Marko Gajšt … Bookshelf

When I tell people that I like to read, they often ask if I have any recommendations. The books listed below would certainly qualify. For most of them, I think they came into my life at the right time; that’s something we shouldn’t overlook or underestimate. We need to allow books to find us at the right time.

There are many more books I could include in this list - books that are not bad and have certainly given me something - but the resulting list would be too long. So I’ve chosen the ones that had the biggest impact.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“They were cosy and comfortable in their little house made of logs, with the snow drifted around it and the wind crying because it could not get in by the fire.”

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

“He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle.”

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.”

L’enfant qui jouait avec la lune (Otrok ki se je igral z luno) by Lucien-Aimé Duval

Awareness by Anthony De Mello

“All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing to the moon. As we say in the East, “When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger.”

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

“When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And When his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”

Izpovedi (Memoirs of a Madman, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Father Sergius, Master and Man and A Confession) by Lev Nikolaevič Tolstoj

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?” suddenly came into his head. “But how not so, when I’ve done everything as it should be done?”

Lost Connections by Johann Hari

“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should? What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost, yet still need?”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

“The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort.”

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

“Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread through shadows to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

When Google Met Wikileaks by Julian Assange

“The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy.”

How the World Works (What Uncle Sam Really Wants, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, Secrets, Lies and Democracy and The Common Good) by Noam Chomsky

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views.”

The Fall of Western Man by Mark Collett

“Western civilization and all the achievements it encompasses once held the world in awe, yet despite this, the West is in the midst of a moral and social decline.”