No problem or pressure! You have lots to teach me. What are your quote and poem?
My aunt Nancy, an English teacher (now retired, who works in Barnes and Noble part time) and I like to share quotes, poems and books. She raised her daughter with Shakespeare and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”! That’s right up my alley. 
Randy you are one of the kindest and most generous people I’ve ever met. Believe me, I’m too selfish to stick around if I didn’t think it was a two way street.
No pressure. I tend to over-share so I have to hold myself back sometimes. Thank you for giving me the green light! 
Kurt Vonnegut’s poem from Cat’s Cradle kind of fits for me with my reluctance to sign on to any particular religious doctrine even though I can usually find points of agreement with most of them.
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”― Kurt Vonnegut, [Cat’s Cradle]
I suppose the favorite quote also goes to my reluctance to align with a particular tradition.
Here is the wider passage that quote comes from if that appeals at all:
“What do you think?" shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, [Crime and Punishment
Excellent! It’s a great bit of grace we need to extend to each other in our discussion of what’s right and wrong–that we each have to make our own way figuring things out.
And I would extend that (not for sake of preaching, but for meditation) that if one does believe in God (a god), then that Judge would have to take that into account. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” is not something that applies to the Divine interaction.
Am reading through Macdonald’s “Laird’s Inheritance” and ran across this gem (ch. 21) as the young protagonist, Cosmo, is outside in a beautiful remote area by himself in the cold starry night…
…and there he knelt and lifted up his face to the stars. Oh, mighty, true church of all churches – where the Son of Man prayed! In the temple made by man’s hands he taught, but here, under the starry roof, was his house of prayer, church where not a mark is to be seen of human hand! This was the church of God’s building, the only fitting type of a yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes of self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless ministration of self-forgetting deeds – the one real ideal church, the body of the living Christ, built of the hearts and souls of men and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and over all the world, redeemed alike from Judaism, paganism, and all the false Christianities that darken and dishonor the true.
So many on my list have already been mentioned:
Fiction:
Dune
Lord of the Rings
Ender’s Game
Wüthering Heights
Spiral Arm series (if you like science fiction, philosophy, anthropology, semiotics, etc., this unsung series by Michael Flynn could be worth your while)
The Life of Pi
Non-Fiction:
Good to Great
A Tale of Three Kings
What a coincidence: I literally just read this 15 minutes ago to my kids. It’s in this lovely anthology:
https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/products/national-geographic-book-of-nature-poetry
Any fans of short stories here? I like the Collection ‘the last wish’ by Andrzej Sapkowski.
I read a wide range of books that are fiction and nonfiction. For fiction I read a little bit of everything. I read manga, romance if it’s slice of life style, urban fantasy, western, and horror.
My favorite manga are:
It’s a horror story centered around a group of friends in a small Japanese village done in a arc style of questions and answers trying to find out who the real enemy is that is while building up their own self confidence and trust in each other. To me, it’s one of the best stories about friendship, love, and loyalty in a universe where dark and horrible invades everyone’s life again and again waiting to finally be revealed 20 books roughly into the story.
A story about a super predator trying to find its place in the world. Is it a new evolution of humans, a alien human hybrid, or something created in a lab. Either way it’s been abused since birth. It’s a girl. She’s a teen. She struggles with the typical human experience along with a urge and power that can kill almost anything in seconds and is trying to find out if love and forgiveness can save herself and those she love or will she be hated by everyone, hate herself, and turn into the monster she fears as she slowly turns the world upside down with more of her species.
4.Inuyahsa is one of my favorite japanese feudal era based folklore slices of life stories about a girl who travels through time to a era when demons (Japanese spirits not Christian demon types) was part of everyday life and she meets a half demon half woman dog boy and several other friends who all have one common enemy that is the cause of their pain and suffering that they are hunting down to kill and take what he stole that cast the whole world into a extra level of misery.
Then for just regular fiction i read Emily Giffin who writes mostly slice of life and romance novels but has great character development such as in the book where we belong that’s focused on a girl who wants to know her father and a woman who is struggling with being faithful to the husband she is not into or into this new guy that seems great and is great. Lots of emotional fleshing out.
I like the stories by HP Lovecraft. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized through some of the tales and especially his letters he wrote to others that he was racist.
I have a assortment of asian folklore and fairytale books that I really like. Big into the whole while fox demon and bridal ghost stories.
The Incarnation by Susan Barker.
Story of a man who is being stalked by someone who claims they are meant to be together and seems to know so much about him and presents fact after fact that people are reincarnated and that they can be together in this life or he can be killed and they will start over winning them back in the next life.
However the majority of my books are nonfiction and are centered around Botany, Horticulture, Landscape Design, Mycology, and plant based nutrition.
My children like manga but I cannot stand them. Too little story for all that page turning. The art means nothing to me. I visualize better than that.
Sorry your missing out on them.
Jealous but happy for you that you’ve discovered garden making at a time in life that permits you to have a career in horticulture. It has been my biggest hobby for more than twenty years, but I’ve only ever made my one garden. Good luck to you.
Except for those which come out in anime. Though I don’t watch quite as many as my wife and sons do. My favorites are…
Hikaru no Go
Gate
Ghost in the Shell 1&2
Most of the Studio Ghibli productions
Kimi ni todoke
Say I love you
Man, my uncle Hiro is Japanese, but unfortunately as he lives in WA and I grew up in Africa, I have had little contact till the last year, when we started emailing. I have a lot to learn from him and my cousins. My kids like their Manga Bible, but we don’t have a lot of other Japanese written history. Thanks for the teaser.
I’m also curious if anybody can recommend any Korean literature. I have to do my leisure reading by Audible, because of work, but three of my aunts are Korean, and I’d like to learn more of that culture as well.
All the ones I’ve mentioned with the exception of some of Junji’s work has been made into anime. None of them are for kids really. Inuyasha is pretty kid friendly. The others are similar to R rating.
I don’t know anything really about korean literature. But if you want to know more about japanese history there is mountains and mountains of information built over the millenniums.
I like their poetry including the woodblock art and interpretations. I was really fascinated by the paradigm wars between the scholars and their plum blossoms vs the merchants and their peonies. Though it was mostly a chinese war there was some spill into Japanese cultures. By war, I mean intellectually.
The Huntington has some great podcasts on japanese and asian cultures in general.
Kamsahamnida. 
Then, we could discuss favorite Korean foods…mmm! Pogi chi was my favorite kimchi (radish greens; but I couldn’t afford it much on a student’s salary) in Detroit.
Then perhaps you need to learn how to make it yourself. I think that is the real measure of how much you like something. For me it started with Thai curry. My wife makes the Korean dishes we like most, such as chop chae, pibimpap, bulgogi, and Naeng Myun. The only korean dish I make is Korean rice cakes. I mostly make fresh bread, Thai, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Italian, British, and Middle Eastern. For example, this last week I made Chicken Mushu and lettuce wrapped Chicken on Monday and Beef Shank Stew on Tuesday.
No, Elfen Lied is not for kids. I was just recently watching the beginning of that again.
My favorite horror anime would be the classic Blood movie and Parasyte both of which have been made in to non-animated movies.
Those are the only horror I would mention… but it reminds me of other anime favorites like Xamd and R.O.D.
Definitely.
Blood and Parasyte the Maxim are great. I liked Tokyo Ghoul as well. Shiki. Red Garden. There are a handful of decent horror themed ones.
Well, it sounds like your wife is very accepting! My family allow me to try new foods, but only my eldest son is likely to try new foods with me. As a result, we bought preparations for chicken tikka masala (it was actually a hit with the family), and bulgogi (we haven’t done that yet, though I think he will like it; we do have some kimchi we’ll try, too).
My wife (Japanese) doesn’t care much for the Mexican food. But then the others like it a lot, especially my mother.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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