Thoughts to my children: Recorded below are a short list, a beginning point, of authors, guides, philosophers, intellectuals, and poets I would tell my three beautiful children to read, study, and use as compasses in their journey to find their own path. All of these writers are harbingers of truth; they have influenced, comforted, shaped, challenged, taught, encouraged, mentored, and created who I am. More importantly, they (the persons listed below) have given me varying tools to survive and overcome the challenges I have faced throughout my youth, adolescent, and adult years. I am of the belief that our lives will naturally evolve through the optics of our unique circumstances and literature allows us to freely explore the vast pantheon of our collective and individual human experiences. I am beginning to realize there is no right or wrong in our individual journeys; rather, one question persists: What is my intention?
Authors
Fiction
Haruki Murakami (Must read — 1Q84, Norwegian Wood), Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, Toni Morrison, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Jules Verne, George Orwell, John Grisham, Mark Twain, Annie Dillard, Mario Puzo, Harper Lee, JD Salinger, Tom Clancy, Ayn Rand, Simon Scarrow, William Golding, Walter J Miller Jr. (Must read — A Canticle for Leibowitz), Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle (Must read — Lucifer’s Hammer), Randy Graudin, Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth; The Evening and the Morning)
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant–This is my all time favorite fantasy book series; you will find a part of me here), Hugh Howey, Peter Newman, J.R.R Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Meg Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, H.G. Wells, Anne Rice, Octavia Butler, Justin Cronin, Patrick Rothfuss, Frank Herbert, Edgar Allan Poe, Terry Brooks, CS Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, John Scalzi, Scott Lynch, Pierce Brown, Ursula K LeGuin, Larry Niven (Must read–Ringworld), Joe Haldeman, Douglas Adams (Must read– The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), R.F. Kuang, Andy Weir, Alexander Darwin (Combat Codes–pure fun)
Personal Development
Brendon Burchard, Hal Elrod, Napoleon Hill, Aubrey Marcus, Joe Rogan, Zig Ziglar, Don Miguel Ruiz, Les Brown, Mark Manson, Paulo Coelho, Lewis Howes, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Michael Neill, John C. Maxwell, Coach John Wooden’s Leadership Game Plan for Success, David Goggins
Spiritual/Philosophy/Intellectuals
Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Epictetus, Arthur Schopenhauer, Paramahansa Yagananda, CG Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Aristotle, Eckhart Tolle, Marcus Aurelius, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ajarn Brahm, Robert Wright, Socrates, Plutarch, Baruch de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Carl Sagan (Must read–Pale Blue Dot (at least the first four chapters), W.E.B Dubois
Non-Fiction
William Shirer (all time favorite non-fiction book– Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), Biographies: Napoleon, George Washington, Mozart
Poets
Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Rudyard Kipling (Start with “If”), John Keats, Rudy Francisco, Denice Frohman, Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph W. Emerson, T.S. Eliot, John Donne, Chaucer, Conrad Kent Rivers, Edgar Allan Poe (“Alone”), Charles Bukowski (“Your life is your life-Go all the way”, “So you wanna be a writer”), Razaq Malik (start with “In Another World”), Berton Braley (“The Will to Win”), Walter D. Wintle (“State of Mind”), Edmund Vance Cooke (“How did you die?”)