4) I am not sure if Catcher on the Rye would even have made my list except for the fact I asked a friend for one suggestion. To review this is a list of the top ten books teens should read to prepare them for survival.
So take this recommendation seriously because my friend is a heavy hitter.
I am not googling nothing when I do this going strictly from 40 year old memory. Thats a book with impact, which reminds me of Catch 22.
Catcher in the Rye was on every grade nine reading list back in the day (70's and 80's) despite the use of the word fuck, I think it was only once. In essence it is a well told tale of teen alienation. It tells the reader its okay to be a fuck up and rebel. Love yourself and listen to your own voice because there is no truer compass in this mixed up direction life. Like most books on this list Catcher on the Rye is ancient history and will the UTES of today comprehend that nothing has really changed.
However like Gulliver's Travels Catcher on the Rye was a cultural revolution that could only be understood by thinkingaboot things or historians. The 60's would never have happened without help from Holden Caulfield who was revealed to the public in 1951. Without the 60's we would all be living behind white picket fences with no Gates. (IBM PUN)
5) Well its a bit of a collective I asked a very famous internet pen pal for a suggestion and be gave me that list. Some good stuff there, but really my friend your endorsing Friday Night Lights, what you want to turn us into Texas:)
Now I have never read that book. My only advice about finance is that never trust anyone with your money. The stock market is a casino and unless your very clever the house wins. Samuel Clemens had very good advice. Invest in real estate they are not making any more of it. Nevertheless financial literacy is a woebegotton education for teens.
5)Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is based upon the 100 years war in Europe. We live in a world where its logic is applied every day while the bloodshed mostly happens in Doran. I hate to teach cynicism but the fact is that we are all sinners and saints, and the higher you go on the saint pole the more sins you must commit to sit on the throne. Men are animals, women are the human mothers of animals these are truths. The real lesson is we should separate the intellect from the physical being if we want to make a civilization that will not destroy itself.
6) Foundation and Empire (the trilogy)
Issac Asimov was a critical thinker a trait he shared with his peer in the Golden Age of Sci Fiction. His contemporaneity are legendary Robert Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Ray Bradbury and others who wrote blind. They where not extrapolating future history based upon the magical tech we have today, they were inventing the future we now living in cira 1950.
As I look back all these year later having grown up with their collective dreams I pick Issac as the one who the youths of today should pick first overall. The reason being is he was the most correct. Foundation is a story about a historian who used mathematics to plot a thousand year course for humanity. He even predicted The Mule. The Mule is Trump.
Everyone should have absolute faith in mathematics. Statistics can be manipulated, but mathematics are a Farabouchi. Math is the voice of God if there is one, and even though I dont believe it seems incredible that math is nothing more than random numbers.
7)Slaughterhouse 5
I met Kirk Vonnegut jr long after he seared my skull with laughter and tears flowing from his epic tales. He was a survivor of the fire bombing of Dresden and it scared him forever. His writing was in no small way an attempt to push humans away from folly. Aside from Sienfield I dont think I have every laughed as hard as reading a Vonnegut novel. Every one of his novels is a trip.
8) Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)Eldon Musk was not the first human to say we better get to Mars before its too late. Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the seminal series about the colonization of Mars. Its a soap opera disguised as science with a scalpel like examination of humanity at the same time. A colossal work that needs the HBO treatment today.
9) Catch 22
Maybe the utes of today no longer say it, but the world we live in portrayes it in every sound we hear from TV or podcasts, its the rage of rap. What is a catch 22?
a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.
Its the circular logic clusterfuck that allows us to burn down villages to save them and take the hero walk afterwords. If I was confronted by aliens and they asked me for one book to explain myself before they cleansed the planet I would give them this one.
10) Crake and Onyx
To limit myself to ten was a real challenge. For sure I should have included some uplifting autobiography. I think the news today if full of greet news stories at the end of every hour. If you look under the cover of every hero except maybe Jean Beliveau you are going to find some big hollows. My advice is dont limit yourself, but dont destroy yourself in the purist because even the greatest success will not be worth the price. Bill Gates and Richard Branson seem to me to be the two people I would admire most. How much we can really learn about success from them is debatable. Having said that lets get back to dystopia.
Crake and Onyx is the most insightful book written about 21st century human civilization. Its a 12 monkeys tale with a lot more depth. With great power comes great responsibility. Humans now have nearly universal access to the former and have given up on the later. Please teens of the now and future dont be like your parents. (1984 not included because duh kids are going to read in on their own or get it through osmosis living today)
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