Of course I forgot to give credit to deptstoremook for the first edition, which happened to be superior to this thread in that it included why the book was listed as required reading.

Well, you get the idea. The original thread contained many great books to provide totseans with reading suggestions.

The longer your list, although quality over quantity is always better, the more helpful and interesting this thread will be to everyone.

Wow, there are already well over two hundred books on the list.

I'm disappointed that the original was deleted without any notice for bumping.

For those of you that don't realize it, there is no order to this list.

The Illiad

The Odyssey

Ulysses (Anything by Joyce)

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Complete Works of Shakespeare

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

Animal Farm

1984

Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

Brave New World

Angela's Ashes

The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

The Deptford Trilogy

The Bible

Frankenstein

Catch 22

Catcher in the Rye

Two Solitudes

Paradise Lost

The Death of Ivan Illytch.

Dracula

LOTR (Anything by Tolkien)

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy (Anything by Douglas Adams)

The Republic

The Allegory of the Cave

Jane Eyre

The Things They Carried

Beloved

Crime and Punishment

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Sun Also Rises

Fahrenheit 451

Fight Club

Gods Debris

Tao of Jeet Kune Do

H4rrY p0tt3R!!! OMG!! l0lz0rz!11!

Heart of Darkness

The Poisonwood Bible

All Quiet on the Western Front

Anything by Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Flowers for Algernon

The Color Purple

Qu'ran

Torah

Anything by William Faulkner

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Leaves of Grass

Anything by Robert Frost

Anything by Emily Dickinson

Things Fall Apart

On the Road

Slaughterhouse-Five

Anything by Nietzsche

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Point Counterpoint

Jennifer Government

Of Human Bondage

The Moral Animal

Non-Zero: The Sum of Human Logic

The Disposessed

The Razor's Edge

Temporary Autonomous Zone

Power of One

A Christmas Carol

Anything by Einstein

The Chronicles of Narnia

Noteable Historical Trials (Vol. 1-4)

No Man is an Island: A Selection of Prose of John Donne

Anything by Voltaire

Anything by Thoreau

The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference

Culloden

Glencoe

Aeneid

Moby Dick

Anything by Will Ferguson (If you're Canadian)

Business Communication: Process & Product

Neuromancer

Anything by Poe

The Egyptian

Anything by Orwell

The Farseer Saga (Anything by Robin Hobb AKA Megan Lindholm)

The Wheel of Time

Anything by T.H. White

A Song of Fire and Ice

The Sword of Truth

Anything by Tad Williams

Anything by David Eddings

Anything by Frank Herbert (Dune Series in Particular)

Anything by Raymond Feist (Riftwar Saga)

The Darksword Trilogy

The Death Gate Cycle

Sword of Shannara

Rose of the Prophet

Anything by Michael Moorcock

Incarnations of Immortality Series

Anything by Steven Brust

Tales from the Earthsea

Tales of the Otori

The Glass Bead Game

The Prince

The Art of War

Anything by Jung

Anything by Marx

Metamorphosis

Gulliver's Travels

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Oedipus Trilogy (Sophocles)

Gulliver's Travels

Dante's The Divine Comedy (especially Inferno)

Origin of Species

Anything by Dickens

Anything by Jules Verne

Don Quixote

This Side of Paradise

The Wealth of Nations

The Time Machine

The Three Musketeers

Faust

The Dumas Club

Long Walk to Freedom

Anything by Hunter S. Thompson

In the Skin of a Lion

Coming up for Air

The Motorcycle Diaries

The Histories (Herodutus)

Song of Solomon

Shibumi

Breakfast of Champions

Despair (Nabokov)

Something Happened

Ivanhoe

Redwall

The Dharma Bums

The Divine Comedy

Selected Works of King

Anything by Kerouac

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Anything about science, history, or religion by Asimov

On War

Schindler's List

Grimm's Fairy Tales

Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales

The Arabian Nights

The Oxford Companion to English Literature

On the Good Life

Meditations

Democracy in America

History of Western Philosophy

The Wit of Oscar Wilde

A History of the English-speaking Peoples

Anything by Hawking

Silent Spring

Island

Ishmael

A Brief History of Everything

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Millionaire Machine

Common Sense Economics

Goals! by Brain Tracy

Man's Search For Meaning

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Anna Karenina

Bhagavad Gita

Sophocles

Siddharta

Dhalgren

Something Happened

God Knows

Endgame (Script)

Voss

A Short History Of Nearly Everything

Out of Darkness

The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop

Papillon

The Stars My Destination

Zop Wallop

Common Sense, the Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings by Thomas Paine

The Red and the Black

Anything by Balzac (Lost Illusions)

Anything by Lovecraft

Njal's Saga

Anything by Schopenhauer

Anything by Rousseau

Leviathan

From Here to Eternity

The Thin Red Line

Anything by Brian Greene

Anything by Hesse

Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

The Martian Chronicles

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Story of Philosophy by Durant

The Picture of Dorian Gray

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Ficciones

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Anything by Terry Pratchett

The Godfather

Rosemary's Baby

Anything by Philip K. Dick

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

L'Etranger by Albert Camus

Many more to come when I have a moment to think about it.

I'm going to update my list up front for incase/when this thread gets large to make it usable without taking the time to go through pages of posts.



[This message has been edited by Eudaemonistic_SOB (edited 04-22-2006).]

I must say:

The Great Gatsby.

1984.

Brave New World.

The Death of Ivan Illytch.

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

-Val

Anything written by Tolkien can't lose

Dracula - This book does start off rather tediously, but once you get into it, it becomes an absolutely fantastic read.

If someone doesn't mention 'Hitchikers guide to the galaxy' or any of the other books in that 'series' - i shall commit virtual suicide on behalf of Douglas Adams.

Yikes, also - The Republic and The allegory of the cave. Can't hurt to have some philosophical input.

arx_



[This message has been edited by arx (edited 07-20-2005).]

Angela's Ashes

Jane Eyre

Julius Caesar

let try (((if possible))) to get down to a 15 or 20 book list that we can (or most of us) can agree on.

To start out everyone post their ideas, then later we'll start making cuts.

I disagree, I thought the book was terrible and the ending was a tremendous cop-out. I think a different author could have made it a much better story. It was incredibly dull and boring.

I'm also going to disagree with "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" simply because I'm not a fan of Shakespeare. I think everyone should read at least one of his works, though.

Definitely 1984 and Catch 22, also Tolkein's books.

Hmmm...

The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien, I think)

Beloved (Toni Morrison)

Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (at least one Hemingway should be included in here)

That's all for now. I'll post more later.

[This message has been edited by devil's haircut (edited 07-20-2005).]

No. This thread isn't a place to agree or find Printed Matter's favorite books.

This thread should include as many books that are worth reading as you can think of in order to give people ideas for what they might want to read.

[This message has been edited by Eudaemonistic_SOB (edited 07-20-2005).]

True the ending lacked any melodrama which was a typical theme running throughout the book. However, on a second read of the ending - it all becomes much clearer and the finer points shine out and make you appreciate it all the more.

Calling a book boring is a pointless exercise - that's just your opinion.

True another author may have been able to improve upon the work, but it was to Bram Stoker that this idea occurred, not to 'another author'.

arx_

Fahrenheit 451

Fight Club

Survivor

Choke

Gods debris

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Brave New World

Tao of Jeet Kune Do

H4rrY p0tt3R!!! OMG!! l0lz0rz!11!



JK is teh s00 much b3tt3r than teh sux0r Hemmingway!1@

Exactly, it's my opinion, which I stated. There's nothing pointless about stating one's opinion. If people didn't state opinions, this website wouldn't be here.

Here's my list (I know some of these have already been said, but eh):

•Lord of the Flies- William Golding

•Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad

•The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck

•1984- George Orwell

•Animal Farm- George Orwell

•The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver

•All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque

•The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain

•Flowers for Algernon- Daniel Keyes

•The Color Purple- Alice Walker

•The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and the Hobbit!)- J.R.R. Tolkien

•The Bible and perhaps the Qu'ran and/or Torah

Also, perhaps something by:

•Toni Morrison

•Edith Wharton

•William Faulkner

•Ernest Hemingway

•Edgar Allan Poe

I just haven't really read much by them yet.

I'm going to add "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman, and anything by Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson.

Only a partial list, also I left out anything that had already been said..

• Things Fall Apart Achebe

• On the Road Kerouac

• Slaughterhouse-five Vonnegut

• Go Tell it on the Mountain Baldwin

• Of Human Bondage Maughanm

• The Living Reed Buck

• The Good Earth Buck

• The Townsman Buck

• Song of Solomon Morrison

• Point Counterpoint Huxley

• Jacob’s Hands Huxley

• Jennifer Government Barry

• The Jungle Sinclair

• Death of a Salesman Miller

Especially Of Human Bondage...

I'll give TWO good tokens to whoever finds links me to the first set of books.

With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiweiz (sp?) is an amazing read despite being over 1,000 pages.

Great book! Love the game it inspired online:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Have to add:

The Moral Animal and Non-Zero: The Sum of Human Logic by Robert Wright.

and about 10 others, but it's 5:32 a.m. and I have to get ready for work.

The Disposessed, by ursual k leguin (must read for any wannabe anarchists)

The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham..

Hm, I include many of the books others have posted, so I won't repeat..

Oh, Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey

If it wasn't almost 7 am, I could think of more.. I'll come back to this later.

Oh I love those two!

I have to say the Harry Potter books is a great way to get children/young adults reading.

I really disliked The Great Gatsby unlike a few of you it seems..

Lord of the Flies - great book was one of my favorite that I studied at school.

Power of one - Bryce Courtenay



[This message has been edited by kAtE- (edited 07-22-2005).]

The giver, to add to the list.

I play nation states... or at least i uset to. it got old sorta fast.

A Christmas Carol.

Lord of the Flies.

Fahrenheit 451. Yes, definately.

About Time or some other book about relativity. Since Einstein and his theory are so famous and yet few know what it explains something so unexpected yet true.



[This message has been edited by Ecephalothorax (edited 07-22-2005).]

I agree with everything you just said. Especially the Great Gatsby bit. I hated that book.

Can you explain, intelligently, why in another thread?

hmm... my list seems distinctively different of the most... I think I blame that to getting not so many translated books here, and not just crappy taste :P

Tales from the Earthsea - Ursula le Guin

Tales of the Otori - Lian Hearn

About anything from Edgar Allan Poe

Crime and Punishment (or some other old russian piece of litterature)

Farseer saga - Robin Hobb, simply because the language is beautiful

Neuromancer and/or Mona Lisa overdrive - William Gibson

Midsummernights dream and the Tempest - Shakespeare (as if someone didnt know the writer)

The Egyptian (Sinuhe)- Mika Waltari

The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse

And if comic books are counted, Sandman series from Neil Gaiman

And, of course, most things from George Orwell, and everything from Tolkien

Well... I’m ashamed to say that I probably can't explain all that intelligently why I don’t like it. I actually didn’t even finish the book. (It’s the only school book that I haven’t, actually.) I stopped a few chapters from the end, a bit after the chick got run over by Gatsby.

And you know, maybe it wasn’t even the book itself that I disliked. Maybe I was just uncomfortable with the time period it depicted and how unhappy everyone was. The 20’s really was a shitty decade.

Or maybe it was something about the style.

As I said, I can't really explain intelligently. Just, something about that book kind of threw me off. I hated slogging through it.

Dr. T. J. Eckleburg was a nice touch though.

I think I’ll reread (and finish!) it sometime so I can better explain.

(Oh, and I didn’t think this post deserved a completely new thread, so I posted it here, but if you want, I can start a Great Gatsby thread.)

You don't like The Great Gatsby? That is one of the few books I liked from school.

Also, for some reason after doing a report on Robert Frost...I was really turned off by him.

I usually don't like Dickens, and I would suggest Ursela Le Guin, I mean I am reading her EarthSea series, which I read as a kid and I love them a lot.

Although the language isn't mistifying I still like it.

Well the thing that impresses me with your list is it's great variety. For instance putting Verne and Steinbeck, the Republic and the Koran together. All those books will appeal to different people at different times in their lives. For instance, I read everything I could get by Verne when I was little, much to the disdain of adults who thought I was faking. And I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was oh 16 or 17, and never got it. All it is a seething jew gloating over the collapse of gentile society. And the Republic is a mosterpiece, while the Quo'ran (sounds klingon) pretty much depends on a belief that the angel Gabriel came and dictated it to some lice encrusted raghead. And what is the 3Muskateers doing there? Besides being a cracking good read, I don't see why its "required". In fact I havent read half of those books, and most likely never will. Is it supposed to be campleat? What criteria did you use for drawing it up?

The Dumas Club - Arturo Perez Reverte, and yes, that is Dumas as in Alexandre.

Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandella.

The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje

1984, Animal Farm and Coming up for Air - All by Orwell, and I cant believe how few people have read Coming up for Air, one of his greatest.

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.

Travelling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary - Alberto Granado.

The Iliad and the Oddysey - Homer.

The Histories - Herodutus

I dont like saying this is "required reading" as I dont think anyone should be required to do something they dont want to do, but I think everyone can learn a lot from those books.

as i lay dying (faulkner)

song of solomon (morrison)

invisible monsters (palahniuk)

shibumi (trevanian)

the loo sanction (trevanian)

breakfast of champions (vonnegut)

the clan of the cave bear (auel)

fahrenheit 451 (bradbury)

despair (nabokov)

catch 22 (heller)

something happened (heller)

finnegan's wake (joyce)

a portrait of the artist as a young man (joyce)

ivanhoe (scott)

redwall (jacques)

mossflower (jacques)

a wrinkle in time [and the rest of that series](l'engle)

bless me ultima (anaya)

edit:

the dharma bums (kerouac)

slaughterhouse five (vonnegut)

1984 (orwell)

any other vonnegut stuff

any other palahniuk stuff

the divine comedy (alighieri)

pet sematary (king)

the shining (king)



[This message has been edited by cheapandugly (edited 07-23-2005).]

Anybody have some non-fiction to offer up?

the autobiography of malcolm x (haley)

that's the only completely interesting non-fiction i've tackled in quite a while

but how bout historical fiction...

trinity, and mila 18 (uris)

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Anything about science, history, or religion by Asimov. The art of war by Sun-tze. On War by Clausewitz. The Republic by Plato.

The Webster ? Nah, seriously, Schindler's list, by Thomas Keneally (?), and Five Rings.

Btw, would anyone here know who wrote the latter one? Or is it only known as 'that asian dude'?

[This message has been edited by LockeTM (edited 07-25-2005).]

Musashi?

The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking.

Chicken Soup series, various.

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson.

Any Old Iron, Anthony Burgess.

I would recommened Island by Aldous Huxley. I enjoyed it alot more than Brave New World to be honest. I'll also recommend A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilbur, and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

A few on my list were non-fiction, The Histories, for example, is the primary source of information when looking at the ancient Spartan and Persian empires. Long Walk to Freedom is DEFINATELY non-fiction. It is required reading on any level, as his plight is one of the most important for the African people.

Also The Motorcycle Diaries and Travelling with Che Guevara are non fiction as well, and well worth a read for anyone who actually wants to understand the nature of Che.

If you mean The Giver by Lois Lowry, then I have to disagree. I loved this book when I was 11 but it by no means a signifigant or even particularily good book. Although it is simple and short, it is a good read for younger people, younger being between the ages of 10-14.

how about the unbearable lightness of being?

and the electric koolaid acid test?

i don't really care enough to read everything, but if the world according to garp isn't on there, it should be.

I just read that list for the first time, and Farseer Saga jumped out at me... but I didn't recognize it as such. I was thinking of Robert J. Sawyer's Far-Seer trilogy... really, anything by Sawyer is brilliant. Not one of his stories has disappointed me.