# What should I read to be well read in one year? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 14, 2002, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371 "2002-09-14T00:01:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mccauley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea5d25/32.png) [@mccauley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mccauley)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/1 "2002-09-14T00:01:19Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/2 "2002-09-14T00:24:34Z")
The Great Gatsby. Great Expectations. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. ---
**Author:** ![Tenebras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@Tenebras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tenebras)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/3 "2002-09-14T00:25:03Z")
Books. And lots of them. ---
**Author:** ![TheeGrumpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/4 "2002-09-14T00:40:32Z")
“Nineteen Eighty-Four.” It’s a brisk read, and loaded with notable quotables. ---
**Author:** ![Mockingbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mockingbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mockingbird)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/5 "2002-09-14T00:50:36Z")
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… ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/6 "2002-09-14T01:03:13Z")
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett The Tao te Ching by Lao-Tzu Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter ---
**Author:** ![partly\_warmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@partly\_warmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/partly_warmer)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/7 "2002-09-14T01:07:38Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/8 "2002-09-14T04:02:23Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/9 "2002-09-14T05:22:18Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Roadwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19b73/32.png) [@Roadwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadwalker)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/10 "2002-09-14T06:16:02Z")
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee ---
**Author:** ![SAustinTx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/57b2e6/32.png) [@SAustinTx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SAustinTx)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/11 "2002-09-14T06:41:19Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/12 "2002-09-14T14:22:57Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Forbin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5e9695/32.png) [@Forbin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Forbin)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/13 "2002-09-14T14:46:27Z")
“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. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/14 "2002-09-14T15:02:43Z")
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… ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/15 "2002-09-14T16:48:59Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/16 "2002-09-14T16:50:53Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2002, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/17 "2002-09-14T22:53:27Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/18 "2002-09-15T00:34:07Z")
**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. ---
**Author:** ![Mars\_Horizon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mars_horizon/32/2804_2.png) [@Mars\_Horizon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mars_Horizon)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/19 "2002-09-15T00:51:59Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Spit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/76d3ee/32.png) [@Spit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spit)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371/20 "2002-09-15T15:09:44Z")
What? No mention of _Mutiny on the Bounty_? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-read-to-be-well-read-in-one-year/128371.md?page=2)