'Must-Have Books'

[Jas]

Are there any particular books that you would recommend as being 'must-reads'? On my list I think I'd have:

"The Mists of Avalon" - Marion Zimmer Bradley
"The Life of Pi" - Yann Martel
"The Handmaid's Tale" - Margaret Atwood
"Angela's Ashes" - Frank McCourt
"His Dark Materials" Trilogy - Philip Pullman

And of course, I've forgotten half of the titles I'd recommend. I'm just trying to expand my library a bit, and maybe catch those that I've missed.

[Darat]

Memoirs of a Space Woman, Naomi Mitchison
The Dreaming Jewels, Theodore Sturgeon

[Jon.]

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Asimov's Foundation Trilogy
Stranger In A Strange Land by Heinlein
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr
the first three Hitchhiker's Guide books by Douglas Adams
all the Harry Potter books, especially Goblet of Fire
Kama Sutra
Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber (?)
The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul
Twelfth Night, King Lear, 1 Henry IV and the Scottish play, by Shakespeare

that's a pretty good start...

[Dredred]

I like this thread. I never know what to read.

Neuromancer by William Gibson.

[Jon.]

Originally posted by Dredred
I like this thread. I never know what to read.

Neuromancer by William Gibson.

D'oh! How could I have missed Gibson? He even lives in the same city as me!

In addition to Neuromancer, I would add Virtual Light and (to a lesser extent) its sequels, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. His last one, Pattern Recognition is also very good. It's not really even sf.

[LibraryLady]

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Flim Flam by some guy named Randi

[Boo]

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck

Any good compilation of poetry

Jon pretty nailed the rest of my list.



Boo

[Piscivore]

"The Life of Pi" - Yann Martel
I couldn't finish this, I found it insipid and boring.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Overrated.




My list would include:
Justine,, Marquis de Sade
Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Farenheit 459, Ray Bradbury
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Cannery Row, Steinbeck
Nine Stories, JD Salinger
Lathe of Heaven Ursula le Guin
The Bad Seed, William March

[SezMe]

Godel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter

Metamagical Themas by Hofstadter

The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Dennett

Absolutely great books to provoke thought. Can you deduce that I am a fan of Hofstadter?

One more:

The World of Mathematics by James R. Newman. A four volume set that is an absolute masterpiece in the history of western thought.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by Piscivore


Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Farenheit 459, Ray Bradbury
Catch 22, Joseph Heller


So you like books with numbers in the title? ;)

I agree with library lady about Alice - best books ever written.

Also:
David Attenborough - Life on air

[Oregon_Skeptic]

The Bible
The Iliad
The Origin of Species
Don Quixote
Moby-Dick
The Scarlet Letter
Huck Finn
Leaves of Grass
Invisible Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Beloved
The Things They Carried
Titan, Wizard, and Demon
The Demon-Haunted World
A Feast Unknown
Lies My Teacher Told me
The collective works of Shakespeare

This is no where near a complete list, but it would be an okay start I think. Lot 49 is a must read as well. And I'm undertain about Underworld, but I'm leaning towards it being a must read.

ETA: The Sound and The Fury and As I Lay Dying

[TragicMonkey]

The Golden Bough
Dream of the Red Chamber
The Birth of Tragedy
Moo
GK Chesterton's Father Brown stories

eta: If anyone liked The Good Earth they should read Buck's Pavilion of Women. It's sometimes considered her greatest work.

[Jas]

Originally posted by Piscivore
I couldn't finish this, I found it insipid and boring.

Really? I know some people have had trouble getting through the beginning where he's describing his name, and life in the zoo.


Overrated.



I have to agree with you on that one. I read it in highschool, and was sitting there going - "Okay, so they get drunk, have parties, and go through numerous changes of clothes. Grrreeat. Sounds like last weekend".

Granted, maybe I shoudl reread, but I could never get really into it.

[Piscivore]

Originally posted by Jas
Really? I know some people have had trouble getting through the beginning where he's describing his name, and life in the zoo.

That's about where I remember getting off the trolley. Some of his sentences were well crafted, and the imagery I remember being pretty good, but I was just really getting tired of exposition. Then my brother said he had read the whole thing, told me it didn't get much better, and I trust his opinion on such things, so I went and read something else.


I have to agree with you on that one. I read it in highschool, and was sitting there going - "Okay, so they get drunk, have parties, and go through numerous changes of clothes. Grrreeat. Sounds like last weekend".

Granted, maybe I shoudl reread, but I could never get really into it.

I read it in HS, again in Jr. College, and then about two years ago just to be sure my first impression was valid. IMO, it was- bunch of bored, stupid, rich people awash in ennui and pining for unfulfilled dreams, screwing up their pathetic, empty lives.

Gee, money doesn't buy happiness? Thanks for the insight, Mr. Fitzgerald. Maybe that was new and insightful in the 1920s, or maybe I was just brought up too far on the Left for this book to be meaningful to me.

[Piscivore]

Originally posted by Tanja
So you like books with numbers in the title? ;)

Yeah, I noticed that too. :D

I agree with library lady about Alice - best books ever written.


They're right up there. "Alice" were the first books I read to my daughter.

[Jon.]

Originally posted by SezMe
Godel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter

I tried reading this one on the recommendation of a very smart friend, made many years ago. I liked the first few chapters, then found it was getting hard to follow. I suspect the problem was that I read for 15-30 minutes each night in bed, and this seemed to be a book that needed to be read sitting up, fully awake, with a pencil and paper to work things out as you go along. I vowed to try again under these conditions, but haven't had the opportunity yet.

[ungoliant]

the bible - one of the greatest works of mankind ever written, if not THE greatest. full of war, redemption, sex, natural disasters, miracles, intrigue, death, romance, prophecy and madness. how could you NOT like the thing?

the lord of the rings - the bible light. but still cracking.

the prince - machiavelli

any conan book - by robert howard. alive with energy and drive. almost as much sword and sorcery as the bible.

[hgc]

The Brothers Karamozov by Feodor Dostoevsky

The Conformist by Alberto Moravia

[kirwar4face]

I'm just going to have fun with this one:

Superman-Red and Superman-Blue (http://superman.ws/tales2/redblue/)
The Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain (plus Letters from the Earth)
Meetings With Remarkable Men, G. I. Gurdjieff (especially the chapter on the Gobi excursion)
An Autobiographical Novel (Revised and Expanded), Kenneth Rexroth
Because It Is, Kenneth Patchen (nonsense poems)
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
The (Original) American Book of the Dead, E. J. Gold (1978 edition or later)

[bruto]

I'll add, randomly off the top of my head, some books I'd be sorry to be without:

All of Jane Austen.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban

Terra Nostra, by Carlos Fuentes

The Secret Agent and Victory, by Joseph Conrad

John Cheever's short stories

The Grapes of Wrath

Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter

The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis

Anything by Ambrose Bierce, but especially The Devil's Dictionary, and the civil war stories.

[Skeptic]

OK, in my role as unofficial forum wise @$$:

Strangely, nobody mentioned Dante or Shakespeare yet (let alone Milton, Chaucer, etc.).

Farenheit 459, Ray Bradbury

I'm surprised nobody noticed it's actually 'Fahenheit 451'... ironically, I haven't read it, but I have watched the movie (by Trouffat (sp?)).

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Haven't read it, but absolutely loved David Copperfield, the Pickwick Papers, and Great Expectations.

Moby Dick[/I]

Am I the only one who found this book terribly boring, Ahab or no Ahab? (By the way, I guess the guys who founded Starbucks are fans of Moby Dick, due to the name itself and the logo...)

[B]"Alice" were the first books I've read to my daughter

Isn't that a bit like using mushrooms mixed with pot as her first baby food?

the bible - one of the greatest works of mankind ever written, if not THE greatest

In the original Hebrew (the Old Testament) it is even more powerful. I'm studying Greek now with the hope of re-reading the NT in the original (although I'd probably be able to ask St. Paul about it directly long before I know enough Greek for that).

Any good compilation of poetry

In my view, the best poet of the 20th Century was not Eliot or Pound, but W. H. Auden.

The Brothers Karamazov

True. Also, Crime and Punishment. But the greatest novel ever written is, in my view, Tolstory's War and Peace.

Love in the Time of Cholera

He's one of my favorite authors. The opening sentence of 100 Years of Soltitude is the best, perhaps, in all literature. I read the whole book straight through, in 10 hours or so, after that.

Catch 22

Overrated, in my view. Far better is The Good Soldier Schweik, by Hascheck. Heller's book is clever; Hascheck's, a masterpiece.

the lord of the rings

Loved it at 14, cannot stand it now. Not Tolkein's fault: it's intended for 14-year-olds, as his children were at the time. But why any adult would read it is beyound me. In any case, the plot is obviously swiped from Wagner's [/I]Ring of the Nibelungs[/I] (sp?) Opera cycle. When you have to swipe your plot from an Opera, you know it can't be too sophisticated...

To add a few more:

I, Claudius. Graves totally copied RKO Speedwa... I mean Tacitus' Annals, of course, but he did it so wonderfully well! Strangely enough, Graves himself considered this to be his minor works.

The Life and Games of Michael Tal, by M. Tal. Yes, a chess book. But apart from his annotated game, it is also an autobiography of his life, done so well that if you have any interest in chess at all this is a book to get.

GK Chesterton's Father Brown stories

They're good, but his masterpiece is, surely, The Man who Was Thursday.

[Dagny]

"The Wayward Bus" and "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Unbearable Lighteness of Being" by Milan Kundera
"The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye " or any other collection of short stories by A.S. Byatt
"The Foutainhead" and "We the Living" by Ayn Rand.

[Jon.]

Originally posted by Skeptic
OK, in my role as unofficial forum wise @$$:

Strangely, nobody mentioned Dante or Shakespeare yet (let alone Milton, Chaucer, etc.).



Ahem. Ahem. Please read my first post.;)

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Jon.
Ahem. Ahem. Please read my first post.;)

Why? Your posts aren't a must-have book, are they? :p

[Piscivore]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Farenheit 459, Ray Bradbury

I'm surprised nobody noticed it's actually 'Fahenheit 451'... ironically, I haven't read it, but I have watched the movie (by Trouffat (sp?)).

D'oh!

"Alice" were the first books I've read to my daughter

Isn't that a bit like using mushrooms mixed with pot as her first baby food?

Don't tell CPS, 'kay? :)


Catch 22

Overrated, in my view. Far better is The Good Soldier Schweik, by Hascheck. Heller's book is clever; Hascheck's, a masterpiece.

I've read Catch 22 three times now, loved it each time. I'll check out yours, when I get the chance.

[Jon.]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Why? Your posts aren't a must-have book, are they? :p

Not yet.:p

[Jorghnassen]

Perceval ou le Conte du Graal, though unfinished, just to balanced out the heretic who started this thread mentioning Marion Zimmer Bradley.
I'll say Dracula too, just in case someone might want to bring up any crummier vampire novels.
And La Peste too. This thread needs more books that weren't written originally in English...

[clarsct]

Dune by Frank Herbert. The book, and the whole series.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins


Others have mentioned Tolkien, Heinlein, and Bradbury.

Farenheit 459 is the sequel..;)

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and American Gods have hit my list as of late.

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. (can't remember the author ATM..sorry)

[epepke]

Originally posted by clarsct
Farenheit 459 is the sequel..;)

Naw, it's the unrated version. Eight degrees hotter. Anyway,

Six Easy Pieces--Richard Feynman
The Star Thrower--Loren Eisley
The Boomer Bible--R.F. Laird
Also Sprach Zarathustra--Friedrich Nietzsche

[Hutch]

Well, this thread has been heavy on fiction, so let's add some History to it:

The Coming Fury-Terrible Swift Sword-Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton for everything you need to know on the American Civil War (unless you're a major wonk like BPSCG or me)

The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough on the creation of the Panama Canal

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman on the beginnings of WWI

and for your travel pleasure;

The Innocents Abroad and Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain.

[Skeptic]

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. (can't remember the author ATM..sorry)

Tom Wolfe, of Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and, recently, I am Charlotte Simmons fame.

As for non-fiction:

Brighter than Seven Suns about the Manhattan project.

ALSOS about the American attempt to figure out how close the Germans were to the bomb.

[Jon.]

Originally posted by clarsct
Dune by Frank Herbert. The book, and the whole series.


Really?? You managed to wade through all that? I loved the first book, liked the second, and thought it went downhill on rocket-skis after that. Bloated semi-mystical claptrap.

But that's just my opinion.:D

[headscratcher4]

My mixed bag:

The Left Hand of Darkness by LeGuinn
Lolita -- Nabokov
The Master and Margarita by Bulgolkov (sp?)
Vanity Fair -- Thackery
War and Peace -- Tolstoy
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -- Gibons
Byznatium (three volumes) -- Norwich
The Tale of Genji -- Lady Murasaki Shikibu
The 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights
East of Eden -- Steinbeck
The Autobiography of Malcom X
Any history by Sir Stephen Runciman or John Jules Norwich (for that matter).


Oh yah, the Book of Mormon for light comedy...

That's a start anyway...

[Jorghnassen]

Originally posted by Jon.
... and the Scottish play, by Shakespeare


It's called Macbeth you superstitious thespian!

[Metullus]

Here goes:

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody – Will Cuppy
I, Claudius & Claudius, the God – Graves
Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire – Gibbon
Seven Pillars of Wisdom – T.E. Lawrence
Lives of the Twelve Caesars – Suetonius
War Commentaries – G. Julius Caesar
War & Peace – Some Russian guy
The Histories & The Persian Wars – Herodotus
The Glorious Hussar – A. Conan Doyle
The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science – Issik Mittmov
A History of the Peninsular War – Oman
A Wrinkle in Time
The Middle Moffitt
The Hornblower Books

[clarsct]

Originally posted by Jon.
Really?? You managed to wade through all that? I loved the first book, liked the second, and thought it went downhill on rocket-skis after that. Bloated semi-mystical claptrap.

But that's just my opinion.:D

Wade? I read the whole series in two weeks. And that was with going to school and all that rot.

How could one not like the Bene Gesserit? They were the ultimate skeptics. They did what worked and taught what made the mind WORK in a specific way. And their view of religion....

My sig line is my own paraphrasing of a chapter from God Emperor.



Mystical, yeah. It is Science Fiction, after all. But enough politics and intrigue to keep it going. And the view of how a religion is built and engineered is cool. The Missionara Protectiva had to be one of my favorite parts for that reason.

[Antiquehunter]

"The Theory of Poker" - David Sklansky
"Green Eggs and Ham" - Dr. Suess
"The Chronicles of Narnia" - C.S. Lewis (thin ice here - but I really enjoyed them as a kid. The biblical allegories make an interesting study later on in life.)
"Atlas Shrugged" - Ayn Rand
"Shampoo Planet" & "All Families are Psychotic" - Douglas Coupland
"The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins
"Broca's Brain" and "Dragon's of Eden" - Carl Sagan (Big nod to Demon Haunted World naturally - but its been mentioned a whole lot already - OK the collected works of Dawkins and Sagan)
"L'Etranger" and "The Plague" - Albert Camus
"Stalingrad" - Anthony Beevor
"Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley
"The World According to Garp" - John Irving

Big nods to both Claudius books by Graves - and the BBC series. (John Hurt as Caligula - classic!)

[Jas]

Originally posted by Dagny

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Unbearable Lighteness of Being" by Milan Kundera


I keep meaning to pick up the '100 years' book. I'm curious about 'Unbearable Lightness', and have heard some really mixed reviews.

[headscratcher4]

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Unbearable Lighteness of Being" by Milan Kundera

IMO, of course, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fine book...though I don't know that it is a must have.

One Hundred Years of Solitude could also be titled One Hundred Years of Pretentious, Self-important and Ultimately Unfullfilling Drek that You Will Never Get Back...

IMO, of course....;)

[Dagny]

Originally posted by Jas
I keep meaning to pick up the '100 years' book. I'm curious about 'Unbearable Lightness', and have heard some really mixed reviews.

I maintain that both are must-haves. Garcia-Marquez manages to do magical realism well, which I'm usually firmly against.

And if you're curious about Lightness, you ought to just read it. ;)

[JAR]

"Lost Horizon" by James Hilton (It is an amazingly excellent book.)
Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(my favorite author)
"The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger
"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith(I've read the first three. They're great.)
"Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens
"Kim" by Rudyard Kipling
"Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence(my favorite historical figure)
Works of Charles Fort
"Conquest of Gaul" by Julius Caesar
"The Civil War" by Julius Caesar
"The Vinland Sagas" a Penguin Classics book containing the sagas about the Norse discovery of America
"History of the Kings of Britain" by Geoffrey of Monmouth

[bruto]

I just realized I left out one definite must have:

Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier should be on even a pretty short list.

[Fungrim]

"The New York trilogy" - Paul Auster
"Ghost Story" - Peter Straub
"Eugenie Grandet" or "Le Pere Goirot" - Honore de Balzac
The collected poetry of Lagerquist and Fröding (swedish)
"Hyperion" and "The fall of Hyperion" - Dan Simmons
The book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
"Darwins dangerous idea" - Daniel C Dennet
The history of philosophy - Marc-Wogau (or similar antology)
"History of the world" - J M Roberts (or similar)

And many more. Perhaps:

"The transparent society" - David Brin
"The hero with a thousand faces" - Joseph Campbell

And maybe... And... And then....

[Jas]

One that I totally forgot to mention was "The Importance of Being Ernest", but Oscar Wilde. Actually, all of Oscar Wilde is pretty good, one fo my favourite playwrights/authors.

I just started reading "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. It's about people living in India in the mid 70's under Indira Gandhi. So far it's pretty good, but I just picked it up last night, so haven't gotten very far into it.

I think there should be a JREF book club, if only because they already have a political book clue.

[TriangleMan]

The Tale of Genji by Murisaki Shikibu
-- The Confessions of Lady Nijo (only if you like Genji)
The Mahabharta
The Ramayana
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Qur'an

More contemporary works that I haven't seen on the list . . .

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
many stories by H.P Lovecraft

some non-fiction that really made me think

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
No Logo by Naomi Klein