'Must-read' books
- Thread starter Renard
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Beardie
Well-Known Member
- Location
- Disneyland's twin town
"Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. Recently published guide to how to spot the bull**** in the media's reporting of science, and much else. Reads as easily as Bill Bryson (also highly recommended) and doesn't assume any understanding of science.
derall
Guru
- Location
- Home Counties
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
We - Yevgeny Zemyatin
Principia - Isaac Newton
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
We - Yevgeny Zemyatin
Principia - Isaac Newton
Chromatic
Legendary Member
- Location
- Gloucestershire
+1, although I tried twice. That guff about it changing the way you think about your life is right though, it made me think I shouldn't waste any more of my life ploughing my way through to the end of thoroughly tedious books.Uncle Mort said:
Flying_Monkey
Recyclist
- Location
- Odawa
Another impossible question!
I would certainly include The Master and Margarita and perhaps We. Whether anyone else would agree with other things I love, I don't know.
I'd have some poetry first of all: TS Elliot's The Four Quartets; Seamus Heaney's North; a collection of Ryokan's work, Minimal by Shuntaro Tanikawa; Mountains and Rivers Without End by Gary Snyder.
Nonfiction: The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho; The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesen; Murakami Haruki's Underground.
Short-story collections: definitely What we talk about, when we talk about love, by Raymond Carver; maybe Searoad by Ursula Le Guin.
Novels - how many am I allowed? Just a few random ones then... Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Strandloper by Alan Garner, Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and perhaps Kerouac's On the Road, not because it is a great work of ideas (it isn't) but because it is so full of careless, misfiring energy and the writing is great... Oh yes, and I would include Ulysses, if only for Molly's amazing orgasmic sentence.
There's lots more.
I would certainly include The Master and Margarita and perhaps We. Whether anyone else would agree with other things I love, I don't know.
I'd have some poetry first of all: TS Elliot's The Four Quartets; Seamus Heaney's North; a collection of Ryokan's work, Minimal by Shuntaro Tanikawa; Mountains and Rivers Without End by Gary Snyder.
Nonfiction: The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho; The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesen; Murakami Haruki's Underground.
Short-story collections: definitely What we talk about, when we talk about love, by Raymond Carver; maybe Searoad by Ursula Le Guin.
Novels - how many am I allowed? Just a few random ones then... Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Strandloper by Alan Garner, Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and perhaps Kerouac's On the Road, not because it is a great work of ideas (it isn't) but because it is so full of careless, misfiring energy and the writing is great... Oh yes, and I would include Ulysses, if only for Molly's amazing orgasmic sentence.
There's lots more.
threebikesmcginty
Corn Fed Hick...
- Location
- ...on the slake
I was Looking for a Street - Charles Willeford + any 'Hoke Mosely' books.
Michegan Roll, Double Down, Criss Cross - Tom Kakonis.
Anything written by Miles Gibson!
Michegan Roll, Double Down, Criss Cross - Tom Kakonis.
Anything written by Miles Gibson!
asterix
Comrade Member
- Location
- Limoges or York
PaulB said:
+1
(There, is that better?
mondobongo
Über Member
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Rider - Tim Krabbe
Big Deal (One Year as a Professional Poker Player) - Anthony Holden
(Written before the mass explosion of Poker when Poker was a little rougher around the edges and all the better for it. Interesting when he sees the Shrink to find out why he is actually driven to play. Does not assume you can play and explains well.)
The Rider - Tim Krabbe
Big Deal (One Year as a Professional Poker Player) - Anthony Holden
(Written before the mass explosion of Poker when Poker was a little rougher around the edges and all the better for it. Interesting when he sees the Shrink to find out why he is actually driven to play. Does not assume you can play and explains well.)
Cathryn
Legendary Member
- Location
- Marlborough, Wiltshire
dragon72 said:
I'm with Dragon on The Master and Margarita. WHAT a novel!!!! I liked both the others too, but on a different scale to the other one.
I'd add 'Troll, a love story' by Johanna Sinnisalo. Very dark, VERY weird but totally awesome!!
None of the foregoing, with the exception of Ogri, Newton and Joyce. And I'm not sure about Newton. Actually, skip Newton. Take my word for it - those planets are going round in circles, the apple will fall, and nobody can curve a ball like Rivelino
The Wife of Bath's Tale by Chaucer. This is really where storytelling in English takes off...some sex
The Prince by Macchiavelli. Best book on politics. Winners and losers.
King Lear by Shakespeare An examination of personhood and the state that gets to the start line two hundred years before Hegel - prose that is packed so tight with thought that new words have to be made to fit. Modern english starts here
Sonnet 110 by Shakespeare Where words are beautiful
Paradise Lost book 4 by Milton Much more on the State, good and evil, and beauty undone by itself. Sex.
The Elective Affinities by Goethe You want romance? You got romance. This is really the daddy of romance. Best of all this gets you out of reading Faust which goes on and on
Scarlet and Black by Stendhal. All kinds of quotes to impress the girls (or boys)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers by Thoreau. Forget all that Gabriel Garcia Marquez stuff. Good in it's way, but this is where nature as the twin of the spirit, given to the spirit by description really starts off. The beginning of our love affair with the world
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The other great novel. Writing about writing. Very clever, playing with language, not the great novel (which is Moby Dick) but an easier read.
Oliver Twist by Dickens The political novel. Not as good as Germinal or Great Expectation, but, as life is about winners and losers, why not read a novel that won?
Pages 1 to 10 Sexus by Henry Miller. Probably the most knockout ten pages in all of English. Lots of sex
Swann's Way by Proust - either you will go on and read the rest or not, but until one has waited seventy pages for his mama to come up and kiss him goodnight, one simply has not lived.
The Death and Life of the Great American City by Jane Jacobs. Forget Calvino and Sennett. This tells you how it is, and how it might be.
Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich. You want hope? You got hope. This is why I ride a bike
There's a lot of books listed above that I love (not least The Snow Leopard which I received in a hut on top of a volcano serialised, as my friend Rod got through the book, and broke it up to give to me in pieces), but if one takes the question at face value, then you've got to go for the Big Stuff, the stuff that changed things.
The Wife of Bath's Tale by Chaucer. This is really where storytelling in English takes off...some sex
The Prince by Macchiavelli. Best book on politics. Winners and losers.
King Lear by Shakespeare An examination of personhood and the state that gets to the start line two hundred years before Hegel - prose that is packed so tight with thought that new words have to be made to fit. Modern english starts here
Sonnet 110 by Shakespeare Where words are beautiful
Paradise Lost book 4 by Milton Much more on the State, good and evil, and beauty undone by itself. Sex.
The Elective Affinities by Goethe You want romance? You got romance. This is really the daddy of romance. Best of all this gets you out of reading Faust which goes on and on
Scarlet and Black by Stendhal. All kinds of quotes to impress the girls (or boys)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers by Thoreau. Forget all that Gabriel Garcia Marquez stuff. Good in it's way, but this is where nature as the twin of the spirit, given to the spirit by description really starts off. The beginning of our love affair with the world
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The other great novel. Writing about writing. Very clever, playing with language, not the great novel (which is Moby Dick) but an easier read.
Oliver Twist by Dickens The political novel. Not as good as Germinal or Great Expectation, but, as life is about winners and losers, why not read a novel that won?
Pages 1 to 10 Sexus by Henry Miller. Probably the most knockout ten pages in all of English. Lots of sex
Swann's Way by Proust - either you will go on and read the rest or not, but until one has waited seventy pages for his mama to come up and kiss him goodnight, one simply has not lived.
The Death and Life of the Great American City by Jane Jacobs. Forget Calvino and Sennett. This tells you how it is, and how it might be.
Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich. You want hope? You got hope. This is why I ride a bike
There's a lot of books listed above that I love (not least The Snow Leopard which I received in a hut on top of a volcano serialised, as my friend Rod got through the book, and broke it up to give to me in pieces), but if one takes the question at face value, then you've got to go for the Big Stuff, the stuff that changed things.
Baggy
Cake connoisseur
- Location
- Where the chevrons are
'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood.
Aperitif, you've genuinely listed the first two books I though of on looking at the title of this thread, both left a very lasting impression.
Aperitif said:
Aperitif, you've genuinely listed the first two books I though of on looking at the title of this thread, both left a very lasting impression.
beanzontoast
Guru
- Location
- South of The Peaks
Thoreau's Walden.
beanzontoast said:
I'd go for that, as an alternative to 'A week...'
What I forgot to mention is (prepare to take notes here) PROJECT GUTENBERG. This is a library kept, I think, by the University of Adelaide. You don't have to go out and buy this stuff, you can read it off your screen. If you're really wicked you can cut and paste bits of Proust which impresses Flying Monkey no end.
