I’m not a collector, I swear I’m not. I don’t have any real hobbies, and definitely not any where I hunt down things to complete a list. Even if I liked Pearl Jam, I wouldn’t need to have live recordings of every show they ever did. Not me, nuh-uh.
Except when I fall in love. Sometimes I’ll like a thing - say, a book - so much and in such a way that I can immediately understand the author’s endless potential for more of the same, similar, and better, and I want it. I don’t want it because I need to have it all in some theoretical sense, but because I know it’ll all be good.
See:
Richard Dawkins
At the age of eighteen, I picked up this book in a library in Clearwater, FL. I honestly don’t remember how, but I remember how it seemed to tickle and grow my brain.
I was then gifted The Blind Watchmaker and spent the next six months reading through the rest of Dawkins’ books. It was a fun journey, and without it I wouldn’t have proceeded to read Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, Daniel C. Dennett, and many more.
Douglas Hofstadter
Many of the authors above referenced an oddly named book:
It’s impossible to describe and quite difficult to recommend as its 800+ pages include everything from music history and theory to math to programming, from poetry analysis to puns to physics, from fiction to graduate-level biology, from philosophy to aesthetics. All that in a beautiful, playful package.
As things stand today, this is still my favorite book. And yes, I immediately picked up everything else with Hofstadter’s name on it.
David Simon
Simon is my most contemporary brainthrob, so he doesn’t have that much for me to collect yet. But I’ve collected it:
Two bests here: The Wire is the best TV show I’ve ever seen (obviously) and Homicide is so far the best book I’ve read this year. Currently I’m enjoying the heck out of Treme, waiting for season two. Can’t wait to see what this guy does in the future.
Alan Moore
I resisted picking up this book, I really did. The thing with me and comics is, I got burned out on them after high school - I still can’t stand to look at another twee story about a quirky loner who gets a chance at love or discovers a fantasy world blah blah -so no matter how much friends recommended it, I put off getting it:
What a dummy. It’s a fantastic book, so rich that I now find it hard to imagine a time when I was unfamiliar with its characters. But Moore didn’t stop (or start) there, and neither should you or I - these are all great: V for Vendetta, From Hell, Swamp Thing, Voice of The Fire. I love his whole crazy, wizard-bearded, paranoid, curmudgeonly, technophobic, poetic ball of purple rage.
Of course, love is blind and honeymoons end, so with three of these I’ve already been disappointed by works on the margins of their creative output. But I totally don’t care. That’s how love works - once you’re in, it takes a lot to get you out.
