Hello Straight Dope.
I hope that the title says it all.
If I am to read a book a week, for the next fifty two weeks, which books must I read to be ‘well read’ within one year?
John.
The Great Gatsby.
Great Expectations.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Books.
And lots of them.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four.” It’s a brisk read, and loaded with notable quotables.
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Delta of Venus and Little Birds by Anais Nin
Maurice by E.M. Forster
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Bible(It is important to read even if one is not an Xian)
The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Portable Dorothy Parker
This is all just off the top of my head…
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Tao te Ching by Lao-Tzu
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
There was a time a few hundred years ago when great scholars were familiar with all the major works that were available in their area.
In the 1900s several folks, such as Encyclopedia Britannica, tried to put together “Great Books”.
Taking a look at the different lists, even in the 1900s, let alone today, one is struck by how different they are. The “classics” of the 1800s are quite different than those of the 1900s.
You need to define what you want to be well read in: philosophy? poetry? plays? novels? children’s books? science fiction? autobiography?
Take Shakespeare or the Bible. You could easily spend a year getting conversant with either.
(In recent threads people identified which science fiction and children’s books they thought was most important.)
I think Jorge Borges, Mervyn Peake, and Antoine de Saint Exupery and Joseph Conrad are essential modern writers, but it’s just a single opinion.
PARLIAMENT OF WHORES by PJ O’Rourke
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING by Christopher Buckley
PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
CATCHER IN THE RYE by JD Salinger, but if you shoot anyone famous for being a phony afterwards, please ditch the copy before you get arrested
CANDY by Terry Southern
If you want to try some Shakespeare, my suggestions would be Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear, and The Winter’s Tale.
Also try some of these:
Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
In no particular order:
Ulysses, James Joyce
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Doestoevsky
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Faust, Johann Wilhelm Von Goethe
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Fathers & Sons, Ivan Turgenev
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Divine Comedy, Dante Aligheri
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
1984, George Orwell
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Information, Martin Amis
The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
King Lear, William Shakespeare
The Trial, Franz Kafka
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Naked Lunch, William S Burroughs
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Doestoevsky
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
Is that 52? I think it’s about 5-6 short, but there’s no way you’re getting through some of these books in one week, so if you can read all of the above in one year, more power to you.
SAustinTx
I’ve toyed around with the idea of doing what the OP suggests–trying to become “well read” within a certain period, that is–and thought I might use some critical survey of Western literature as a sort of guide and companion. Bloom’s The Western Canon and Paglia’s Sexual Personae are each standing on my bookshelf awaiting this duty. Is this a good idea? Would you suggest using one or the other, or something else?
“The Decameron” by Giovanni Bocaccio
“The Thousand Nights and the One Night” transl. by Sir Richard Burton
Both are books of short stories.
“Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque” by Edgar Allan Poe
More short stories
“Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
A very good novella.
“Moby Dick, or The White Whale” by Herman Melville
The best novel I have ever read.
Just some suggestions from me.
Umm… adding to this already distinguished list:
Plato’s the Republic
The Divine Comedy
The Canterbury Tales
Descartes’ Meditations
Brave New World
The Brother Karamazov
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek- Annie Dillard
Milton, Donne, Beowulf, T. S. Eliot, Tennyson, Hopkins…
The Bible. The Anchor Bible Commentaries are helpful companions for serious study, but Isaac Asimov’s two volumes of commentary are less intimidating.
The Iliad — Homer
The Odyssey — Homer
Ethics — Aristotle
Politics — Aristotle
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
The Divine Comedy — Dante
On Liberty — John Stuart Mill
Walden — Henry David Thoreau
The Story of Civilization — Will and Ariel Durant
If pressed for time (and I hope you’re not), read the first and last items above.
To be really general-
the primary text of your religion
some of the primary text of another religion
an introduction to world religions
the primary documents of your nation
a primary document of another nation
a basic history of your nation
a general world history
a primary text of your political orientation
a primary text of another political orientation
an intro to political thought
a classical epic, a classic novel, a respected but popular novel
lots of recognized poetry
I would insist on these books of the Bible- Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, I & II Samuel, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon,
Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Daniel, Malachi; a Synoptic Gospel (Matthew,
Mark or Luke), John, Acts, Romans, one other Paulist epistle, Hebrews, James, I John, The Revelation. A good children’s Bible story book might actually cover Gen, Exo, Deut, I-II Sam, the Gospels & Acts pretty well.
Also, at least one comedy & one tragedy by Shakespeare
The Declaration of Independence & the Constitution of the US
Karl Marx’s COMMUNIST MANIFESTO is not as essential as it was before
1990, but its not irrelevant yet, but even moreso now is an intro to
the Quran & Islamic thought & history.
I kept this general only because there are so many great books out there that appeal to so many diverse tastes & ideologies & focused on so many different nations that I can’t say that because you don’t read my faves, you’re not well-read. I am damn well-read by USA standards, a bit less so by British ones & not much at all when we get to non-English cultures.
Check out “How to Read a Book” by Charles Van Doren. He has a reading list that sounds like something your looking for. The book is a great read as well.
mccauley, granted there isn’t much to go on with your post, but there’s really a huge difference between being “well read” and being “culturally literate.”
I’ve never read Moby Dick. But I understand what it means to go after one’s white whale.
I’ve never read Lolita, yet I still know that it’s about a 40 year old man lusting after a 13 year old.
I’ve read Guns, Germs and Steel, yet if you had asked me just a year and a half ago who Jared Diamond was, I’d have just stared at you blankly.
The point is to be aware of what’s out there. You cannot possibly read it all. Not if you read 100 books a day. Not if you compiled a list like this one and followed it religiously.
Read what you want. Read when you want. Continually expand your horizons. Right now I’m reading a fantasy, a philosophy, and an astronomy book. I just thought they’d make good reads. None of the three are on anybody’s list so far but they’ve opened my mind to great writing and and even greater ideas.
When I’m done with them I still won’t be “well read.” Just…further along.
For anyone who has followed my posts lately, I’ve been a bit of a one trick pony, but that’s because I was deeply touched by the following book, which I read last week.
Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.
Read it, Grok it, Live it - Thou art God.
What? No mention of Mutiny on the Bounty?