The Purpose Driven Life This is the first Christan book I read, other than the Bible, after deconverting from Christianity. My dad bought it for me, as I hadn't let him know yet, so I decided to treat it as an experiment. It was while reading the book that I started to, from an outside perspective, understand religiosity for the first time. Ultimately, the insights I gained from the experience helped me to finally have closure with being religious and live my life honestly as who I am. It wasn't the intent of Pastor Warren, of course, but so what?
I read this, I think , around 2004, just before joining the forum. If you want to understand the mind of plutocratic pawns, this is how you get there. Beck tends to swerve like a drunk driver through books, but BillO manages to keep on message throughout, demonstrating how false, partisan narratives are built. It's a much more immersion experience than watching the O'Reilly Factor or Hannity or Huckabee, because it's basically an entire year of talking points, along with elaboration, in one source. It was like taking a masters class in propaganda.
What happens when a celebrity becomes a murderer? You get Phil Specter or Thunder Collins. What happens when the person's celebrity is fed by being a murderer? OJ Simpson. The book I Want to Tell You isn't any good, obviously, but what it represents is the dark side of modern society. Here we see a man who killed two people who was able to get off due in part to his fame and in part to playing on people's being uncomfortable with racial issues, and now still manages fame in the form of infamy. The book itself was a simple way to try and make legal fees, but it represents in a fundamental way just how rotten things can get when we all lose perspective. In that way, this is one of the most important books of the modern age.
Similar to above, but different enough that it should be told: Sex and the City documents perfectly the mindset of consumer culture. In the book, you see women who define themselves by things and by their attachments to sexual partners that are just as hollow. While on the surface the book just seems another silly romp, when viewed in the right lens, it is the greatest argument in modern history for minimalism. In a time when global overshoot is at 30%, an unprecedented number, the satirical reading of Sex and the City stands as a dire warning about humanity's inability to come to terms with a limited world.
If you're still with me at this point, you've caught on to the fact that I've listed 5 absolutely terrible books that I'd not wish on Hitler. My actual bookprint or whatever is probably going to be something like For Whom the Bell Tolls, Crime and Punishment, Slaughterhouse Five, Dune, and Ulysses. The thing is, these are on my list for the same reason they're on everyone's lists: they're fucking amazing books and most anyone who can read well can instantly recognize this fact. These books, among other great works, have helped to challenge the assumptions and bring new ideas to thoughtful people for a long time and will continue to do so for hundreds of years. The Christmas Sweater, on the other hand, is the ranting of a lunatic obsessed with his own media cult. As someone who actually owns a sweater I joyfully associate with Christmas, I'm offended even at the title of this book, let alone its empty sentimentality and outright dishonesty. Glenn Beck should be banned from Christmas.
So there we have it. My bookprint or something.