that even when he technically gets his sight back, he still has to learn how to perceive. It's fascinating. Leaves you thinking about what it truly means to be blind v. sighted, and about perception v. vision for weeks after and also raises the question of blind architects... which it turns out, exist.
And anyone who hasn't read Middlesex should read it immediately. Now that's a journey... not to mention hilarious and un-put-down-able.
Also, I personally much preferred 'Kafka on the Shore' to 'the Wind Up Bird Chronicles'... I find it a much more interesting story. Couldn't stop thinking about that one after reading it.
Kafka On the Shore is my next murakami book, but i feel bad reading him on the subway because everybody else is reading him.
i can come up with lots of GOOD books, but if we're talking life-changing i'd have to say
being there (which is also goofy), jerzy kosinski
the magic mountain by thomas mann,
the glass bead game by hermann hesse, and
ada, vladimir nabakov
i would like to reread that book that changed my life. maybe a reread will change it back...
I haven't seen much Murakami in the UK, so I guess his ubiquity is a US thing.
p.s. Chocolate and a chilli was an aztec thing - it was a hot chocolate drink, really bitter as well. I tried some, it was not so nice.
Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
For me, it made the 80s a whole lot more fun.
"the pet goat" was pretty life-changing
...like otherwise there would never have been Anonymous Saint in Bikini while Jesus is Walking on Water.
herman hesse's narziss and goldmund..
its even appropriate for you, as you are travelling around..
fine line, i can't imagine anymore overlooked book in the 20th century, i never heard of Invisible Man, until college, and when i realized that it was 600plus pages, i was cursing my prof, but after i started reading it, i was riveted. all students should have that book on their list in senior year...
good reminder, beta, I've been meaning to read that one for ages. Thanks.
Ishmael
Apurimac, have you read Kafka's The Trial?
^no
Invisible Man is going to be my next book.
while I can't really say it changed my life (I'm kinda beyond that at this point) I think Rebecca Solnit's "Field Guide to Getting Lost" would be a GREAT book for such a journey as you're describing.
Dr. Suess' Oh, The Places You Will Go.
No Joke.
The book that changed the course of the way I looked at things for the rest of my life was Jiddu Krishnamurti's "Think on These Things". That hit me like a ton of bricks back in high school. Although when I read it now as I got older it doesn't have the same impact cause I guess I'm older and moved on to other teachers more relevant to this period of my life. But as a teenager, great eye opener.
i am pierre bezuhov...
for me it has to be reading Old Man and the Sea in middle school. it was the first time i really hated reading and found tv to be so much more enjoyable.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Atlas Shrugged. Whether you liked The Fountainhead or not.
According to a Library of Congress survey, Atlas Shrugged was voted the 2nd most influential book, after the Bible.
Whether you agree with her ideas or not, it's worth the read just to appreciate the work of art it is.
Plus it's long enough to keep you busy throughout your travels ;)
Calvin and Hobbes
atlas shugged would also make an topical and interesting read in light of current 'government intervention policies'.
Tom Wolfe's bonfire of the vanities also seems quite appropriate in these times and is a great read too.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.