Book List
Reading recommended by the Chief Boo Hoo
Most of the books listed here can be ordered from amazon.com by clicking on their underlined titles. I don’t agree with every opinion in every book I recommend, including The Boo Hoo Bible which was published in 1971 (if you order, expect some superficial signs of old age on your artifact). If the book is listed here it means I think it is one of the best of its kind, using “best” and “kind” broadly, and that I don’t think the point of view of the book is injurious to your mental health. The OKNeoAC gets a small referral fee if you order by clicking from this site so we appreciate your doing that. V/H A
FICTION
- Trixie Belden books. Written in a clean narrative style, these little novels are great for girls and for adults who want pleasant escapist reading.
- Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. Perhaps the best short novel in world literature.
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. And this may be the best novel about romantic love.
- The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. Take my word for it.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson. In its own way, this is very accurate reporting. The “atmospherics” are exactly right.
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter Thompson. Likewise. (The admirable conduct of the boo hoo here described might have served as a model for all our clergy in 1972.)
- The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. Fiction? Non-fiction? Hard to say. Anyway, the grand master of Fazzmic bullshit at his best.
- Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. Hilarious.
- The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh. Probably the most accurate description of a paranoid episode in world literature. Very funny also, as paranoid episodes often are. All speed freaks should read this!
NONFICTION
- The Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna. Boring, but what a title!
- Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus (hardcover). Use any of these arguments before a Grand Jury and you will be cited for contempt of court for sure.
- Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus (paperback). Skepticism is the intellectual foundation of solipsistic nihilism.
- I Ching (Bollingen Books, Wilhelm Translation). What, you don’t have a Ching?
- A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume.
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume.
- The g Factor by Arthur Jensen. This is the latest and best scholarly work on individual and group differences in IQ and the subject of human intelligence in general by the leading authority on the subject (one might say that g is the “essence” of intelligence). Unfortunately, what this book will demonstrate to most people is that they don’t have enough g to read it. Even a real smarty-pants like myself usually gets all worn out after two or three typical paragraphs. Well, so what? Who says that all good books have to go down easy? Some subjects are inherently difficult, that’s all. So use it as a bedside book and take only measured amounts at widely spaced intervals.
- Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti. Parenti’s views on what is going on in the world these days in political and economic terms are pretty much mine also. Unfortunately, he also suffers from the standard delusions about drugs, religion, race and individual differences (see above) which have always crippled Leftist thinking on these subjects. Oh well.
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
- Das Kapital by Karl Marx. The fantastic power of capitalism explained.
- The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh Highly entertaining, with lots of leads to other interesting stuff.
- Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak. Introduction by Gore Vidal. The inspiring doctrines, charming practices and happy history of this cute cult are examined by a man who knows what he is talking about.
- Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. If nothing else, this book will explain a lot of the weird shit you see on TV, where every variety of Jewish neuroticism is displayed daily for your analysis. Maybe that’s why the media wants you to think Freud is “out of date.”
- The Oxford Book of Essays. This is a wonderful collection. Lots of satire. Lots of leads to great authors. Why go to school? You will learn more from books like this.
- Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. A master stylist who never lies. Why are American high school inmates forced to read vulgar, stupid fantasies like “Flowers for Algernon” when they could be reading great books like this?
- Heraklitus Fragments A text and translation with a commentary by T. M. Robinson. My guess is that Heraklitus was Enlightened in a half-assed way. His great hierophantic pronouncement, “The sun has the breadth of a human foot” may have been “The sun is the width of my foot” before some “New Age” doxographer of the third century BC decided to improve on what he had before him. We learn here that Diogenes Laertius said that Heraklitus “merely” said that the sun was the size it appears to be. Merely? No solipsistic nihilist will have trouble with this. Appearances are all you have. Everything else is speculation. One sees, in this learned work as in others, how hard it is for most people to accept this simple fact. Robinson’s determination to present Heraklitus as an early Blobovian swells to Zemblan proportions when he claims that “Every animal is driven to the pasture with a blow” is “a powerful metaphysical statement concerning the cosmos.”
- Love’s Body by Norman O. Brown. Aphoristic insights from all over, with a brilliant commentary by Brown, almost all of which fits right in with the solipsistic nihilist way of looking at things.
- Penguin Classics. Any or all. (We don’t get a cut, but what the hell.) Donate the entire collection to your local prison library today and escape the guillotine tomorrow!