Yesterday I realized that it would be a big mistake for me not to take a good number of books with me on this trip. There will be long stretches where we won't have anything to do. I'll want to take this time to catch up on some reading. Jenna has a Kindle, which puts her ahead of the game. I still need dead-tree books. I bought a few books yesterday, and last night, posted on Facebook asking for recommendations. The response was tremendous. Unfortunately I have a limited budget and even more limited space, so I could really only add a few books from those recommendations. This is probably a final list:
- Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani. I'm already halfway through this bizarre book of hyperstition; it came highly recommended by my friend Dan.
- The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Jorgen Randers, Donella Meadows, and Dennis Meadows.
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I know nothing about this book other than that two of my best friends recommended it.
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.
- Ubik by Philip K. Dick. There are two Philip K. Dick novels in this list; the sum total of my PKD reading is one of his early novels, which was okay but not spectacular.
- Tristes Tropiques by Claud Levi-Strauss.
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I've never read Lolita.
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Despite my friend Owen's warning that Ender's Game is for fascists, it's a sci-fi classic I've been meaning to read.
- Neuromancer by William Gibson. I read another Gibson book recently and enjoyed it.
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick.
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Does it live up to the hype?
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