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10 Books to Read Before You Die By Dennis Stewart |
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| Everyone
has their own list of the ten best books they have read. I do not
pretend to have been blessed with a great intellect. However, having
said all that, the following are the ten books that I myself would
choose to have with me if stranded on a desert island.
1) The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Ed Abbey, is the one book that changed my life. Having had the benefit of a good Baptist up-bringing in northeast Louisiana, having earned a college degree from Louisiana Tech University as well as a law degree from LSU, having passed the bar exam, and having been named as an assistant professor of business law at ULM, all by the age of 24, my world view was suddenly and irreversibly shattered when I discovered this book in the mid-1970's. It’s message was simple: Always Question Authority. For better or for worse, I always have. 2) The Fool’s Progress, also by Ed Abbey, had a different effect on my life. At a time when I was experiencing the pain of my first failures in life, it was a great comfort to read this book, and to learn that others had experienced the same pain. 3) A Pirate Looks at Fifty, by Jimmy Buffett, is the autobiography of the king of shrimp boat rock and escapism. Whether you are stressed out by life or just by taking yourself too seriously, the cure can be found in Buffett’s recipes for escape. His CD "AIA", named after the highway to Key West, is the most all-encompassing CD ever made. Some of its songs are funny (i.e., Door Number Three); others are reflective (Migration, Life is Just a Tire Swing), while still others are inspiring (Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season, Tin Cup Chalice). When life has knocked you on your backside, Buffett’s music, as well as his philosophy, will pick you back up. 4) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway is a good example of a professional making something difficult look easy. Hemingway’s natural, straight-forward style of writing makes you think anyone can write like that, but no one else can. I’ve tried it. Anyone who’s been married can relate to "The Short, Happy Life of Frances Macomber". "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a haunting tale of hope and desperation on an African safari. "The Nick Adams Stories" make you wish you were fishing in the Michigan wilderness. 5) The Bear, by William Faulkner, is probably the best hunting story ever written, not in the sense that it glorifies the spilling of blood, or that it presents fundamentals or instruction, but instead in the sense that it recreates the atmosphere of a by-gone era when hardened men journeyed by horse drawn wagon to the hunting camp located deep in the virgin-timbered forests of the South, intending to devote not days but weeks and sometimes months to the chase, where character would be discovered and determined and measured and exposed for all to see, a time when men did not hunt in order to kill, but killed in order to have hunted. Okay, I can’t emulate Faulkner, either. 6) Green Mansions, by William Henry Hudson, is the only book that I was required to read in high school that struck a chord. It is a tale of a man who falls in love with a jungle-dwelling girl in South America, who then loses her when she vanishes without a trace. Reading it makes you ache inside, hoping that he will find her. This must be how people who have lost a prized hunting dog feel. 7) Black Sun, by Ed Abbey is similar to Green Mansions, except it takes place in the American southwest and the main character is a forest ranger who sits up in a fire tower all day, the job I always wished I had. 8) The Dummy Line, by Bobby Cole, is a new suspense thriller by one of the executives of Mossy Oak. It tells the story of a turkey hunter who takes his 9-year old daughter to the hunting camp, which is invaded by a group of meth-head rednecks, causing the hunter and his daughter to flee into the woods in the middle of the night. There the redneck pursuers find the tables are turned when the hunters become the hunted. The book is more than 300 pages long, but I read it in one evening, unable to put it down. 9) The Green Hills of Africa, by Ernest Hemingway, is the story of an African safari in the mid-twentieth century. His lack of success in pursuing the elusive kudu makes me feel better about my recent bear hunt. Reading Hemingway’s account of a safari is the next best thing to being there. 10) The Bible. My mother sometimes reads this column. Happy reading! |
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