What books are essential reading?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

What books should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in reading?

[vordhosbn]

An Alphabet book?

[ydoaPs]

Catcher In The Rye

Ender's Game

Speaker For The Dead

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

Rethinking Life and Death

[randomc]

Not a book, but anyway Orwell on How To Spot A Bullshitter, basically.

http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html

 

People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning--they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another--but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you--even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent-and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.

Edited May 7, 2010 by randomc

[tomgwyther]

What am I trying to say?

What words will express it?

What image or idiom will make it clearer?

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Could I put it more shortly?

Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

 

I really like this, could it be incorporated into the forum rules? Could it be incorporated into the new forum logo?

 

On the subject of essential reading, off the top of my head, I'd go with

Jostien gaarder - Sophies World (For the younger scientific mind)

Bill Hicks - love all the people

Roger penrose - Road to reality

Richard Dawkins - God delusion

Charles Darwin - Origin of species

Lao Tzu - Tao te ching

Stephen Hawkin - A brief history of time

An atlas and a dictionary

[insane_alien]

a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

 

hardly as classy as dracula or a portrait of dorian grey but it is a good book and provides a humurously accurate reflection of the mind of humans.

 

on a do not read list, i'd have to include war and peace. it's crap. i'm currently forcing myself to read it and i'm not enjoying it at all. i don't care for any of the characters, the plot is quite frankly boring and things happen so slowly its just like watching the hour hand of a clock going round. i keep waiting for something worth it to appear but it never does.

[Variola]

To add too the already great books recommended above ( especially H2G2!)

 

Bill Bryson- A brief history of everything.

 

New Scientist-Does anything eat wasps? Excellent for anyone not familiar with science.

[StringJunky]

"The Revenge of Gaia" James Lovelock. Whoever I've lent my copy to has said everybody should read it. Very difficult to argue against anthropocentric climate change when one has done so. Great intro for lay readers to the concept of the Earth as a self regulating System.

[divagreen]

"The Revenge of Gaia" James Lovelock. Whoever I've lent my copy to has said everybody should read it. Very difficult to argue against anthropocentric climate change when one has done so. Great intro for lay readers to the concept of the Earth as a self regulating System.

 

I have been wanting to read that book!

 

I always lend out The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Socrates to Sarte: A History of Philosophy by Samuel Enoch Stumpf. Two of my favourite.

[Double K]

Meditations : Marcus Aerilius

A Game of Thrones (series of 7): George R. R. Martin

Glamorama: Brett Easton Ellis

1984: Orwell

[bascule]

Snow Crash and Neuromancer, but maybe I'm just biased

[Genecks]

What books should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in reading?

 

I'd have to say that a person should have a background in grammar, logic, style, and symbolic interpretation. By symbolic interpretation, I mean a background in finding ways to understand something as something else. For instance, an old man is not just an old man, he symbolizes wisdom and the passing of time. A person needs to find books that will help with critical reading skills.

 

By beefing up one's skills in critical reading, reading becomes somewhat easier.

 

In an academic setting, however, the emphasis is on memorization, recall, and application of read material. For the autodidact, I would say he/she should emphasize on those things, but he/she should at least emphasize memorization and recall in an attempt to prove he/she "learned" something.

 

In general, a foundation of reading materials should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in reading.

Edited May 25, 2010 by Genecks

[nycjosh]

Bill Bryson- A brief history of everything..

 

classic imo

[Mr Skeptic]

I'm reading 1984 by Orwell. It's a very orwellian book, I must admit. Essential reading for us more paranoid types or for those who are not paranoid enough. (incidentially, 1984 is also my birth year).

[vordhosbn]

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength

[DJBruce]

Must Read

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead- Tom Stoppard (You will probably want to have read Hamlet first)

The Federalist Papers

Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky

The World is Flat- Thomas L Friedman

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

The Divine Comedy- Dante Alighieri

As a recommendation by Thomas Jefferson I highly recommend taking a few moments on every July 4th to read The Deceleration of Independence.

 

Read

How to Read Literature like a Professor- Thomas C. Foster

A Tale of Two Cities- Boz

The Music of the Primes- Marcus Du Sautoy

1984- George Orwell

Grapes of Wrath- John Stienbeck

My Antonia- Willa Cather

Candide- Voltaire

[ydoaPs]

The Great Gatsby? Really? Eww.

[blanchardd]

Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

[dethfire]

I would recommend: Shogun, Lady in the Lake, Razors Edge, Be Here Now, The Power of One, Life of Pi

 

Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I just finished that, quite good!

Edited September 16, 2010 by dethfire

[Serena2003]

Wow where to begin?

 

War and Peace-Tolstoy

A History of English Speaking Peoples(series)-Churchill

The Odyssey-Homer

Decent of Man-Darwin

Chronicles of Narnia-Lewis

David Copperfield-Dickens

Oliver Twist-Dickens-Complete Sherlock Homes-Doyle

Uncle Tom's Cabin-Stowe

Candide-Voltaire

A Christmas Carol-Dickens

Lord of the Rings Trilogy-Tolkin

The Canterbury Tales-Chancer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer-Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Twain

Beowulf

Interpretation of Dreams-Freud

Animal Fam-Orwell

1984-Orwell

Complete Essays-Orwell

A Treatise of Human Nature-Hume

Apology-Plato

Beyond Good and Evil-Nietzsche

Island of Dr. Monreau-Wells

Alice in Wonder Land/Through the Looking Glass-Carroll

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz-Baum

Anything by Shakespeare

The Second World War-Churchill

 

 

The list goes on and on.....

Edited September 17, 2010 by Serena2003

[kristina221]

All from the above + Boccaccio: Decameron

And that's only the tip of an iceberg...

[Eric M.]

If you are looking for essential reading for popular science, I would point you to A Nerd's Guide to Reading at:

http://nerdsguidetoreading.com/Nerds_Guide_to_Reading/Popular_Science.html

 

This is how I found out about Chaos by James Gleick, and Sam Harris' new book on Free Will (which I would recommend to anybody).

[CyberFlo]

I love the Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo and Og Mandino's Great Trilogy by Og Mandino.