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Ask Slashdot: What Are the Books Everyone Should Read?
dpu writes "Part of my New Year's resolution is to encourage reading as a hobby in those around me — especially my friends' children (ages 2 to 22), but my wife and I as well. There is a lot of 'classic' literature out there I'm familiar with, and will be promoting to the short masses here (Fahrenheit 451, To Kill A Mockingbird, In The Heat of the Night, Huckleberry Finn, Cryptonomicon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Wrinkle In Time, When Rabbit Howls, etc.), but I know many of you are much better read than I am. What recommendations would you make? What are the books that everyone should read? I don't care if it's been banned by schools, burned by communists, or illuminated by 15th century monks. If you think everyone around you should read it, I'd love to know about it."
0. THE BIBLE
1. Homer’s Iliad
2. Homer’s Odyssey
3. Exodus & Ecclesiastes & The Psalms
4. Virgil’s Aeneid
5. Socrates’ Apology
6. The Book of Matthew & Jefferson’s Bible
7. Plato’s Repulic
8. Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic
9. Aristotle’s Poetics
10. Dante’s Inferno
11. The Declaration of Independence
12. The Constitution
13. John Milton’s Paradise Lost
14. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
15. Newton’s Principia
16. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
17. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
18. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (& all of his work)
19. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
20. Ludwig von Mises’ A Theory of Money and Credit
21. F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
22. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
23. Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity
24. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth
25. Ron Paul’s Revolution & End the Fed
26. THE BIBLE
Start with the Gospel of John and then Romans.
But really, make sure The Bible is on the list. Actually having read it opens up a tremendous world of understanding of other art and literature, regardless of one's religion.
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Just for once, read the f'ing manual.
Sure, if you think that reading should be an exercise in excruciating drudgery.
That book bored me to tears, resulting in my finally giving up and throwing it in the trash.
GÃdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Godel, Escher, Bach is not a simple read. The ideas are complex and the logic subtle. But it is a completely satisfying book, and reading it is one of those rare experiences when you leave feeling smarter than when you started.
its true, though I felt like a complete simpleton after reading it - its an awesome piece of writing. Its not something to read casually though, you're gonna have to think, a lot.
Animal Farm
Just as relevent now.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Dilemma
Christopher McDougall - Born to Run
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Posted too quickly and should have said why...
Stranger in a Strange Land - really stretches your mind. What is religion? What is humanity? Little questions like that.
Ender's Game - A great morality play; and a very exciting read.
Slaughterhouse Five - (or really anything and everything by Vonnegut. The guy is a great master, and every one of his books will open your mind.)
The Hobbit - Okay, not Sci Fi, but a great book on greed. Pure and simple. Or perhaps not so simple.
Aristoi - A deep look into a future of plenty, where society needs rigid controls to prevent a nano tech disaster. Also great insights into mind-computer interfaces and where they can lead.
Consider Phlebas - A different take on a future of plenty, where society is so advanced, the artificial intelligences we have developed treat us like their pets.
Steel Beach - Yet another take on a future of plenty, more near-term, and about the angst it can engender.
The Peace War - Just read it.
Rather than thinking about books, I would think about authors. Mark Twain, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Friederich Nietzsche, Feodor Dostoevski, Tolstoi, Voltaire, Edgar Alan Poe, Pablo Neruda, etc.
by Richard Adams. I truly believe it helps people build empathy, and sympathize with animals and understand how frail and exposed they really are.
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"The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoyevsky. Characters and conflict that will really come alive in your mind.
"Foundation" by Asimov. Start of a really good sci-fi series. I read the entire book as if computers were described in the story all along, only to realize after I was done that he wrote the book before computers were even invented. Whoa!
"Israel" by Martin Gilbert. A fact-based history starting in late 19th century using Arabic sources that will make you shudder to realize how many lies are believed about the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict as well as the sheer magnitude of the current level of anti-Israeli propaganda (i.e. "news").
"Band of Brothers" by Stephen Ambrose. A great portrait of American heroes from The Greatest Generation. Better than the TV miniseries.
Daniel
How about if we all read different books? Then we'll have lots of different ideas to discuss. It'll be like we're thinking individually instead of just following along with the group.
A Confederacy of Dunces ...
Catch-22
Dharma Bums
Lord of the Flies
Momo
On the Road
Siddharta
The Golden Notebook
The Grapes of Wrath
The Razor's Edge
A Clockwork Orange
Brave New World
Player Piano
Slaughterhouse Five
Snowcrash
The Diamond Age
The Dispossessed
The Island
The Stand
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If someone tells you it changed their life, I'd just stop talking to them.
If someone told me any book changed their life, I'd start talking to them to find out more. If anything, such an event always makes for great conversation.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Sorry, I think Catcher in the Rye is worth the read. Not life-changing, but yeah, read it - worthwhile.
++On The Road - awesome book - might supplement it with some third-party history of the beats.
Recommend Dune in the Science Fiction realm. Take the series as far as you wanna - but at least Dune.
Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug is essential for the web developer, and I think "Simple and Beautiful" by Giles Colburne a close second. Maybe top it with "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman - you'll never look at a door handle the same way again.
Recommend for ANY coder Kernigan and Ritchie "The C Programming Language" - such a brief tome, and a comprehensive document on how to write in the language that rocked the world. Would be a good read for any tech writer, as well.
Whatever they say about Steven Ambrose (and they say a WHOLE lot...accusations of plagarism, f.e.), "Undaunted Courage" presents the Lewis and Clark expedition in Technicolor - if only they could teach with books of this quality.
If you're gonna read any Stephen King, gotta read The Stand, for the sweep of it.
I think Marx's Capital has aged somewhat better, in part because it's less a proposal of what to do, and more just a detailed analysis of how capitalism works. You can take that analysis and do whatever you want with it (embrace it, oppose it, etc.), but as an analysis it has a lot of interesting stuff.
The Communist Manifesto is interesting as history and rhetoric, but it's from a completely different context. Some of the stuff in it no longer makes much sense, e.g. even most modern Marxists are puzzled by the parts where it calls for a reversal of urbanization and a re-spreading of the population across the country. Other parts of it are now so mainstream that they're no longer seen as radical or communist, e.g. the part of the manifesto where it calls for abolition of child labor and introduction of free public schools.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As I read a lot of books, I've heard this question asked a couple of times before, so I've thought about it for a while and come to the conclusion that there's not really one book everyone should read. People are different, and they take different things from what they read. There are few books I've enjoyed as much as The Name of the Rose, but I also understand that that's because I love both Sherlock Holmes and the debate over realism/nominalism concerning universals in the middle ages -- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in my immediate family, because I know they would probably die of boredom before even finishing the introduction. They wouldn't get why the revelation at the end is so great, any of the philosophy, or even the Burgos-Borges link. The Name of the Rose's embeddedness in several different contexts contribute hugely to why I think it's such a good book, but if you lack those contexts it's really nothing more than an entropically extravagant piece of firewood. So perhaps "books I enjoyed" is not the right interpretation of "books everyone should read".
So perhaps non-fiction then. I'd love it if more people looked at the world scientifically, and there are definitely books that can teach you to do that. However, you can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn. You can make The Demon-Haunted World required reading, but you can't make someone actually think about what it says. Thinking is something you have to do by yourself, and if you don't want to think about something being forced to read a book isn't going to make you. So perhaps "books I think people should think like, or at least about" is not a proper interpretation of "books everyone should read" either.
What book someone should read depends on what they're interested in, what they already know, and what they've already read. If they like sci-fi they should read The Cyberiad, Neuromancer, Ted Chiang's short stories. If they like fantasy and have already read LotR, they should read Bridge of Birds and Perdido Street Station, to see what else can be done in that genre. If they like horror they should read Poe and Lovecraft. If they like thinking just because they should read Borges.
For every reader there's a book that they should read, but there's no book that everyone should read.
I care more about *how much* and *how often* you read, than *what* you read. If you read more than 50 books a year that tells me a lot more about you than the titles you read. I think everyone should read at least 20 books a year, with two or three genres of fiction and non-fiction represented. Once we get to that point, THEN we can argue what titles should be in the "canon".
This is not the middle ages, where a gentleman could return from university with a library of fifty or so books that'd do him for the rest of his life. There's just too much information in the world and entering the world to rely exclusively on a canonical list of titles. It's more important to be a habitual knowledge seeker who can take pleasure in reading.
And we need some kind of antidote to the 24 hour news cycle, in which the more people read or watch the less informed they become. That antidote is books, in large quantities.
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A Brave New World describes the current world much better than 1984 ever could. 1984 and Animal Farm are about Stalinism and control through fear. A Brave New World is about control through entertainment. The first is much easier to convince people to fight against; the latter is, apparently, impossible.
You clearly haven't read Capital, if you think it's a pipe-dream proposal, or a proposal at all. It's mostly just an analysis of capitalism; unlike the Communist Manifesto, it's not a proposal of or advocacy for any particular alternative.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
>You want your kids to have a positive outlook, be confident in their ability to solve challenges, read them good, hero fiction.
I agree, emphaisi on the good. And I think it's worth pointing out something somewhat unusual about The LotR and The Hobbit that make them particularly good- there's absolutely nothing special about the hero. He's just an ordinary guy who rises to the demands of extraordinary circumstances. No super powers, no magical birthright, no (pseudo-) divine messenger. Granted, the ring does bestow a powerful advantage, but one that comes at such a high cost (at least in LotR) that it's rarely invoked.
Superhero stories, from Beowulf to Superman, let children dream of being one of the Chosen Ones empowered to do great things. "Everyman" heroes show kids that you don't necessarily need magic powers or great deeds - sometimes a great hero is simply doing what must be done even though they'd much rather be comfortable at home. You tell me which is more likely to inspire a man do something heroic like betraying his government for the sake of his people.
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I've tried reading the Koran. So far, I've parsed the first eight Sura.
Even being a Christian and having significant historical knowledge of the Bible and its history, the Koran is still very, very difficult to understand for a westerner not familiar with the history of the Koran. There are significant direct references to Biblical, Arab, and Islamist events that are frequently made and referenced throughout its passages. Even more difficult are the indirect references. Many messages and commands require background knowledge in order to construct what is being said. If you want to study the Koran, you are best off taking a university course on it, or at least going to some community and/or Islamist center where the instructor knows and understands the material.
I found the Old Testament far more entertaining. Granted, all the lineages were a bit dry, and detailed blueprints of the Arc of the Covenant just don't help me day-to-day, ya know, but heck, collecting foreskins for a king to wed his daughter, that stuff's just good as gold!
I cant belive i didnt find "Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy" here. It has answers for everything.
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This should be required reading for everyone of junior high/high school age. It's basically a brief introduction to statistics, focusing on all the ways they are often misused. It's short, funny, and permanently changed the way I view news and politics. Once you know this stuff, you'll see examples everywhere, especially when partisans have an ax to grind. E.g., years ago I saw a group's study that purported to "prove" that California's taxes and regulations had no negative effects on businesses. Further investigation revealed that they studied only existing California businesses, not businesses that had closed down, or moved out of state, or never got off the ground. Um, sample bias?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
"1984" by George Orwell, which could be renamed "2014"
Notice how several of the above books have been banned at one point or another?
If you want a decent list of "must read" books a good starting point is to just read all the books
that have been banned at one point or another. By definition controversial books are a great
source of views "contrary" to the norm and are generally written in a way that opens your mind
and make you think otherwise there would have been no reason to ban them.
Before you start reading anything, do read Sagan's Demon-Haunted World first. It's a good introduction into telling lies and bullshit apart from stuff you can believe. I think scepticism and logic and scientific method are very lacking from today's education and peoples minds. This book takes a small step in fixing that.
As for other books worth reading- other comments have plenty of good suggestions.
--Coder