A revision:
"Two Concepts on Liberty," or if you want a book, <I>Liberty</I>, by Isaiah Berlin opened my eyes and gave clarity to things I'd somehow had in my head, about how concepts have multiple permutations, how all the goods and values in the world cannot be realized at once, and how choice is both what defines us and is the hardest thing we have to face. As Berlin wrote in another essay, "The Pursuit of the Ideal," "we are doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss." Put me on the path to probably pursuing theory as a career. Everything that I think passes though the filter of Berlin these days.
<I>Uncle Vanya</I>, by Anton Chekhov, for my money the best work of drama ever, that reveals the true nature of our lives, as possessing tragedy and comedy in equal measure. Nothing really happens, but the characters are forced to recognize what their lives really are. I acted in this, as the alcoholic, guilt-ridden environmentalist and physician Dr. Astrov, and I don't think I've ever felt quite so painfully close to a character or to a piece. It doesn't get any better than this; don't listen to anyone who tells you that Chekhov is dreary, because when you do it right, it's not. Put me on the path to possibly pursuing theatre as a career.
<I>God: A Biography</I>, by Jack Miles, that attempts to consider the figure of God in the Tanakh (essentially what Christians know as the Old Testament, with the key difference that the prophets fall between the Torah [Pentatuach] and the writings) as a literary protagonist. The way this accounts for apparent changes in his character, from creator to warrior to law-giver, and perhaps even to fiend, as in the book of Job, before receding into the background in such books as Esther, Song of Songs, and Daniel. I've yet to find such an appealing portrait of God. The stuff on Job alone is worth the price of admission, and his retranslation of Job's final words as "word of you had reached my ears, but now that my eyes have seen you, I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay" as one of repudiation rather than repentance, is incredible. Put on the path to being able to reclaim religion as a part of my life. Every authority figure, even the divine ones, are somehow human.
<I>From Dawn to Decadence</I>, by Jacques Barzun, records the decline of Western civilization in the past 500 years. I'm not sure I agree with the thesis over that full span of time, since an awful lot has been created, particularly from the standpoint of cultural history, which is what Barzun specializes in, but that things haven't gotten richer, I cannot deny. Also, he has some fun with this, with peculiar quotes lodged into magazine style sidebars and his elevation of digression into an art. It's long, some 700 pages long, as I recall, but like any long novel, and this has the spirit of one sometimes, you get into it eventually. Magnificent and elegiac. Also, erudite. If only I were so erudite.
<I>Inherit the Wind</I>, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (not the). It's not great literature, by any means, but it's the first play I was in, some 5 years ago at this point, which certainly set made me more confident and on the path to needing some sort of limelight and acclaim. This is about how ideas are the most important things we have, and how life is about them, but that things still turn into a sideshow most of the time. People grow apart, people who seem like good guys are even more intolerant than the more apparent bigots (the film makes this point better than the original text), and the public is fickle. It's self-congratulatory intellectual and tolerant in a way that really means it often isn't, and I hate when I'm that way. But, the thread asks for me to describe myself through the books, and this does do that.
Also, the first 5? They're all about loss.
So, one supposes, is the last, in an odd way. It's <I>Around the World in 80 Days</I>, by Jules Verne, written at the last possible moment at which it could be done primarily by travel across the Commonwealth and at which it would have been an impressive feat, before technology advanced farther. It, too, is an elegy of sorts, in this sense, and it's ridiculous that Fogg never actually gets to see anything while he's making his trip, but then, of course, that's part of the point. When I was younger though, that wasn't what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the world and how cool all the different places were, and later I'd think about how classy and unflappable and just plain cool Fogg is, especially when David Niven plays him in the movie. The real book I fell for, part and parcel not merely of my connection to the written word (oh, how that's collapsed over the past years) but of my interest in culture. It really is a great book.
