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25 May 2006
books that you think everyone should read at least once→[More:]
We have had book threads before but we have more members now and I am not sure this exact theme has been covered. I want to start reading more again and I thought this might be a good way to get started.
For some reason, I initially read that as books you would read again. The list is the same, though, with the addition of Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries.
Every kid who wants to read Catcher in the Rye should read Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge instead, and save themselves 5 years of angst.
Also, they should read Nine Stories before Catcher.
Other than those two Great books, I would suggest some other, lighter stuff like Ham on Rye...
But seriously, I think Jasper FForde is writing some great light, witty stuff (the Eyre Affair is great fun). I am also a fan of Douglas Coupland, but some others wouldn't agree.
I have a friend who has been trying to get me to read The Razor's Edge for years, richat. It is his favorite book ever. I have tried and tried and tried and I just cannot finish that damn book.
- The Phantom Tollbooth (yay for so many people on here saying so as well! I still wish I could be Milo, and live in King Azaz the Unabridged's kingdom)
- CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders
- Outside the Dog Museum, by Jonathan Carroll
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Weretable, maybe you can define "should" as you use it in your question for better results. . .should why? It implied a certain weight to me. I'll second Unbearable Lightness of Being - I thought about that. . .
Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell, You Can't Win By Jack Black, Mother Courage and Galilleo by Brecht, Cockfighter by Charles Williford, Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, there are lots more, A bunch of Shakespeare, Candide, Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan, A Mark Twain collection, everything by Flannery O'Connor, Politics and the English Language by Orwell, Island of the Blue Dolphins, My Side of The Mountain. Lots and lots of shit, I think everyone should spend two years serving their society as a cop or a ambulance driver or a teacher or a social worker and two years reading books, in addition to college and whatever else.
How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher, The Boyscouts Manual, A Barefoot Doctors manual, Kindred by Rocktavia, some Stanislaw Lem, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
Also, I happen to know that my place of employment had representatives at the event in DC you just attended. I hope you peed on their booth or at least sicced Jim Goad on them.
To Goad's credit, he never pretended to be a nice guy, although once, after I learned of his Slade fandom and pointed him towards some pre-fame Ambrose Slade audiofiles, he was effusively thankful.
The Things They Carried (O'Brien) Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut) Night (Wiesel)
The Bible: Selected books (Genesis, Exodus, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)
Great literature could make the world a better place, if people actually read it.
"Pity is like rust to a cruel social machine." - KV
Also: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery Great Gastby For Whom The Bell Tolls
certain short stories by Hemingway: "Snows of Kilamanjaro," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Long Dark Tea Time of The Soul - Douglas Adams
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The Grapes Of Wrath -- John Steinbeck
The War Of The Worlds -- H.G. Wells
1984 -- George Orwell
Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon
Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley
and who knows how many others that I can't think of right now...
I really recommend you read Owen Meany. If only for the aural overtone it gives to any metachat shouting threads you read at the same time as the book.
It's funny isn't it, book recommendations. Quite a few of those listed above would be on my list, but about an equal number of them I have read and considered a total waste of time. Never fails to amaze me how people can take such different stuff from the same book. Anyway, here's what's left over on my list:
The Inheritors - William Golding
All the Enderby novels - Anthony Burgess
And my favourite childhood book:
The King of the Copper Mountains - Paul Biegel
Finally, to be more specific wrt Chomsky, I'd suggest his Language and Problems of Knowledge.
Anything by Flann O'Brien
(Especially The Third Policeman and The Dalkey Archive) Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Anything by James Kelman
Anything by John Irving up until Owen Meany, at which point you should pretend he died tragically (eaten by bears in Vienna while wrestling perhaps) having written his best book. The Phantom Tollbooth (though I suspect it's even better if you read it before rather than after seeing the movie). The Hobbit Wind in the Willows Catch 22
Some early Tom Wolfe.
As much Plato as you can manage (in Greek if you can).
The Bible
Descartes' Meditations
Hume's A Treatise on Human Nature
As much Shakespeare as you can manage.
I could do this all day, but I have to go to work.
Independent People, Haldor Laxness
Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley
Gormenghast, by Peake
Baltazar and Blimunda, and Blindness, both by Jose Saramago
The Idiot, by Dostoevsky
The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, by Peter Carey
Sister Carrie, by Dreiser
any part of Dos Passos's USA trilogy
any older Vonnegut
and i'll second The Stand and the Street of Crocodiles.
I'm not sure if there's anything that I think everyone should read, but here are a few anyway:
Borges' complete short stories Without - Donald Hall Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson White Noise - Don DeLillo King Lear, Hamlet and Othello, then, if you're into those, more of 'em
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Another vote for A Prayer for Owen Meany Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein Ribofunk by Paul Di Filippo
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
On The Road by Jack Keroauc
Big Sur by Jack Keroauc
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
The Naked & The Dead by Norman Mailer
And allow me to toss another ballot into the 'Phantom Tollbooth' jar.
Maybe it's just because they taught me how to be a contrary little freethinking bastard, but Louise Fitzhugh's "Harriet the Spy" and Daniel Pinkwater's "The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death" taught me more about how to be an interesting (and interested) human being than anything else I've ever read.
Mostly repeating other's suggestions at this point... serves me right for joining the party late.
1984
Motorcycle Diaries
Night
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A People's History of the United States (which was my high school AP american history text... I didn't know that there was any controversy around Zinn until years later!)
Possessing The Secret Of Joy
Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello
It's almost bedtime so that's all I can think of for now.
Personally, my goal is to read everything by Lovecraft by the end of Summer.
What's the controversy around Zinn? I mean other than that he's a dissident to mainstream American viewpoints of history?
The Tempest, Superfudge, Alan Mendelson the Boy from Mars, Norwood by Charles Portis, Working by Studs Terkel, Hells Angels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Desert Solitaire by Abbey.
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