What are some favorite books?

Lord of the Rings… that is a great book to read in winter. I have my copy on the shelf. I should read at least book one this year before school gets busy.

The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Saks- profoundly honest story of an academic who struggled with a severe case of schizophrenia and still became a professor.

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I can’t read novels, I don’t have the motive to do that, I read scientific books only, everything that holds a scientific valuable information is my book.

The Gadfly by E.L. Voynich.

It’s not my favorite book but it was a book that stuck in my head like no other was “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. I felt exactly like that cockroach.

I read that about 10 years ago… before I had my first psychosis… someone recommended Kafka to me after reading some stuff I wrote… they said my stuff reminded them of Kafka’s. Kafka is very good and dark. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is a good comedy for those that need a good laugh.

I also read up to the fourth book of the series… I plan on reading the whole series… I’m also reading George R.R. Martin’s song of ice and fire series… along with some other books.

I like biography’s and autobiography’s. I like reading stories of peoples lives and the obstacles they faced and still survived. But I would also say 'The Hobbit" and 'Lord of The Rings". I bought and read them in third grade.

“Animal Farm”. I used to imagine that was the situation in Heaven where God blamed all the ills of the World on his banished foe, as well as things that were his fault. I have mellowed out about that since then because obviously the majority of the people where I live disagree with such a radical idea. I also like Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut along with historical books.

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse is one fo my favorites. When the movie came out in 1974, a younger sister took me to see it.

The protangonist is a 48 year old schizophrenic who comforts himself with the idea that on his fiftieth birthday he’ll allow himself to commit suicide. Then, he meets a beautiful young woman, and the adventure begins.

Jayster

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My favorite writer is Loren Eiseley from back in the 50’s. My favorite book of his is The Night Country. He’s sort of an archeologist of the mind.

Currently reading Dr.Sleep by Stephen King.

Currently reading short stories by Chekhov. One reason I like them is that they are often very short. Another is that they are about people of all ages and all types of characters.

That is one of my favorites too. I also liked An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jameson. I also liked Rethinking Madness by Paris Williams. It’s an ultimately uplifting examination of psychosis, and points to possible recovery.

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I read Dr. Sleep BakedBeans. It was pretty good. I won’t ruin the ending for you but I think it does a great job as a sequel making the series current and new.

If you like Stephen King another good one with a great ending is 11/22/63. It has the most exciting ending I have ever read. :smiley:

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ever since war and peace,
anything that approaches war and peace;
the historical, sweeping epic component,
the psychological insight component,
the masterful storytelling component,
and most importantly, from the story of what turns out to be the main character,
a tale of moral awakening and spiritual insight and maturation,
so after something with all that,
i search through the european historical novels that won awards
looking for things that are similar.
i noticed if you google for top 100 books, war and peace is always number one like its led zeppelins stairway to heaven.
but as for 2 through 100, it’s a huge drop from one down to 2, and then a crawl through the modern western american literature.
so i am planning a book or an essay called" if you liked war and peace, here are ten novels you never heard of that are similarly appealing", and so for that project i a m enjoying lots of novels that don’t quite measure up, and found a few so far that almost do measure up, they were

das nister - the family mashber

and
knut hamsen, the growth of the soil

i think any great epic literature like that needs a satan in the story,
a character so mysterious and magical he could very well be satan,
and all these stories comtain that magical unknown element,
without being evil at all, but rather all being massive moral tales
full of education and insight.

on marrying or just on relations between the sexes,
i think all women should want the men to read war and peace / anna karennina and reply with an opinion.

other ideas as well as these i would develop into that essay some day, when i find a few more good books.

also, in the rare genre of madness literature that i often drop what ever i’m reading to go look at -
the memoirs of schizophrenics and literature about characters that are schizophrenic, read some great ones over the years, best were:

into the halflight, that author isn’t schizophrenic but he must know someone who truly is.

spirits of trauma by some lady

i can’t find that particular book, her second, now, she has this website with that title, and many other books on shamanism and healing madness that i thought were extremely unique and powerful and insightful

http://www.shamanswell.org/shaman-quote/olga-kharitidi-spirits-trauma

and carlos casteneda novels about the mythical shaman don juan,

of all the schizophrenia memoirs there are two kinds, one is most, where they want to get better or kinda think they did get better, then there’s the other kind, my favorite, written from deep insde the florid psychosis with a bunch of overwhelming irrational enthusiasm for getting these crazy ideas across.

in that genre one stands out, i walk in his footsteps, the great daniel shraber,

schizophrenic for life in 1900 germany, they used the fact that he wanted to publish this book against him and committed him for the rest of his life, but he was able to get this massive intricate psychosis direct to me in a thousand page explanation, brilliant, mine is similar in myriad ways, though his is beautiful and truly unique, he is the son of the famous pediatrician dr schreber who wrote the schreber method of raising children, and that was what came down to my mom as the dr spock method of raising children, so daniel schreber wrote the psychotic book and stayed locked up, spock’s kid committed suicide, hegel and fitch and shiller just turned magical for the most part, though suffering was involved. me, i’m ok, but very weird, sort of a philosopher of madness

i used to be like “alex” above, in my 20s and 30’s, no novels, no motivation, i had specific questions that i thought best addressed either in the science journals or in the advanced philosophy and religion manuals, and so all my reading was non fiction, in those areas, multiple science disciplines like astrophysics which i still try to keep up with, along with flow physics and geophysics and “compressed” physics which is bose einstein condensates, not sure if i’m really keeping up there but haven’t noticed any really new developments, just bigger and bigger molecules doing it, you know, that 5th state of matter they won the nobel prize for in the 90’s, besides liquid, solid/ gas, and plasma, there’s the BEC, bose einstein condensate, yeah all that no time, and i feel like i got what i wanted from it, just scanning for anything new now, but after a while i didn’t have a specific question anymore, felt full and satisfied, that’s when i started reading historical literature, tell me something new about human nature i didn’t even know to ask about, and i find it rewarding now and enjoy it, never mind the article in yesterday’s new york times that reading anything long these days is a lost art and if you are doing it then you are lonely cause no one else is.

once someone said why are you reading that - there would be like 4 people in the world that would be able to discuss that with you.

i said i don’t choose my reading material based on how many people i can talk about it with, infact, pretty much the opposite…

i read to share info with the dmeon world. turns out they can get access to time magazine and people without my help, they got others, but for the astrophysics work the demons trade me info for what i bring them from cutting edge human space telescope discoveries.

here’s something you may not realize, that i am sure of:

demons can’t read.

but they are hungry for the info.

they will pay us for what we can get them,

and they pay higher for the rare stuff,

they want psychotic grandiose delusion,

that’s what i build and sacrifice to them

onderdonk