Curses. Rabbit, Run[.
That is all.
Oh, damn. And anything by Pam Houston. Especially Waltzing the Cat. And Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. And A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.
Okay, now I’m really done. I think.
~mixie
Please disregard the extraneous bracket, also seen as the typo in my effing correction.
The Harry Potter books
A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
History of Sex by Reay Tannahill
History of Food by Reay Tanahill (I will spell her name different ways here so I have a chance of getting it right.)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
The Collected Works of Mark Twain ( I favor Pudinhead)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
I just took two Tylenol PMs as I have strep throat and can’t sleep. I am feeling very woozy. I am sure I will look at this list tomorrow and want to change it a hundred different times.
I never thought to include children’s books, unless Huckleberry Finn counts.
I would then include The Black Stallion or any of the other wonderful horse tales by Walter Farley. My favorite teacher of all time read several of them to us in class over a whole school year, and then I read them all myself. Mrs. Henricks (whom I dearly loved) got me interested in reading, for which I am grateful to her.
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Dune (read the whole series) - Frank Herbert
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
A Room with a View - EM Forster
Siddhartha - by Hermann Hesse
Shakespeare (I adore Will)
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Tennessee Williams (all works)
EB White (all works)
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Ooops…I couldn’t possibly be expected to keep to ten…lol.
The thread is about 10 books ALL people should peruse, not just books that were solely important to you… dude.
:rolleyes:
Oh, I’m so sorry. God forbid I didn’t pull out my big book of Books You’ll Never Give a Damn About and Probably Won’t Mean a Rat’s Ass to You.
I bow before your literary elitism.
:rolleyes:
I refute the concept that there is such a thing as a book that all people should read. What you’re talking about is that hoary old myth - The Literary Canon…which has traditionally been a list of books by dead white guys.
Reading, and the value that comes from it, are highly subjective. Race, Religion, Class, Gender, Affectional Preference, etc, etc, etc, all impact how a particular book will be interpretted and therefore the value to be gained from it. We can’t definitively say “These are the best books”, the best we can ever do in recommend books that have touched our hearts and minds. In the process of doing that, some books will be nominated enough times (as we’ve seen here with To Kill A Mockingbird and Ender’s Game) to a achieve a special “short list” status.
I also feel that trying to draw a line between Literature (note the capital L) and popular fiction is a meaningless exercise in elitism. It, in effect, says that anything approved of and enjoyed by the masses cannot be Art. I’ve never been comfortable with that kind of classist elitism.
Is there a difference between, say, your average bodice-ripper and Shakespeare? Oh hell yes. But that doesn’t mean that a book that just happens to be a bodice ripper can’t also have that undefinable spark that engages the mind and heart of the reader in the same way as Merry Wives of Windsor (which was pretty baudy stuff and greatly appreciated by an audience that hadn’t been trained yet that it wasn’t appropriate to yell the 16th century equivilent of HUBBA HUBBA at the “actresses”).
I stand by my earlier endorsement of Stephan King’s Four Seasons. Just because you’re likely to find it in an airport bookstore does not mean that it is not well crafted, nor that it has nothing profound to say about the human condition.
Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
1984 - George Orwell
The Last Hurrah - Edwin O’Connor
Zorba The Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis
The Bridge on The Drina - Ivo Andric
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Prince - Machiavelli
Schindler’s List - Thomas Keneally
Stephen Jay Gould (rip!) belongs here, too, next to Carl Sagan & Stephen Hawking. Any of his books would be a great choice.
I also think it’s time to dispense w/this “no religion” thing - gimme a break, everything that’s really meaningful includes a God quotient in there somewhere. Besides I see Siddhartha slipping thru. The Bible is a no-brainer, how could that not be on the short list?
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Illusions - Richard Bach
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
(and I’d also like to second about half of the books already listed here, and thank people for the other half which I now need to go read!) (except for Moby Dick, that’s sadistic)
Some amazing books have already been mentioned, but I’m just going to repeat the ones with which I agree.
In no particular order:
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- The Little Prince by St. Exupery
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- Master and Margarita by Bulgakov
- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
- Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
I know it’s ‘your’ OP, but if you dismiss writers and books because you think they might merely be entertainment, how would you know if they contain ‘something profound’ about humanity?
Stephen King, while entertaining most of the times, has certainly explored some darker sides of what it’s like to be human. I would even say that I’d rather read him for a look at evil, than plow through Dante’s Devine Comedy. King won’t be on my list, mainly because I think one pick up bits and pieces from reading a lot of his books. And you asked for ten books, so I won’t say “everything by X.Y.” but limit myself to writing that I indeed think are a must:
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
The Perfume - Patrik Süsskind
American Tabloid - James Ellroy
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
Underworld - Don De Lillo
Cider House Rules - John Irving
Something Happened - Joseph Heller
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
A Perfect Spy - John Le Carré
I didn’t bring up any books that were suggested earlier in the thread, since they have nominations allready. I omitted books to get one from each author. I wanted more of each and every one of them. I’ve read them all, they’re in the bookshelf. It’s all great literature, while at the same time highly entertaining.
I realize that this is increcibly subjective, and I appreciate that some folks have at least attempted to justify their choices, but someone is going to have to explain why The Fellowship of the Ring keeps showing up. Of all the books ever written, I find it difficult to swallow that Tolkein is someone EVERYONE should read.
I think Cosmos by Carl Sagan should be required reading for all high school students. Probably my favorite book.
The DVD collection of the PBS TV series is also very good.
I am going to stick with fiction so…
The Mansion William Faulkner
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
Prometheus Bound Aeschylus
The Odyssey Homer
Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein
Crime and Punishment Dostoyevky
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
OK, so I am stopping at eight, but only because choosing is becoming so difficult!!
Because this is the SDMB? 
It’s obvious to anyone who hangs out here that we’re pretty heavy on people into gaming, fantasy, paganism, etc. Especially so in Cafe Society.
Ah, the ever present geek factor.
Well, Tolkien’s books are the only ones that reference the dozen (dozens of?) languages that he invented. So from a linguistic standpoint, it could make a top 10 list.