{"id":534,"date":"2012-01-13T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=534"},"modified":"2012-01-13T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T17:00:19","slug":"asking-a-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=534","title":{"rendered":"Ask a doctor…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Several years ago I was talking to a friend. He had just graduated with a bachelor\u2019s degree in philosophy and I was curious if this qualified him to endorse any particular worldview as the most credible.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what\u2019s your favorite philosophy?\u201d I asked him. He laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s like asking a doctor what their favorite medicine is.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the rest of this essay I will be discussing my favorite book.<\/p>\n

There have been different books in my life that were extremely meaningful to me at specific times: Immediatism<\/em> by Hakim Bey, The Hip Mama Survival Guide<\/em> by Ariel Gore, George<\/em> by E.L. Konigsburg, Frankenstein<\/em> by Mary Shelley, Small Is Beautiful<\/em> by E.F. Schumacher. I\u2019ve loved reading books since I was small and since it\u2019s been almost thirty years since I was small I\u2019ve had plenty of time to read quite a few.<\/p>\n

If I had been asked this question at the age of five I likely would have said Strega Nona<\/em> by Tomie dePaola. It is the tale of a man who messes with magic forces and is forced to pay the price. This book taught me that there are serious consequences for breaking a promise and that one should not fool around with other peoples\u2019 stuff. At fifteen I might have told someone that Henry Miller\u2019s Tropic of Cancer<\/em> was my favorite book. This is the perfect book for a precocious high schooler since it is full of jobless ex-patriots lounging around and drinking and reading it really made me believe that living an interesting life was a possible vocation. My outlook changed when I became a parent and at the age of twenty five I almost certainly would have answered The Island of the Day Before<\/em> by Umberto Eco. This book is about grand adventure but it drew out of me a sadness that I couldn\u2019t step in the same water twice. Once I chose my grand adventure, I could not go a different way or start over.<\/p>\n

Looking at that short list I can\u2019t pick one book as a favorite. They are each so different and appropriate only for the time and place where I read them that it feels like comparing heart medication with neosporin even though they are, in fact, all books.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is still next to impossible for me to pick a single title as the one and only, but it sure does make me take pause for a moment. Each of those decades I had a favorite book that reveals something about my attitude and personal mythology of the time. Although I\u2019m nearly half way through my current decade I have not yet found my current favorite book. Perhaps I\u2019ll only be able to identify it in retrospect. Ask me in ten years what my favorite book was ten years ago and I\u2019ll be able at that time to answer for my self now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several years ago I was talking to a friend. He had just graduated with a bachelor\u2019s degree in philosophy and I was curious if this qualified him to endorse any particular worldview as the most credible. \u201cSo what\u2019s your favorite philosophy?\u201d I asked him. He laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s like asking a doctor what their favorite medicine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[396],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-favorite-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}