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Your favorite books?

train in vain

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‘fear and loathing in las vegas’, as wild as it is, really sparked my interest in living life as freely as possible


I love that book. Annoying when folks just think of it as two dudes fucked up on drugs blowing it. I was still sxe when i came across it haha.


I dont think ive ever read a "life changing" book to be honest.

Sand and Foam and the Prophet were/are pretty high on the list.
I wonder how many folks arr gonna mention into the wild in here haha.
 

roughdraft

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Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Black Spring by same ^^

The Dead Father by Donald Barthalme

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (i actually love it)

The Fall by Albert Camus (The Stranger ((a.k.a. the outsider)) is also worth time

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Tao Te Ching.....you can´t go too wrong with this one...but I've witnessed many translations are meh compared to others...

on that note, The Art of War is solid!

Bonus;;;;; favorite play: Rhinoceroses by Eugene Ionesco (swear on everything this one is a belter, people)
 
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ResistMuchObeyLittle

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Moral letters to Lucilius by Seneca and
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius should be required reading. There's more wisdom in those 2 books than all the other books I've ever read- including the great religious texts-The Bible, Rig Veda, etc.

"Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die. 6. For this reason, make life as a whole agreeable to yourself by banishing all worry about it. No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed. "

"
No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing.
Show me that the good in life does not depend upon life's length, but upon the use we make of it; also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little."
 

train in vain

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@train in vain - yeah know what you mean I'm a big reader but I never had a life changing experience through books, only from serious psychedelic drugs ! but every now and then a book has me grinning from ear to ear and I can't put the fucking thing down.....
I used to read A LOT. Pretty rare these days. I usually pack a book when i go ride trains but it just takes up space most of the time. When i read its almost always non fiction now.
 

ResistMuchObeyLittle

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Thanks for all the great recommendations!
 

Tongtwisted

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I'm a huge fan of anything by Vonnegut or Irvine Welsh, but Steinbeck's East of Eden is probably my favorite book of all time.
If you liked that brotherstory from Steinbeck, you might read "sometimes a great notion" by Ken kesey, it was my best littérature ever, although I read a translation. I would be curious to know if the original is as good as it was in french. A bit heavy in a bag though.
 

Undercity

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I personally love Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JR Tolkien. Both books are a bit hefty to carry around, but it took me a good six months to get through each of them.
 

Ivy Vines

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Personally, I love Howl's Moving Castle, both the book and the movie. That story just stuck with me since I was little.

But, Into the Wild was the book that first opened me up to the idea of vagabonding. I never thought that sort of lifestyle was possible until I was introduced to it by that story, and now that I know that it is, I feel freer than I've ever felt in my life.
 
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People of the Deer or maybe the Fellowship of the Ring, I could definitely read both over and over again, also it's already been mentioned, but I liked Matt's book as well.
 

beersalt

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I read "Expect Resistance" which was released by crimethinc shortly before I got rid of my lease, and started travelling full-time. I just really dug the way it was written, because I'm a sucker for memoirs.

Which brings me tooooo- Electroboy, by: Andy Behrman. Which he refers to as "A Memoir of Mania". Should be self explanatory..

NAKED LUNCH - by the one and only, William S. Burroughs. I read this book for the first time in 8th grade. Didn't really understand what the fuck was happening on ANY of the pages; yet read them all, and enjoyed every minute of doing so.

Aaaaand last, but not least.. Invisible Monsters, by: Chuck Palahniuk
Being my favorite novel I've ever read of his.
 
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vajrabond

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1. 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance
2. Against His-Story, Against Leviathan
3. An Indigenous People's History of the United States

Those three changed me the most in the last year.

I've read a lot of the books listed here. Man's Search For Meaning is something I think about a lot. Not so much into fiction anymore, but I read a great deal of everything from the beatniks to Vonnegut to Palahniuk. From Salinger to Wallace. There's a little something in all of them. I enjoyed the books by John Francis listed here. If you like him I recommend Daniel Suelo and Peace Pilgrim. Read all the CrimeThinc books. Evasion was the first one that pulled me in. Some alternative travel books I'd recommend are Walden On Wheels, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart, and SunHitcher. All different, all great. I feel like I took an important thing from each. Also funny: Noah Levine gave a Buddhist blessing to my touring bike, since it is the punkest to ever exist.
 
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ResistMuchObeyLittle

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@BikePunky great selection of literature. Man's search for meaning is always on my mind. Walden on wheels was a great read. Daniel Suelo is an inspiring guy, read the book The Man who quit money.
 
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vajrabond

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@BikePunky great selection of literature. Man's search for meaning is always on my mind. Walden on wheels was a great read. Daniel Suelo is an inspiring guy, read the book The Man who quit money.

Yeah, that book stuck with me a lot. I feel like I do so much with very little money and it's probably that direction of reading I took to thank for it. Daniel is a great person. If you use the Facebook still, he has a personal account on there and posts lots of interesting things to discuss. He just did a TedX talk that was neat as well.
 

MFB

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Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell is a great read for bum type people.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway is beautifully written.
 

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