The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The procrastinating serpent finally reaches the end of the booklist as part of a previous meme courtesy of The Cat

For those who know this serpent, the answer is obvious. But for those who don't ....

"Gödel, Escher, Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter

"Is the soul greater than the hum of its parts?"
Don't even know where to begin with this one. Simply the most amazingly magical strange and loopy book that Izzie has ever peeked her little nose in.
Simply thinking about it is enough to make this serpent smile and get all nostalgic and slushy
To maintain a child like sense of wonder of the world and to convey it to others so that they catch it too is just the least of it.
Needless to say, the ma hated the sight of the thing and was always threatening to toss it into the fire claiming that it was corrupting and twisting this innocent serpent's mind. Those Dursleys most definitely do NOT like magic.

Had always been fond of paradoxes, strange and impossible things. But it was many many years after admiring nameless drawings in children's encyclopedias of twisted triangles, strange loopy spirals, ants going around in circles and all sorts of impossible buildings that the Izzie found them all again in one place and realised for the first time that they were all by the one artist M C Escher. And this book was the place. That alone made it special but was only the start of it
There were Zen koans and stories from all sorts of seemingly unrelated areas. But these are very special stories. Not only do the characters talk about complicated concepts but the structure of each story itself illustrates the very concept itself. Contracrostipunctus - is particularly wicked. Who would ever guess that you could get up to so much mischief with an old fashioned record player? And there's all sorts of wicked twists in the tale
Many moons ago, Izzie found the whole chapter posted online but a good twenty minutes consulting the Oracle of Google is not delivering the goods.

If there was only one book that the Izzie could rescue from her entire collection, this would be the one.



Then there's also his wickedly wonderful "Metamagical Themas" which introduced Izzie to yet more fun stuff like fonts, fractals, tiles, number numbness, the Prisoner's Dilemma and one of the most twisted tales ever told

Ohh that last paragraph does not count as the second book - more a sort of second instalment of GEB. Or as Izzie calls them 'The Old and the New Testaments'
Izzie got a bit too enthusiastic and has now run out of time to post the lucky last and will have to save it for another day

Now you can see why we don't do these Inquisition memes too often. Once started - just cannot stop squiggling

Lazy Izzie has been procrastinating again. But finally got back to the Cat's evil questionses
The first question was -
What 5 books had influenced you most of all in your life?

But a book junkie such as Izzie could never choose just five. Gone greedy and grabbed a dozen but even that is being most restrained indeed

Decided that it would be best to do this in chronological order as obviously the books you've read first have had a longer time to cast their magical spell

1 The Faber Book of Greek Legends (edited by Kathleen Lines)
Found this as seven or eight year old flobberworm while slinking around in the ma and pa's bedroom looking for Playboy magazines. This was the book that got Izzie hooked on big fat grand epic stories. Remembers raiding the local public libraries to get all the gossip on those gorgeous Greek Gods and Goddesses. Came across the Egyptian ones too and before long goblins, witches and other assorted monsters got added to the menagerie

2 A Man Never Dies (at Amazon under another title)
Izzie's first real grown ups book. Uncle Vernon got this from a friend at work. Was in grade 4 at the time so must have been 9 or 10. It was about a 16 year old Rumanian who got snatched by Russian soldiers while he was on the way to school and got shipped to the coal mines of Siberia. (well - the Ukraine actually)
Aside from starting a fascination with Stalin and stories about concentration camps and great escapes, this was the book that led to the decision to never ever touch a cigarette. Was never one to care about being cool - being most definitely NOT with the in crowd but smoking was so normal in those days
The smokers in those camps would sell their souls for a cigarette and Izzie never wanted to go near a substance that could have such a scary effect on the mind

3 "Animal Farm" George Orwell
Got introduced to this one by a religion teacher at the age of 13. It was love at first sight. Even to this day, there's a certain spot in the story that the Izzie has got to get the hankies out and that's most rare indeed for this unsentimental cruel heartless serpent. The previous obsession with Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan and other assorted power freaks only added to the appreciation of the more subtle details.
Been a fan of satire and allegories ever since.

4 How to develop a super power memory" Harry Lorrayne
There were two particular tricks in this book - the phonetic system for remembering numbers - (the one with d and t representing the digit 1) and the calendar that particularly intrigued this serpent.
Due to the crazy compulsion to use the calendar trick to calculate the day that any given date falls on (works only for the 1900s and present century)- and there's been lots of 40th anniversaries to practice on this year - that's what gets it such a high place on the list.

5 "The Vegetarian Alternative" Viktor Sussman
The Izzie sister bought this book for a school project. No book ever entered the Dursley's Den without being gobbled by the Izzie and this one was no exception. But it did leave a bit of an aftertaste. The stuff about factory farming was truly disgusting. Decided that it was not acceptable to expect others to do the dirty work so that if Izzie wanted any meaty snacks in future - they would either have to be from certified organic sources or DIY. Organic was simply unaffordable for a poor serpent and going out and killing it rather messy and nasty. (Plucking the feathers off an old hen that the ma had strangled was revolting enough and there wasn't even any blood involved just a warm limp and very yellow bird)


6 How the Other Half Dies" Susan George
More politics and power. This one goes well with the last one. Read it way back in 1982 or so. It was about the real causes of world hunger, the unintended side effects of the so called Green Revolution and the Izzie's first introduction to certain seed companies. Probably the first step on the evil green path and also the source of a continuing fascination with the Dark Side of capitalism. While all the other giggly girls in Izzie's class would be drooling over Sting in the pop magazines, Izzie would have her nose stuck in huge heavy tomes with titles such as "Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture" and this book was the one that began it all