Living Car Free - Books that changed your life

Please add yours, heres mine:


Asphalt nation
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520216202/103-3116374-3556606?v=glance&n=283155

Geography of Nowhere
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671888250/ref=pd_sim_b_2/103-3116374-3556606?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0962570761/sr=1-1/qid=1152863952/ref=sr_1_1/103-3116374-3556606?ie=UTF8&s=books

Miles from Nowhere
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898861098/ref=pd_sim_b_4/103-3116374-3556606?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

"Down and out in Paris and London" by George Orwell.

There are about five hundred more.

The extant body of classic russian literature including the industrialists (ex. Gladkov's "cement")and most banned stalinist era writings, esp. Bulgakov.

Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel"

Rene Daumal's "A Night of Serious Drinking"

James Fenimore Cooper's complete leatherstocking tales.

um, throw in a few eastern references. the tao, the little red book ;)


oh, oh and a copy of "The Last Whole Earth Catalog" Definetly a copy of the catalog.

Exposed me to so many other ideas via reviews and ordering information for (mostly) non fiction books back in the seventies. introduced me to Buckminster Fuller, ancient crafts, workplace ideas, a whole earth full of stuff. Oh, and does anyone remember the story of 'divine right's trip' in the sidebars of the last whole earth catalog- that was wild, wacky stuff.

Carless' Asphalt Nation and Home from Nowhere.
Non cyling books.
Immortal Poems of the English Language.
the works of Howard Zinn & Michael Parrenti.
Adlai Stevenson,Patrician among Politicians.

Desert Solitaire.
Edit to add: Plutarch's Lives

"The Air Conditioned Nightmare" by Henry Miller
"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens (the statement that people were all fellow travellers to the grave, and not some other species on a different errand);
"This Simian World" by Clarence Day

Lies My Teacher Told Me - James Loewen. This masterpiece basically changed my whole worldview, from current affairs to religion.

Walden
Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey
Buddhism, Plain and Simple, by Steve Hagen

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn
www.ishmael.com

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
The March of Folly and several other works by Barbara Tuchman
(those two have some similarities...they were both somewhat self-taught outsiders who challenged the conventional wisdom of professional historians or urban planners.)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. The book that brought us "paradigms".

A bunch of massive historical works...Livy's Roman history, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macauley's English history...took me years to read them in small snatches late at night, but it really helps you reflect on present day events and see the same bull**** at work through the ages

Harry Potter series. They are so good.

The Tao of Physics
Small is Beautiful
The Man who Planted Trees
Mid Course Correction
Natural Capitalism

many more...

Edit: more:

A Handmade Life
Siddartha
Anything by Gary Snyder

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Edit: removed Amazon link

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Any chance we can ditch the Amazon links?

the man who planted trees, i forgot about that one....nice. oh, of course, robert pirsig's zen motorcycle musings. How about Saint-Exupery's classic 'le petit prince'? stellar. Johnathan Livingston Seagull, and most of Richard Bach in all his pithy sappiness, was pretty dang telling. what is it with pilots anyways?


i got a lot out of Ginsberg's "America" and Kerouac, and Brautigan in his whimsy. Keller's "Catch-22" has got to be one of the most brilliant contemporary political satiries of the 20th century... of course, Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" would rank up in the shortlist of best satires of the 20th century, i believe.

John Updike's "Rabbit" series. And John McPhee for his nonfiction analysis of just about anything.


so, so many books......

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
Celestine Prophecy.
Catcher in the Rye.

but one's that I haven't seen posted yet?
The simple living Guide by Janet Luhrs
Your money or your life.

Your money or your life.

+1 Very Good

the man who planted trees, i forgot about that one....nice. oh, of course, robert pirsig's zen motorcycle musings. How about Saint-Exupery's classic 'le petit prince'? stellar. Johnathan Livingston Seagull, and most of Richard Bach in all his pithy sappiness, was pretty dang telling. what is it with pilots anyways?


i got a lot out of Ginsberg's "America" and Kerouac, and Brautigan in his whimsy. Keller's "Catch-22" has got to be one of the most brilliant contemporary political satiries of the 20th century... of course, Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" would rank up in the shortlist of best satires of the 20th century, i believe.

John Updike's "Rabbit" series. And John McPhee for his nonfiction analysis of just about anything.


so, so many books......

Bek, no Gary Snyder for you, esp out in Pugetopolis?

Tao Te Ching by LaoTsu translation by Gia-Fu Feng,Jane English
Bunkhouse Logic by Ben Stein (Yes that Ben Stein.)
An English bicycling book in the late 60's that introduced me to touring, derailleurs and cadence.
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
Curious George Rides a Bike :p by H.A. Rey (It had directions on how to fold a paper boat, skills which eventually lead me to a bronze medal in Aerobatics at the 2nd Great International Paper Airplane Contest. It was the first book I ever checked out of the library as a technical reference and it inspired me to borrow a friend's bike and teach myself to ride at age 5.)
Here is Your Hobby Car Customizing by Henry Gregor Felsen
Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics, Second Edition, by W. Newman and R. Sproull.
The Official Blender 2.0 Guide by Ton Roosendaal and Carsten Wartmann
Richards Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine
The Art of War by Sun Tsu.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Drifters by James A. Michener
Between My Legs by Chaim Sil
Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III
The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin

no, no i like snyder, but found him a bit pre-self obsessed or something..... kind of hard to pin down..... really did appreciate a lot of his stuff.

his firewatching writings are more succinct than Kerouacs... i really romanticize those fellas out there, all beatdown in their towers, lighting dancing st elmos in the lookout while the watchers perched atop elephantine glass insulators to avoid electrocution.....

no, no i like snyder, but found him a bit pre-self obsessed or something..... kind of hard to pin down..... really did appreciate a lot of his stuff.



understand. something with snyder resonates with me though - maybe me being from the east coast and only visiting your wonderful neighborhood leaves me with flickers of memories.

my favorite snyder:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light



from "For the Children"

Gary Snyder
Turtle Island




Back OT:

Lost Language of Plants

Anything with Andy Goldsworthy's work depicted...

The Immortal Class : Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Culley "THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND MACHINE when I mount a bike like this one..."

Artkansas' suggestions of Paul Erlich's writings and 'the limits of growth' were very instrumental to me as well.... any perspectives gleaned on futurism after the first Club of Rome meetings on the subject really caused me to alter my lifestyle to be more in touch with the global citizen and reduce my footprint, before 'reducing my footprint' even had resonancy in meaning.

Didn't necessarilly change my life, but here are some books that made an impression on me

The Tracker - Tom Brown
The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle
The last hours of ancient sunlight - Thom Hartmann

All of these books have had an influence on the way I look at things, for better or worse:

Narcissus and Goldmund and Demian - Hermann Hesse
Steps and The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
Candide - Voltaire
Harpo Speaks! - Harpo Marx
Surely, You're Joking Mr Feynman! and What do YOU Care What Other People Think? - Richard Feynman
The Tyranny of Words- Stuart Chase
Language in Thought and Action - SI Hayakawa
The Moon and Sixpence, The Razor's Edge, The Painted Veil, and various short stories - W. Somerset Maugham
Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journals - Paul Gauguin
The Blue of Capricorn - Eugene Burdick
Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey
Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson - Alistair Owen and Bruce Robinson
Going Solo and My Uncle Oswald (probably my favorite written comedy) - Roald Dahl
The Dhammapada - Buddha
The Great Pianists - Harold C Schonberg
Music, the Brain, and Ecstacy - Robert Jourdain

and...


The March of Folly and several other works by Barbara Tuchman

:beer:

I love Barbara Tuchman. March of Folly is excellent, same with Proud Tower, Guns of August, and Distant Mirror.

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
"The Gospel According to Jesus (translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Rilke's poetry
Most influential for me: "Collapse" by Jared Diamond; this is perhaps the most important book written in the last decade; everyone should read it.
IPCC's reports, available online

Eyelids of Morning

http://www.peterbeard.com/publications/morning.htm

I don't know about life changing, but some of my favorites:

I'll 2nd these books already listed:
Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions both from Richard Bach
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintence by Robert Pirsig
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage

here's a couple I didn't see listed:
Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
Odesseyus' Last Stand by Dave Strombolis (great cycle touring book, I liked it better than Miles from Nowhere)

Tao Te Ching by LaoTsu translation by Gia-Fu Feng,Jane English
Bunkhouse Logic by Ben Stein (Yes that Ben Stein.)
An English bicycling book in the late 60's that introduced me to touring, derailleurs and cadence.
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
Curious George and Curious George Rides a Bike :p by H.A. Rey (Curious George had directions on how to fold a paper boat. It was the first book I ever checked out of the library as a technical reference. Curious George Rides a Bike inspired me to borrow a friends bike and teach myself to ride at age 5.)
Here is Your Hobby Car Customizing by Henry Gregor Felsen
Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics, Second Edition, by W. Newman and R. Sproull.
The Official Blender 2.0 Guide by Ton Roosendaal and Carsten Wartmann
Richards Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine
The Art of War by Sun Tsu.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Drifters by James A. Michener
Between My Legs by Chaim Sil
Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III
The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin

Good list! (I love that you included Curious George).

Don Quijote de La Mancha - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Aura - Carlos Fuentes
Of Love & Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn, Mark Twain
How to Win Freinds and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow
Baked Beans for Breakfast, Ruth Chew
Alligatior Pie, Dennis Lee
and anything by Florence Nightengale.

I'm glad to see this forum is full of readers. You all have listed some of my favorites too and some
I'll keep an eye out for. Changing my life... Well, way back in high school a girlfriend got "The Joy of Sex" by Alex Comfort. She insisted we try everything, I didn't actually read it myself. Later in life a book by the same author "Authority and Delinquency" put my years of voluteering at the police department in perspective. Alex Comfort has a theory of why cops and politicians act like they do. It seems to explain
many things.

So many good books.... my favorite so far is "Moby Dick". It only changed my life in that it made me a more commited reader and much less interested in TV or movies.

The classics from long before the printing press are almost all worthwhile if you have a good translation. If a book was copied by hand for several hundred years, several generations of men thought it had something worthwhile to say right? That is a better filter than a book review in the newspaper.

"Go Dog Go" - I can read this one for hours.

Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez
Tightwad Gazette

Golf in the Kingdom - Michael Murphy
Golf in the Spirit - M. Scott Peck

Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui - Kingston
Organizing from the Inside Out - Morgenstern
Getting Things Done - David Allen

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Eggers
No Exit - Sartre
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy

Geomorphology
CRC Handbook
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Between Planets
Atlas Shrugged
"The Wonderful One Hoss Shay"

Any chance we can ditch the Amazon links?
Why? They give useful information on the content of the books. Not all books have a dedicated website.

"Go Dog Go" - I can read this one for hours.

I think I can recite that one verbatim.

Why? They give useful information on the content of the books. Not all books have a dedicated website.

Agree on the useful info. Disagree on the Amazon online whatever you want super cheap artificial pricing model.

(then again, my office is right above a local, funky bookstore - so I just walk downstairs to check some of these out) :)

Agree on the useful info. Disagree on the Amazon online whatever you want super cheap artificial pricing model.

(then again, my office is right above a local, funky bookstore - so I just walk downstairs to check some of these out) :)
Huh? People are linking to Amazon because it provides info on the books, nothing more. Do you know of another site with info on all of the above mentioned books? I sure don't......

BTW, no one mentioned a thing about the prices of these books.....

......
oh, oh and a copy of "The Last Whole Earth Catalog" Definetly a copy of the catalog.

Exposed me to so many other ideas via reviews and ordering information for (mostly) non fiction books back in the seventies. introduced me to Buckminster Fuller, ancient crafts, workplace ideas, a whole earth full of stuff. Oh, and does anyone remember the story of 'divine right's trip' in the sidebars of the last whole earth catalog- that was wild, wacky stuff.
Such an excellent choice, Bek! I read it a dozen times during my adolescence in the late 60s and early 70s. Almost everything you read today in this forum--literally--was presaged by The Last Whole Earth Catalog.

But the books that influenced me the most were the Bible, Dharma Bums by Kerouac, and foremost, Thoreau's Walden. If I hadn't read Walden when I was 15, I would have been a success as society judges it, but a failure in my own eyes. (Dropping acid that year helped too.:))

....introduced me to Buckminster Fuller....

Oh yes, read a short bio-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

....
"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
"This Simian World" by Clarence Day....


Silent Spring is average today but years ago it was scandoulous. Whats The Simian World about?

Twist of the wrist II

:P

Hey just a note, if you use Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/ you can highlight/right click/search web for ...(what you highlighted). It opens in a background page.

.....The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
The March of Folly and several other works by Barbara Tuchman
(those two have some similarities...they were both somewhat self-taught outsiders who challenged the conventional wisdom of professional historians or urban planners.).....


I've heard of >The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs< is it better than kunstler ie, understandable, layman terms, philosophical, or more research and science?

I couldn't get through the Guns of August, I think it was.

Any chance we can ditch the Amazon links?
Oh no is that a bad thing? I just posted the 1st thing up and Amazon usually has reviews. Maybe Wikipedia would be better?

The simple living Guide by Janet Luhrs
Your money or your life.
This looks interesting..

The Immortal Class : Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Culley "THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND MACHINE when I mount a bike like this one..."
I have/read that, biggest surprise is a world class writer/rider as a messenger!

......I don't know about life changing, but some of my favorites:...
Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage...
here's a couple I didn't see listed:
Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl ....

Miles from nowhere, I loved it. I wonder if there is a formal lit genre of touring or even cycling?

The Immortal Class : Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Culley "THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND MACHINE when I mount a bike like this one..."

Everyone who has ever ridden a bicycle should read this book. Everyone who doesn’t ride bicycles should read this book.

carless,

both fantastic books which helped me to refine my thinking about my current way of life.