'A room without books is like a house without windows.' Diderot

If someone would have asked me five years ago whether life had any meaning I would have answered them according to my belief that in my view it is human beings who give their lives meaning, but that life itself has no inherent meaning, being the result of completely haphazard and unintentional evolutionary forces. I would not have been able to substantiate that claim with any evidence however.
    One day, during my journey through the Amazon, I came to a bookstore in the tiny town of Porto Velho, and to my surprise found a bookshelf of completely new english books. I was very excited because I had had nothing to read all summer, and so I bought about ten kilo's of books, booked myself a two week journey on a boat down-river to Belem, and spent most of that journey reading.
    The selected books were scientific, and they opened my eyes to scientific writing, which I found accessible and confirmed my aforementioned opinions about the meaning of life. To cut a long story short: explaining my own views to people who have not read the appropriate literature is enormously tiring. There are people who will deny the very basic facts of life, for want of ever having read a book. I therefore offer this list as a remedy for such tiresome disputes. If and when you have read one of these or all of them, and you still care to debate with me, you are welcome, for at least then we can be sure that you know the terrain rather than arguing aimlessly, without the intention of learning something new.

Daniel Waterman

"Great minds are like parachutes: they only work if they are open"