The Third Book

Beside Still Waters by Charles H. Spurgeon

--Europium

The complete works of Terry Pratchett.

(Including the ones not yet written!)

Good call, but I'm afraid you'll have to have that instead of the Shakespeare (or whatever). Or maybe you'd like it as your religious text?

Actually, as a rational, sober individual with a serious turn of mind, I have to admit that, yes, the works of Pratchett would be an excellent alternative to any standard religious text.

Annoia, Goddess of things that get stuck in draws has told me this in a vision.

Good question.

There is a book called Classical Electrodynamics by John David Jackson. Many will tell you this is a beautiful text with elegant proofs, I say it's pure evil.

In fact, the only way I think I could master the book is if I was stranded on a deserted island for years. I have to insist that it be the version with solutions included, otherwise the book would just drive me mad.

Pure evil indeed! I totally agree about being on a deserted Island as being the only way to master it!

This explains the odd behavior of my Professor for Classical Electrodynamics!...

...I wonder what his other two books were?

Is there really a version with solutions?

I've never seen a solution book, but one must exist. Jackson had to provide solutions to the problems in that book to someone right? There is a webpage with a lot solutions, but who knows how accurate they are.

Jackson Solutions

"Belief" book: Would probably be Atlas Shrugged, but that's already included in the next part and I wouldn't want to waste a book, so I would pick "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. I've never read it but I'd like to.

The complete works of Ayn Rand

Book to "keep me busy": The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (its split into three book so maybe that's cheating?)

Rene Barjavel's "La Nuit Des Temps" or "Thousand and One Nights" be my third book.

I have a friend who has that. It is like a small encyclopedia.

How about a subscription to New Scientist?

A book of blank pages to record all the mistakes I would make and ensure I only made them once

Mistake 1: Not bringing an actual book.

"A book of blank pages to record all the mistakes I would make and ensure I only made them once."

------

You've got a point, but there's a down side as well. I recommend you seriously reconsider your decision to make those mistakes only once.

For one thing, it looks like you're gonna be stuck on that island for a long, long time. You'll probably get rescued only by virtue of first contracting senile dementia in your old age and then subsequently believing you'd already been rescued. In the meantime you can re-read the same mistakes over and over and not recall that you'd already read about making that same damn mistake yesterday. This tends to reduce paper cuts as well, as you don't have to flip back and forth between the pages to read about the really juicy ones.

Fourth, your mistakes are the only things that are truly yours, and so if I were you, I wouldn't tend to get too stingy about it. It's the only thing you're gonna take with you when you depart for The Great Beyond, so you might as well be generous with yourself.

On the flip side, your making too many mistakes might result in a scarcity of notebook paper and you'll have to start making your own. This in itself might prove to be a fertile source of mistakes which you can then record on your new paper. In a sense, the paper itself may prove to be the more permanent record your mistakes without your actually having to write anything down at all.

Not a bad idea, actually.

--Europium

For the third book, I'd look for something that was useful yet entertaining at the same time. Something along the lines of the original "The Way Things Work" by David Macaulay would fit this crtieria.

How about and exclopeida?

How about a dictionary?

If we can include sets of volumes, I would have to choose "the great books of the western world," that way if I were to ever return to society, I would return as a truly educated individual. Then there is that cursed, evil book that Mr. Pink recommended earlier...

Sorry, but you can only have a book or set of books (up to a trilogy) by one author (JRocket (post #6) just sneaks in). You may get away with a group of collaborating authors.

Looks like you're stuck with Electrodynamics !

If we can get by with a "set" of books, Will and Aerial Durant's History of Civilization" comes to mind. I know of no-one who has read the whole thing. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a human lifetime is sufficient to read it.

That runs to about a dozen books - you'll have to pick your best three!

If my first two are for spiritual well being and entertainment then the third would have to be something very practical.

I would suggest a survival guide, preferably one specific to tropical island locals.

Goethe's Faust; both books, if you please.

Elrond Hubbards "Mission Earth." A decalog of sci-fi, an entertaining soap opera plot.

I can't top G K Chesterton's answer to this question: "Black's 'Guide to Shipbuilding'"

I'll go with the "Illustrated Sourcebook of Mechanical Components" by Robert O. Parmley, P.E. There would be lots of time to see what I could build out of palms and coconuts, like they did on Gilligan's Island.

Something on botany, with emphasis on medicinal plants.

Personaly, I don't think years of exile would be so bad, as long as I don't have to suffer from some mundane medical problem.

White sand, blue surf, lobster for dinner and a raging abcessed tooth!

umm, here is a question: you are on a desert island with tool, but you did not indicate they would have every amenity or facility already constructed for your use. Wouldn't it be more practical to choose at least some books on hydraulics, waste/wastewater treatment, building/construction, cooking, survival in the wilderness, edible plants and fish, or any other civil engineering, construction, food, waste handling or wilderness survival. Alternately, i guess you could just sit out in the sun and rain reading during daylight, hanging around doing nothing in the dark until you die of heat stroke, starvation, disease, or thirst. Which would you succumb to first while reading "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid"?

I think you're misunderstanding the point of the exercise.

Well, I'm not afraid to ask: What IS the point of the exercise?

I'd just hoped for some good suggestions for books to read - ones that you can keep on the shelf, and you know you can always find something good to read (like when the Challenge gets too boring! ). I reckon JRocket has the right idea.

I realy didn't expect all the survival guide stuff. Does anyone out there listen to "Desert Island Disks"? It's been on the radio (now on BBC Radio 4) for time out of mind. Guests are invited to select the 8 records they would like to have if they were in the 'Desert Island' situation. They chat about their life & works, etc., between playing bits of their choices. At the end, they have a question about books, from which this thread was inspired, and also what one luxury they would like to have. It is taken as axiomatic that their survival needs have been met.

BTW Short-form blurbs for the suggestions would be welcome.

OK, since you put it that way, if you like classic Science Fiction, I would recommend, "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert Heinlein. This is a rather thick, even in paperback, collection of his short stories that have a common thread of characters, and even a timeline, known as his "Future History" series.

It is full of humor, adventure, and even some interesting philosophy, but nothing so deep or dark as Carlos Castanedo, Ayn Rand, etc.

Remember, Heinlein is the original guy that coined the the word TANSTAAFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch) and his works are full of it! (no pun intended).

If you like that, you can go on to read some of his other stuff, including earlier, mostly adventurous books, some of which have been made into films, like "Starship Troopers", or more introspective counterculture works like "Stranger in a Strange Land", or pseudo-political, like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", or, for a twist, one of his later works, written from the point of view of a woman, "Friday", who travels extensively to hide her identity and avoid discrimmination, yet desparately seeks a family ties (because she never had any, being a genetically engineered Artificial Person).

Thanks, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Sorry my original post didn't make it clear.

I read a load of sci-fi up to the age of about 20 (Robert Heinlein included). I used to trawl thro' the library, homing in on the yellow Golancz spines. From 25 to 50 I didn't read much non-fiction (if any). I've recently started reading "murder mysteries", but they're beginning to get a bit jaded - hard to find original story lines.

A few months ago I tried to get back into sci-fi with a book of Philip K Dick short stories, but I found them so dark, I gave up. I used to love it, but I think having kids has made a subtle difference to the way I look at things.

Maybe I'll try to get hold of a copy of "The Past Through Tomorrow" & give it a go.

BTW Thanks for reminding me of Carlos Castenada - I found him when I was about 20, and had loads of fun reading about all sorts of bizarre stuff (farts that moved mountains, flying from cliffs & surviving etc.) - I still can't decide whether it was all made up, or what. Anyone got any authoritative ideas or substantiated news?

I've been listing good books in my profile "bio" section, in lieu of an official "good books" database here on CR4. (I want to add that too, but it's pretty far down on the list right now.)

Here's what I have in there right now:

Suggested reading:

• Cryptonomicon - Neil Stephenson
• Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson
• The Baroque Cycle (Quick Silver, Confusion, System of the World) - Neil Stephenson
• Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson

A '"good books" database here on CR4' sounds good to me. I'll shut up about books for now, but please don't leave it too far down the stack!

Thanks for your suggestions - 'fraid I've never heard of either of the authors, as far as I can remember.

I will have to agree with MillMatt. We may be missing the point of the exercise, but then the exercise may have missed making its point clear, by adding all the jazz about pirate-types, desert island, survival tools, etc.

Wouldn't it have been much simpler just to ask, "If you had nothing else to do but read, and could have any one book, or three-volume set (which was a later stipulation added by JohnDG), besides a primary religious text and complete works of any one author, which you would also have, to read for the rest of your life, either over and over, or slowly taking your time, and no others, what would it be and why?

Maybe that would "get to the point".

My choice would be the U.S. Army Field Manual, No. 21-76, Survival.

Better for this application than the typical survival guide, because if the pirate-type guys should return, to "finish the job", you should be ready.

Unlike civilian-type survival guides, this one is chock full of references to "the enemy" and how to escape and evade, as well as the standard survival information: water, food, shelter, weather, medicine, there are sections on tools, weapons, water crossings, signalling, "movement in hostile areas", camoflage,etc.

You may have "enough tools etc. so that you could survive quite happily, living from the land" but without the information you need to survive, that's not going to happen. Tools can't warn you about poisonous foods or how to tell what is not. Tools might help you build a survival shelter, or a snare or weapons for hunting game, but they can't tell you how to make them.

I was a Boy Scout, had Air Force survival training, and spent a lot of time camping when I was a kid. But the even I would find this reference very handy. Surviving on a "deserted island" is hardly like living in a luxury retirement community, where you can afford to while away the hours in pursuit of intellectual stimulus or baser entertainments.

That said, in the spirit of "a book that would keep you going for the rest of your life – either by re-reading it without it flagging, or one that you think would take the foreseeable future to get through", and I would chooose the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Without the Internet and the Information "Superhighway", then I want at least to have the Information "Main Street" ("High Street" for you Brits!). However, the EB is, technically a set of books, more than a trilogy anyway, and by different authors who were not necessarily collaborating, but writing individual articles. If it was disallowed I would say my next choice would be Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged from Merriam-Webster, last revised June 2002. If nothing else, when I lost interest in it, at least I would have a really good stock of toilet paper!

The complete set of "The Foxfire Book". hog dressing; log cabin building; mountain crafts and foods; planting by the signs; snake lore, hunting tales, faith healing moonshining; and other affairs of plain living. The only record of skills, crafts, and folklore pasted down verbally from generation to generation. The way our ancestors lived. Done by high school students from southern Appalachian mountains. If I could only have one I would take the first edit.

"Deserted Island Survival for Dummies". With every other subject they publish for Dummies, it would not surprise me if this one exists.

Deserted Island Survival for Dummies does, in fact, exist, except that no one has figured out how the guy stuffed it in that little bottle. Nor does the book say.

On a different note, my latest book, Idiot's Guide to Dating For Engineers should hit the shelves just in time for Christmas. Of course, I won't be at all insulted if no one selects this particular book to accompany them on their interminable Desert Isle tour.

--Europium

The American Boy's Handy Book by Daniel Carter Beard

Not only the simple projects to build but the ambiance of simple 1920's country living in small town USA as portrayed in many of Beard's writings. This would keep me going during the day building and the wishful dreams of the simple life during the night.

While the range of survival books mentioned by others are best bets, the first book that came to my mind is Yann Martel's novel, Life of Pi. Sure, it's not going to teach anyone how to fish or forage but acknowleding emotional upheaval and adjusting to adverse circumstances complement the physical, spiritual and intellectual facets offered by the other books. Where there's a will, there's a way. (and, no, it has nothing to do with 3.14159....)

"A Brief History of Time", by Stephen Hawking?

"The Railway Children", by E. Nesbit?

"Longitude", by Dava Sobel?

That's the problem. There are so many. And after a building extension project recently these, and many others, are tucked away in boxes in the garage loft until the painting and decorating is done. Aaaaaaargh!