Suggested Reading For Sparking An Existential Crisis By vestigial_tail  [21 more lists]

The Drunkard's Walk is a magnificent exploration of the role that chance plays in our lives. Often historical, occasionally hysterical, and consistently smart and funny, this book challenges everything we think we know about how the world works

This is a hardcore novel. Definitely not for the faint of heart or spirit. I was rereading some notes I had taken upon my first reading of it and one line goes, "Hope is a human invention, not unlike the pillow..." LOL If that gives you any indication as to where this book takes you.

When it was published in 1932, this then-shocking and revolutionary first fiction redefined the art of the novel with its black humor, its nihilism, and its irreverent, explosive writing style, and made Louis-Ferdinand Celine one of France's--and literature's--most important 20th-Century writers. The picaresque adventures of Bardamu, the sarcastic and brilliant antihero of Journey to the End of the Night move from the battlefields of World War I (complete with buffoonish officers and cowardly soldiers), to French West Africa, the United States, and back to France in a style of prose that's lyrical, hallucinatory, and hilariously scathing toward nearly everybody and everything. Yet, beneath it all one can detect a gentle core of idealism. (via amazon.com)

I have long had an interest in parasites. The ones that can dwell within, as well as the nasty ones that feed externally (i.e., mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, etc.) This book will tell you everything you want to know and NEVER wanted to know about how dangerous they truly are. Once you pick up this book, unless you just have a weak constitution, you won't be able to put it down. It's fascinating, frightening and an education in the bizarre, but absolutely true.

In this book, Hannah Holmes compares herself and the rest of us to other animals. The idea is hilarious! I do it all the time! I have to read this book. There are many conclusions that I have come to as follows:

Men have evolved different fur patterns in different populations. For instance, in some parts of the world some men hardly have any facial hair at all. In some, such as in Eastern and Western Europe, the prevalence seems relatively high.

Humans do things socially in order to quell feelings of killing. Such as singing together, praying together and so on.

Human males are likely to do anything necessary to call attention to themselves (generally young ones), especially if females are watching.

People still hunt deer even though there is a McDonald's on every corner, perhaps because there is still an instinct to forage for food.

I could be full of it, but these are only rough field notes. You all will have to let me know what you think. I'm excited to read the book and read Ms. Holmes' field notes on humanity. (via amazon.com)

"After you turn 7, your risk of dying doubles every eight years." By your 80s, you "no longer even have a distinctive odor ... You're vanishing." "The brain of a 90-year-old is the same size as that of a 3-year-old." And it goes on and on. David Shields's litany of decay and decrepitude might have overwhelmed the age-sensitive reader (like this one), but The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead manages to transcend the maudlin by melding personal history with frank biological data about every stage of life, creating an "autobiography about my body" that seeks meaning in death, but moreover, life. (via amazon.com)

It's hard to recommend poetry. People enjoy poetry in the same way they enjoy music. It really is completely subjective. I'm finding it hard to say exactly why I find Sylvia Plath's poetry so wowing. The same things that make my jaw drop or give me pause may just make you go "Meh" or simply puzzle you. I dunno. Anyway, let me say just a couple of things and then I'll just leave it.

Her earlier poems are very carefully crafted and draw heavily upon mythology. Not to say they aren't good, but they lack a certain spontaneity. Her later poems, especially the poems that she wrote shortly before her suicide pack a wallop. Not a word is wasted. The images conjured and instant weight they pack is like a literary right hook. People just don't write like that anymore. Just like some can't tell time unless they use digital watches.

For some unexplained reason, it took two tries until I was able to sink effortlessly into this novel. When I did, it clobbered me with an existential right hook (followed by a combination). In other words, it kicked my proverbial ass. Even my extensive study of the works of Albert Camus hadn't served to effect me as profoundly. Its central theme of the seemingly pointless and painful quest for identity is emotionally excruciating.

Are Americans becoming inadvertently lonelier? That is the thesis of "The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-First Century", a thought-provoking, engagingly lucid book by a husband and wife team of psychiatrists. Building on their clinical experience and past studies, they see a spreading malaise of social disconnection, which the larger culture reinforces. They cite census statistics such as the dramatic rise in single-person households and new social surveys that show an increase in narcissism and a decrease in the number of meaningful conversations people report having with anyone.

In 'The Beauty Myth', Naomi Wolf argues that our culture's images of beauty -- found on television and in advertisements, women's magazines, and p*********y -- are detrimental to women, as well as to the men who love them. She demonstrates that the concept of ""beauty"" is a weapon used to make women feel badly about themselves; after all, no one can live up to the ideal. Wolf DOES agree that beauty plays a legitimate role in our lives and in our attractions to one another. The problem, she says, is when beauty is defined as thinness, pertness, and youthfulness taken to extremes -- extremes that are literally unattainable for healthy women. (via amazon.com)

Three words: loneliness, emptiness, suffering.