Fellow publisher Gary Poyssick The Online Fisherman and I Coastal Angler Magazine were discussing what we each thought were our five most favorite books. Out of respect for the elderly I’d normally allow Gary to go first, but seeing he’s prolific with his words and deep with his thoughts, I thought I’d start first to warm your minds up before moving on to his heavier musings. Here are my top choices.
1) Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea continues to move me; when I was a child this book was about the adventure, but as an aging man it’s more about the relationship between man and the ocean. This is a book I could read once a year. I have similar feelings about Islands in the Stream and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
2 & 3) Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen Covey have helped me formulate two clear paths for improving myself and working with others within our communities. These two books teach you how to set your sights to begin things with the end in mind, how to increase our circle of influence and to reduce our circles of concern. But best of all, they give us the tools to create synergistic and trusting relationships with the people around us. We should never stop reading these roadmaps to a successful life because we’re never done growing.
4) Every American should read James Michener’s This Noble Land: My Vision for America. At 88 years old, the man many consider to be our nation’s greatest novelist penned a sage’s view of America’s past and future. This stirring essay paints a clear picture of where our nation has been and where America and Americans may be in the near future. This should be a mandatory read for all new, or even veteran, legislators at both the National and State level.
5) There are so many legendary authors and titles I cherish that it is nearly impossible for me to say what the fifth book I’d suggest would be. But since we’re living in a world increasingly more polarized by our beliefs in religion and God, I’ll suggest Neale Donald Walsch’s New Revelations: A Conversation with God for all of you who have ever questioned your spirituality or the role God plays in our lives. This is another book that can be read over and over again.
And just for the record, I agree with several of Gary’s choices.
Gary’s List
Just deciding to share this discussion with somebody – at the level it was requested and considering the source – is a challenging and very very fun thing to have considered. It’s funny because the Trial would be one of the top ten, but not the top five. It is more likely seven. My family, by the way, first settled in a pre-muslim town called Ungava in Austria/Hungary when they fled intolerance. I remember the ancients in my family talking about fear. My grandfather spoke nine languages and hung with russians I remember. Ukes, they called us. Ukraine. Kafka is somebody that I love and hate. Like Tolstoy. Love him and hate him. Ditto a lot of authors. But the police and an unknown force that controls me for my own good sits deep in my mind set. Partially, I assume because of those ancients and the stories they told a sensitive child. They grew boys to be warriors. You cannot build a warrior without a little bit – or a lot – of fear. But their fear – and the eternal cause thereof – is not so stupid in the real world.
Books I revisit and always will..
1) First, the Bhagavad Gita. No question. I open it every day. I was raised Christian, but this work had touched (slapped perhaps is more accurate) me several times in strange ways Anbefore I actually bothered to listen to Krsna and what he was saying and who he really was. I hear Krsna. He speaks to me as clearly as he spoke that night to Arjuna. I no longer believe that we know the name of God, nor that God is within our ability to conceive. The Gita tells us that consciousness and energy are God. I am God. The Gita taught me that. I also believe the Christ child was the same portal as was Krsna. And others. I do believe that there is a Divine intelligence that shifts, changes, and controls all that is light and all we see as black. But I believe Man is a special creature for his ability to recognize the source. Increasingly, though, I am sure that my dog – and the insects in my garden and the garden and the stones – are, in Fact, God. But as an entity I believe in One, and I believe that this lifetime is but one of many rental cars. At some level, in some life and in some time, the “thing” that my consciousness is will, in fact, become that all-connected being. The bible, which I love and often read, is not the same as the Gita is. Different. Put together by many and for many personal reasons. Many books got lost. The Gita is one chapter of a much longer work, written by one guru in ancient times. But it was the common thought of the relationship between good and evil and the role of consciousness. I have studied the ancient Sanskrit over the past years.
I do believe in good and in evil. At some level each or created and controlled and balanced by the same intelligence. We are to live our lives one moment at a time. But if the actions of another man is injuring children that moment in my life is to stop it. Immediately and permanently. It is that man that carries handguns. It is not a fearful man; it is a protective one. I would die for another man. Any. More some than others, but not one is outside that model of my reality.
From here it gets hard
2) Blood Meridian, or Evening Redness in West. Cormac McCarthy. The story of a band of scalp hunters on the Texas border right after the civil war. Scalps were selling for $50 gold. The government was paying the bond to reduce the Indigenous populations. Some were very troublesome, and the lawlessness of the west and the total disregard for life is played to its literary best. But the story – ugly, dark, and disturbing, is much, much more. The book and story follows the sequence of the Tarot – the primary cards. It is in many ways a story of redemption. I open it often.The bands sold mexican scalps for the same price, as you could not tell the difference once torn from the living skull. But on some level this is the best work in the English language I ever opened. McCarthy is dark. The Faulkner of modern times, though.
3) The Lore of Sportfishing. Classic. In some ways it strongly impacted the structure i foresaw for the site. That’s something you and me never talked about. I have a map 
I see this entire thread of human communication arriving at a level that has two sides of one coin. One side is encyclopedic This is that side. The other is daily. The news, the stories, the pictures, and the reality of daily life in our fishy world.
4) A Course in Miracles. Too much to say and nothing to say. Very real to me.
5) The Eye of the I (from which nothing is hidden). David R. Hawkins. I have spoken to the Doctor over the years and used/referred to his work on many occasions. In some ways this work is that of an enlightened being. Consciousness studies, with the flavor of a 12-step program. But not connected. The relationship is one that requires pretty deep studies, but they are evident to one with experience in the rooms. I have such experience. I am not an AA person, but the rooms saved my life once.
Runner up. Desolation Island; Patrick O’Brian. The fifth in the series that spawned the movie Captain and Commander. A story of men, women, the ocean, power, and the frivolity of bureaucracy as evidenced in the management of the British Navy. Learning how the fleet went from a thousand warships and 800 members of the Admiralty to 2 and 40,000 taught me much and surely impacted my view of governance. But this book is a story of shipwreck. O’Brian’s life study within the confines of a wooden warship is mystical to me. Historic noveltry at its finest (Spelling mine).