# 1000 Books You Would Save **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 4, 2009, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589 "2009-10-04T21:54:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wargamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Wargamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wargamer)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/61 "2009-10-07T15:21:33Z")
1. Holy Bible: New International Version 2. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins. 3. And Tango Makes Three 4. The Boy Scout Handbook 5. Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle 6. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby 7. A Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein 8. American Civil Engineers Handbook. fifth edition 1930’s 9. foucault’s pendulum. umberto eco 10. Hitchiker’s guide to the Galaxy 11. The Baring-Gould Version of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes 12. 101 Uses for a Dead Cat 13-17. Bloom County Complete Library Volumes 1-5 13. On The Road - Kerouac 14. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - Thompson 15. Billions and Billions - Carl Sagan 16. Happy Endings - Jim Norton 17. Notes From Underground - Dostoevsky 18. Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand 19. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, Annotated 20. A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens 21. The collected works of Lope de Vega. 22. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 23. US Army Field Manual: Wilderness Survival 24. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein 25. Henley’s Formulas For Home And Workshop 1927 ed 26. The Bible, in the original Hebrew 27. The Influence of Seapower upon History, Alfred Thayer Mahan 28. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy 29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck 30. An Transition to Advanced Mathematics, Smith, Eggen, St. Andre 31. Euclid’s Elements 32. Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury 33. Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 34. The Waste Land, TS Eliot 35. Principia Mathematica, Newton 36. War and Peace, Tolstoy 37. Night, Elie Wiesel 38. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry 39. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway 40. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 41. Desolation Island (Master and Commander #5), Patrick O’Brian 42. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth 43. Moby Dick, Herman Melville 44. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 45. 1984, George Orwell 46. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 47. HP Lovecraft: The Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft 48. The Oxford History of the American People, Samuel Eliot Morison 49. Almanac of American History, James Miller and John Thompson 50. Essais, by Michel de Montaigne 51. Oxford English Dictionary 52. The Complete Far Side 53. Watchmen, Alan Moore 54. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (1996 expanded edition) 55. Animal Farm, George Orwell 56. Encyclopaedia Britanica, 1958 edition. 57. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition 58. Origin of Species, Charles Darwin 59. Koran (Why just the Bible?) 60. the Bhagavad Gita 61. Ulysses - James Joyce 62. the Iliad - Homer 63. the Odyssey - Homer 64. Hero with 1000 Faces - Joseph Campbell 65. The Eye of Argon - Jim Theis 66. The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks 67. On the Beach, Nevil Shute 68. The Kama Sutra 69. The Art of War - Sun Tzu 70. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut 71. Your Favorite Seuss: A Baker’s Dozen by the One and Only Dr. Seuss 72. The Second World War Winston Churchill 78-84. The Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling 73. Oh, the Places You’ll Go, Dr. Seuss 74. The Westing Game, Ellin Raskin 75. The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs 76. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 77. Matilda, Roald Dahl 78. How to Eat Fried Worms, Thomas Rockwell 91-95. The Straight Dope collection, Cecil Adams 79. Know It All!, Ed Zotti 80. 1421, Gavin Menzies 81. Holy Bible, King James Version 82. His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman 83. Bleak House, Charles Dickens 84. Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin 85. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 86. The Art Of War By Jomini 87. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 88. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie 89. Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, P.G. Wodehouse 90. Lord of the Flies, William Golding 91. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 92. The Princess Bride, William Goldman 110-116. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis 117-119. Dante’s Divine Comedy 93. First Aid, The American Red Cross 94. Victory Gardens, US Dept. of Agriculture 95. The Physician’s Desk Reference - Let’s be REALLY practical here… ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/62 "2009-10-07T16:41:54Z")
Are we each adding as many books as we like, or one? Some folks are dumping a list, others a multi-book series (not sure how that ties in with the OP’s term “_individual_ books.” I’d nominate _Guns, Germs, and Steel,_ Jared Diamond. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/63 "2009-10-07T23:47:28Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Are we each adding as many books as we like, or one? Some folks are dumping a list, others a multi-book series (not sure how that ties in with the OP’s term “_individual_ books.” > > I’d nominate _Guns, Germs, and Steel,_ Jared Diamond. No more than 10. ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/64 "2009-10-08T07:35:02Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > No more than 10. So I get 10 more? 1. Il Principe, Niccolò Machiavelli ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Credible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a8b319/32.png) [@Justin\_Credible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Credible)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/65 "2009-10-08T12:16:06Z")
1. The Hobbit 2. Treasure Island 3. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney Translation 128-131. Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin ---
**Author:** ![Incref](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f17d59/32.png) [@Incref](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incref)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/66 "2009-10-08T12:37:32Z")
1. A Short History Of Nearly Everything- Bill Bryson ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/67 "2009-10-08T12:40:08Z")
A few post-apocolyptic novels might be nice, so as to give lessions on what to do and not. Plus, 100 years after that, people can look and say, "Wow, that turned out completely differently! To that end: 1. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phillip K. Dick ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/68 "2009-10-08T12:48:31Z")
1. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, annotated by Martin Gardner 2. The Guns of August: Barbara Tuchman ---
**Author:** ![foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9a140/32.png) [@foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolscap)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/69 "2009-10-11T17:47:17Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > 1. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, annotated by Martin Gardner > 2. The Guns of August: Barbara Tuchman 1. grays anatomy 2. history of the world by H.G.Wells A little hard to find these days, but, one of his best. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/70 "2009-10-11T22:36:07Z")
1. _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, James Joyce 2. _Candide_, Voltaire 3. _Walden; or, Life in the Woods_ – Henry David Thoreau 4. _All the King’s Men_, Robert Penn Warren ---
**Author:** ![foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9a140/32.png) [@foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolscap)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2009, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589/71 "2009-10-16T01:38:16Z")
> [@foolscap](#): > > 1. history of the world by H.G.Wells A little hard to find these days, but, one of his best. 1. The Outline of history by H,G.Wells Oops…I made a mistake. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1000-books-you-would-save/512589.md?page=3)