Ten Books Everyone Should Read

[wuapinmon]

Taking a page from the really fun "Five Movies" thread, let's see people's submissions for the 10 books you think that everyone should read. These aren't the best, but the ones that we "should" read--with the definition of "should" being left up to each poster for their own worldview. If a book is not in English, it doesn't matter if there's a translation yet, or not, just translate the title.


Here go mine:

1. The Bible (God, Jesus, et. al)
There's far too much enculturation of religious symbolism in almost everything else that you can read from the Western and Near-Eastern worlds to skip this gem.

2. The Odyssey (Homer)
A foundational text. So much of what we read is lifted from the Blind Bard.

3. Don Quixote de la Mancha (Cervantes)
The first novel, and as postmodern in 1605 as anything Baz Luhrmann every imagined. This is my favorite book in any language.

4. A Very Short Introduction to Postcolonialism, (Robert J.C. Young)
If you want to know why most of the world bristles when America enforces the Roosevelt Corollary, ignoring the other Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy, this book will help you understand the impact of colonialism on subaltern peoples. This should be required reading for holding a cabinet-level post.

5. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
A wonderful novel that made me glad to be alive.

6. Ficciones (Borges)
A classic collection of short stories that address many of the great existential angst-inducing almost-universal questions of humanity.

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
A window into the soul of Latin America, and a window into the motivation behind what makes us do terrible things to those we love. It's also the most charming book I've ever read.

8. My Daddy Was a Pistol, and I'm a Son of a Gun (Lewis Grizzard)
A hilarious memoir about a boy who loves his daddy, despite his PTSD and alcoholism, and why family matters more than about anything else.

9. St. Manuel the Good, Martyr (Miguel de Unamuno)
A Catholic Priest never admits his atheism to a small Spanish town, because he wants the people to be happy, and faith in an afterlife brings that to them.

10. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Tales (Horacio Quiroga)
So you can see what human suffering looks like when emotion is removed.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Good call, wuap. The intellectual preening will be off the charts on this one.

[Commando]

Good call, wuap. The intellectual preening will be off the charts on this one.

[SeattleUte]

My list is not as intelligent as Wuap's. There is not a ranking here, either, and it could change from day to day. Today's list:

The Bible

The Iliad

The Aeneid

The History of the World by J.M. Roberts (I recommend reading a well written, single volume history of the world for a bird's eye view)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (this "book" has influenced me as much as the bible; it is essentially about religion, and all about the Enlightenement viewpoint; ; an amazing historical and literary achievementnote: I have not read the whole thing)

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (I simply love this book)

The Brothers Karamozov

War and Peace

Great Short Works by Leo Tolstoy

The Case of Comrade Tulayev (I recently read this novel about the Stalinist/Soviet show trials, by an apostatized Bolshevik; if I were running for president I'd identify this as an important book I've read; just imagine if Tolstoy had written Darkness at Noon; that's what this is; better than 1984 or Darkness at Noon)

Blood Meridian

The Stranger

The Plague

Guns, Germs and Steel

Battle Cry of Freedom

I wish I could put down the Divine Comedy but truly have not read enough of it to do so honestly. Some day.

[SeattleUte]

Good call, wuap. The intellectual preening will be off the charts on this one.

I listed several that are not really very intellectual.

[wuapinmon]

Good call, wuap. The intellectual preening will be off the charts on this one.

Engineers seldom appreciate things that can't be measured. If they can't see the complexity and somehow quantify it, it must be preening. I actually don't preen as a bird does, I lick myself like the gran tigrillo que soy.

[marsupial]

Taking a page from the really fun "Five Movies" thread, let's see people's submissions for the 10 books you think that everyone should read. These aren't the best, but the ones that we "should" read--with the definition of "should" being left up to each poster for their own worldview. If a book is not in English, it doesn't matter if there's a translation yet, or not, just translate the title.


Here go mine:

1. The Bible (God, Jesus, et. al)
There's far too much enculturation of religious symbolism in almost everything else that you can read from the Western and Near-Eastern worlds to skip this gem.

2. The Odyssey (Homer)
A foundational text. So much of what we read is lifted from the Blind Bard.

3. Don Quixote de la Mancha (Cervantes)
The first novel, and as postmodern in 1605 as anything Baz Luhrmann every imagined. This is my favorite book in any language.

4. A Very Short Introduction to Postcolonialism, (Robert J.C. Young)
If you want to know why most of the world bristles when America enforces the Roosevelt Corollary, ignoring the other Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy, this book will help you understand the impact of colonialism on subaltern peoples. This should be required reading for holding a cabinet-level post.

5. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
A wonderful novel that made me glad to be alive.
6. Ficciones (Borges)
A classic collection of short stories that address many of the great existential angst-inducing almost-universal questions of humanity.

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
A window into the soul of Latin America, and a window into the motivation behind what makes us do terrible things to those we love. It's also the most charming book I've ever read.

8. My Daddy Was a Pistol, and I'm a Son of a Gun (Lewis Grizzard)
A hilarious memoir about a boy who loves his daddy, despite his PTSD and alcoholism, and why family matters more than about anything else.

9. St. Manuel the Good, Martyr (Miguel de Unamuno)
A Catholic Priest never admits his atheism to a small Spanish town, because he wants the people to be happy, and faith in an afterlife brings that to them.

10. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Tales (Horacio Quiroga)
So you can see what human suffering looks like when emotion is removed.

I heart this book.

[RC Vikings]

Taking a page from the really fun "Five Movies" thread, let's see people's submissions for the 10 books you think that everyone should read. These aren't the best, but the ones that we "should" read--with the definition of "should" being left up to each poster for their own worldview. If a book is not in English, it doesn't matter if there's a translation yet, or not, just translate the title.


Here go mine:

1. The Bible (God, Jesus, et. al)
There's far too much enculturation of religious symbolism in almost everything else that you can read from the Western and Near-Eastern worlds to skip this gem.

2. The Odyssey (Homer)
A foundational text. So much of what we read is lifted from the Blind Bard.

3. Don Quixote de la Mancha (Cervantes)
The first novel, and as postmodern in 1605 as anything Baz Luhrmann every imagined. This is my favorite book in any language.

4. A Very Short Introduction to Postcolonialism, (Robert J.C. Young)
If you want to know why most of the world bristles when America enforces the Roosevelt Corollary, ignoring the other Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy, this book will help you understand the impact of colonialism on subaltern peoples. This should be required reading for holding a cabinet-level post.

5. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
A wonderful novel that made me glad to be alive.

6. Ficciones (Borges)
A classic collection of short stories that address many of the great existential angst-inducing almost-universal questions of humanity.

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
A window into the soul of Latin America, and a window into the motivation behind what makes us do terrible things to those we love. It's also the most charming book I've ever read.

8. My Daddy Was a Pistol, and I'm a Son of a Gun (Lewis Grizzard)
A hilarious memoir about a boy who loves his daddy, despite his PTSD and alcoholism, and why family matters more than about anything else.

9. St. Manuel the Good, Martyr (Miguel de Unamuno)
A Catholic Priest never admits his atheism to a small Spanish town, because he wants the people to be happy, and faith in an afterlife brings that to them.

10. The Decapitated Chicken and Other Tales (Horacio Quiroga)
So you can see what human suffering looks like when emotion is removed.

I think I'll wait for the movies to come out.

[MarkGrace]

I think I'll wait for the movies to come out.

[marsupial]

Y'all are forgetting:

New Moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn

[SeattleUte]

For LDS: No Man Knows My History

[wuapinmon]

I think I'll wait for the movies to come out.

Then, I beg of you, please do not watch the sucktacular Simon Birch loosely based on #5. It's offensive to God and Man.

[TripletDaddy]

No Umberto Eco?

[woot]

For LDS: No Man Knows My History

Is that still the best JS bio? I never got around to reading it and wonder how well the scholarship would hold up 60 years (or whatever it is) later. I understand RSR is pretty good, but would be skeptical of it having been written by an apologist, albeit one more willing to delve into the warty bits.

[creekster]

Is that still the best JS bio? I never got around to reading it and wonder how well the scholarship would hold up 60 years (or whatever it is) later. I understand RSR is pretty good, but would be skeptical of it having been written by an apologist, albeit one more willing to delve into the warty bits.

The scholarship holds up ok, its the psychological speculation that is problematic.