Do you guys remember the end of Fahrenheit 451 that classic book that helps us all remember what temperature paper burns? well, following the premise of the solution at the end of the book; what book do you think so worth saving that you would become that book; ie memorize it for future generations; lets leave all things like the Bible, and the Koran and such primary religious books to the clergy as well as dictionaries (which is an interesting commentary all by itself) and encyclopedias.
so; lets say you can have perfect memory of one book that you can retell word for word with ease; what book would you be?
gonna have to think about this for a while myself.
I don't have to think about it long, my favorite book since I read it the 1st of 5 times (so far) is and has always been "To Kill A Mockingbird". Yes I know there's more "classics" out there but that's the book I'd want to be.
Oooo... a tough one. For me, it'd be a three-way toss up between Gary Gygax's Saga of Old City (gotta have a fantasy book in there), Robert Asprin's The Cold Cash War (now that'll change the way you look at corporations) or Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country ('cause I'm a Kentucky boy by blood if not spirit).
Tough one - though I think my first choice would have to be Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea - never has anyone said so much with so few words.
Second choice would be Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In my opinion, a must read for everyone.
I can recite "Ender's Game" almost word for word, so this is my choice.
1984
I would memorize "Physics for Scientists and Engineers" by Serway.
That way, after the nuclear attacke, when I started slipping through timewarps, going on weekly 50 minutes adventures, I could understand why I always push the orange button.
At one time I would have reflexively said, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” because that has been a real favorite of mine forever. But nowadays, I guess I’d have to say Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five; a very disturbing story but the social message is killer.
Somerset Maughan's The Razor's Edge.
Or perhaps The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester since there's no way I'd ever be able to memorize the complete Count of Monte Cristo, and Bester has cooler Space Commandos.
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Cyrano de Bergerac
When I was a boy, I read it because it was a story of a swordfighter.
When I was a young man, I read it because it was about a man who lived life by his own rules, damn the consequences.
When I was grown I read it for both of those things and because it was really about the way he felt about the girl.
I think I've read it maybe 20 times, in two languages. I can recite it word for word in English, now. Cyrano is the man we all want to be, and for him to be lost to the fire is... unthinkable.
Milton's Paradise Lost
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You know I just found these "Book" threads and saw this one as quite interesting. BUT, there is only one possible answer to the question and Kruelaid just named it. Milton's epic poem shut down the entire genre! No one else could (can) ever even write an epic poem after Paradise Lost. Very few even pretended to try. And while Eliot's Wasteland and Burgess's Clockwork Orange are good concepts, even their authors knew they were failures next to Milton's. Heck, without Paradise Lost we may not even know Homer or Virgil anymore because it was Milton's epic that made (most notably) Dryden and Pope translate the original epics and encourage them in popular reading.
-W. E. Ray
The Art of War
1984
Another vote for Orwell's masterpiece...
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Men of Iron by Howard Pyle
Most things by Jonathan Swift
Fizz
Well, obviously, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girls Guide to the Dungeons and Dragons Game!
...or...wait...no...I'm going to have to go with Frank Herbert's Dune (fiction) or Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (non-fiction).
M
In no particular order....
George Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD for revealing to me the horrors of unchecked Communism and Capitalism.
Frank Herbert's DUNE. An overwhelming SF book. Years ahead of it's time with it's ecological theme that underlies it's exploration of religion and politics, power and Myth.
Henry Rollins SOLIPSIST. I walked out of a Rollins show once because he was talking S--T but this book is superb prose for anyone who's ever felt anything.
Confederacy of Dunces.
Man, that book's heeee-larious.
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Hmmm...so many to choose from. here's a short list of what i've been able to knock the bigger list down to in no particular order:
Sophie's World
The Art of War
The Prince
The Book of Five Rings
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (The first book in the series, not the series itself)
Anything by Vonnegut, they're all good.
Yes, there was a bigger list, and no, I can't narrow it down further.
Either Paul Johnson's "Birth of the Modern"(C18th and C19th history) and "Modern Times" (C20th)
OR
Peter Watson's "Ideas: a History of Human Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud" and "The Modern Mind: an Intellectual History of the C20th"
Each book is half of the whole.
Mmmm...tough one. D&D Player's Handbook 3.5. This mastercraft piece deserves to be preserved for future generations.
daedel, el azote.
"Son of mine, It was a time before 4.0..."
In no particular order (bear with me, I could memorize a lot!)
A hearty second to To Kill a Mockingbird
T. H. White's The Once and Future King
2 choices from young adult fiction, The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis and Lois Lowry's The Giver
The Diary of Anne Frank
and finally, either Hamlet or King Lear
Foundation (Trilogy) - Isaac Asimov
Nothing is more telling of the power of *thinking* and knowledge - precisely what a Fahrenheit 451 situation would be leery of.