I was flipping thru an old copy of Oprah’s Magazine recycling pictures for the volunteer ESL class I start teaching next week and I ran across this awesome little reading list in her Reading Room feature. Now, I’m a fan of Rob Morrow from Northern Exposure era, Numb3rs is a little mod for me, but I’ve liked the episodes I’ve seen. His reading list, howevah, is awesome!
I’ll number these books so that it seems more drumroll -y.
1) Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion – I have not ventured into this book. My friends that have read it have all lost practical perspective on life from reading it and since I’m prone to do that anyway, I’m gonna leave this one alone. I imagine it’s a life changer, the caliber of anything by OSHO, or Tolle, or Coehlo, or Miguel & Jose Luis Ruiz.
2) Sanford Meisner on Acting – This is a great book. In fact, my new writing partner is new to writing screenplays and there are only a few good books on screenwriting. It won’t take her long to get through those, the woman has a PHd for crying out loud. I didn’t think about this book. I think I should have had her read it first. It’s all about being an expression or an action and if you can access that as a writer, you have access to a screenplay the likes of As Good as it Gets and Good Will Hunting. With Meisner you can approach a scene or scenario or hell a life event ‘as if’ you were ten feet tall, or, ‘as if’ there were two doves living in your heart, such that your acting is fundamentally based on whether you can abundantly generate dynamics that move the action of the scene forward. There are great life lessons in this book.
3) The Moon and Sixpence – I’m going to to be honest, the only books I’ve read in the last year are business books and vegan cookbooks. I haven’t had any interest in even looking at what might be good to read, so, I think, based on the caliber of the rest of the books on this list, I might make this my next read. Somerset Maugham. Wow. “How Cleaassy.”
4) A History of God – This is a must read and should be mandatory adult reading for Americans, lol. The Reading Room article has such a great quote by Rob Morrow I’m just going to lift it. “… It traces the way humans have created divine narratives and how the beliefs inspired by those narratives have enabled us to survive. [This book] helped me put God into perspective and made me think about my daughter, specifically how I’m going to help this person along in her life.” I love that! Being a rather awful, yet humble Christian, I’d never surmise that I could put God into perspective, but I value all levels of greater, wider, higher, deeper levels of acknowledgment, understanding, discernment and distinction. I think ya can’t go wrong when ya go looking. You may not get it right, but you’re not gonna get it wrong. I need to read this book again. Very cool.
5) The Agony and The Ecstasy – I read this book at 25. I was much smarter, more empathic and much brighter then. It blew me away. The passion and the ‘100% all in’ approach to life that Irving Stone gave his characterization of Michelangelo, breathtaking. In no way was this man’s ego at play over being an artist. He may have had ego about technique or other things, but artistry was his soul. Irving Stone built the entire book on one idea, that Michelangelo saw the statue in the stones he cut. That they were already there for him. He was just following the call. That often, all he could think about was actualizing the visions that he saw. Irving Stone writes this character as a man who WAS his purpose. He looked at other choices, but his spirit had no choice. It’s funny as I write this I hear Frank Sinatra’s I did it My Way in the back of my head. Lol. Stone’s Michelangelo didn’t have that much ego, but he did it his way anyway. The title is the book. Really being willing to live the Agony and the Ecstasy of the choices you make in life. This is such an amazing story. I don’t think there is another book like it.
Me, Laughing 