perfessor multigeek's Journal: My Canon

Somebody over here asked "what's in your canon?" So I did a brief answer. I decided to copy it to here as well but here I'll little by little edit and improve it. For now it's just print.

Abbey, Edward - Monkeywrench Gang, various essays
Austen, Jane - all of it.
Cherryh, C.J. - Union-Alliance books, including Chanur & Cyteen serieses
Bester, Alfred - The Stars My Destination
Delany, Samuel - Dahlgren, Triton
Edjhill, Rosemary - the Bast mysteries
Fowles, John - The French Lieutenant's Woman
Fraser, James - The Golden Bough
Garson, Barbara - her books on industrial organization
Hardy, Thomas - Return of the Native
Heinlein, Robert - Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Mccrumb, Sharon - Bimbos/Zombies books
McLoughlin, John C. - Helix and the sword
O'Neill, Gerard K. - everything, but High Frontier is a good start
Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste better known as Molière - Tartuffe & The Misanthrope
Pratchett, Terry - Night Watch, Montstrous Regiment, and just about all fiction since 1990.
Richmond, Walt & Leigh - Gallagher's Glacier
Shilts, Randy - Conduct Unbecoming
Smith, Cordwainer - all of it, including propaganda manuals
Sloane, Eric - all of it, though his stuff on colonial woodworkers is a great place to start
Shakespeare, William - As You Like It, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice
Stephenson, Neal - Snow Crash & Diamond Age
Stone, Merlin - When God Was A Woman
Sweetman, John - American Naval History
Wharton, Edith - House of Mirth
Zapf, Hermann - any of his late books of type and collected layouts

All for now.

-Rustin

Odd..

[DisownedSky]

My Canon is a video camera.

Cowboy slowing down...

My Canon is..

[perfessor multigeek]

I guess that around here I was asking for that.

Let me rephrase the question.

What books/movies/other media stuff do you consider the big hairy nuggets of concentrated truth and understanding?

-Rustin

Odd...

[richie2000]

My big hairy nuggets are...

Re:

[DisownedSky]

Yeah, I was gonna say...When I was about 12 years old my truth and understanding dropped out three feet.

Re:

[perfessor multigeek]

Everybody's a smart..well, you know what I mean.

It's good to be back.

Omissions? (heh heh heh)

[mekkab]

Zafón, Shadow of the Wind; Calvino, If On A Winters Night A Traveler, Macleod, Island(collection of short stories, but No Great Mischief is good, too), Bentley, Programming Pearls, Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel; Buck, The Good Earth, Auster, City of Glass (the dog one, too), Welsh, Trainspotting, Wolfe, Electric K00l-Aid Acid Test, (and A Man In Full, and perhaps others), Hughes, A High Wind In Jamaica; Cedra, Smith, Microelectronic Circuits, Gaiman, American Gods. Oh yeah. and probably once

Re:

[perfessor multigeek]

Stranger just doesn't seem that relevant to me anymore while Harsh Mistress seems newly so. I'ld be curious to know why you conclude otherwise.

As for Gibson, yeah, at some point I'll go back and add some Gibson, Sterling's Heavy Weather (now that's relevant!), and maybe some Brunner.

Wolfe? Yeah. I just haven't yet narrowed it down.
Why A High Wind In Jamaica? I liked it and all but I've never seen its deeper meaning. What makes it key? I'm kinda attached to Camus's The Plague for all those alienation issu

Re:

[mekkab]

My reverence is not just a function of relevance, but a reminder of it moving me or meaning something to me. And like all personal associations they are frequently attached to outside events and "you had to be there." So right there, that should explain volumes about why my choices are yours don't dovetail.

Getting down to it, Stranger more closely parallels my own awakening, and right along with Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, I'm not sure if upon re-reading it would have relevance, but it still has my undying ad