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'Must-Have Books'

Jas

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

Neuromancer by William Gibson.
 
Dredred said:
I like this thread. I never know what to read.

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

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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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
 
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.
 
Piscivore said:


Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Farenheit 459, Ray Bradbury
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
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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
 
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
 
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.
 
Piscivore said:
I couldn't finish this, I found it insipid and boring.
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Really? I know some people have had trouble getting through the beginning where he's describing his name, and life in the zoo.


Overrated.
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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.
 
Jas said:
Really? I know some people have had trouble getting through the beginning where he's describing his name, and life in the zoo.
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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.
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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.
 
SezMe said:
Godel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter
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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.
 
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.
 
The Brothers Karamozov by Feodor Dostoevsky

The Conformist by Alberto Moravia
 
I'm just going to have fun with this one:

Superman-Red and Superman-Blue
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)
 
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.
 
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