Witchcraft at Salem by Chadwick Hansen – witchcraft really was practiced at Salem. Cotton Mather had virtually nothing to do with the trials. Lots of historians had pretty biased viewpoints. Hansen isn’t perfect, and I disagree with some of his interpretations, but he did wake me up to a lot about this bit of American History.
Salem Possessed by paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum – for completely different reasons. Draw a map of the area and plot rich/poor, accusers/accused, Loyalist/Separatist homes. eye-opening.
Not yet mentioned: Little, Big by John Crowley. I really want to reread Engine Summer some time and see how it holds up, because I recall it coming together just incredibly.
Your first three are on my list too. Add in Zen and the Art
Of a Fire on the Moon
Executioners Song
All Hunter Thompson works (my son’s middle name is Hunter)
Tom Sawyer must be on all lists.
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe … fascinating reporting on the hippie movement and its origins.
Hackers by Stephen Levy. A brilliant exposition on how the home computer came into existence. Nothing else even comes close.
Connections by James Burke. Demonstrates the happenstance and strange synergies that is behind the history of technology.
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. The Middle Ages were even worse than we thought! An excellent antidote to the lard-brained medieval fantasies you see in a lot of fiction.
I’ll second* Little, Big* by John Crowley. It’s been said that every modern fantasy novelist owes something to it, and I believe 'em.
I’ll second Der Tris’ nomination of the first six books of the Amber Chronicles. Brilliant mythos, great storytelling, interesting characters.
I can’t believe no one nominated A Light Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Mind-blowingly good science fiction, goes right back to the Big Ideas that made science fiction such compelling reading in the first place.
I tried reading this back in 1984, bogged down halfway through, and never finished it. I finally tried again a couple of years ago and found it totally enthralling, easily one of the most wonderful things I have ever read. Go figure.
Sorry nitpick: A Fire Upon the Deep. I came here to add that book. I haven’t read tons of science fiction, but I’ve read a fair amount and that is, by far, my favorite.
Already mentioned:
Sot-Weed Factor
Confederacy of Dunces
A Soldier of the Great War
Lord of the Barnyard - so glad someone else read and loved this. I never hear anything about it, but I’ve read it twice and it blows me away. Try reading the first sentence (page) and not continuing.
Not mentioned:
Infinite Jest - defines “brilliant” as far as I’m concerned.
The Brothers K, David James Duncan.
I’m going to throw in an outlier technical book, that is long obsolete unless it’s been updated:
The Hard Disk Companion by Peter Norton.
The workings of personal computers and file management was so crystal clear and thorough, and without any technobabble or academic language, that ever since I’ve become the non-IT computer expert everywhere I’ve worked.
The only ones I can add which haven’t been mentioned already are Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and Tolkiens’ The Children of Hurin. And I’ll also agree with Watership Down, Gödel, Escher, Bach, and Surely you’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.
I really need to read more Umberto Eco, too. The only thing I’ve read by him is The Name of the Rose, and that was excellent.
Hm, only one I can think of right now is Christine Garwood’s Flat Earth. The reasoning used by the flat-earthers should inspire a person to reconsider their own standards of evidence.
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake. It has the most luxurious, decadent language of any book I’ve ever read and uses that language perfectly. I learned more vocabulary words from the book than any other. More than that, however, the book’s use of imagery far exceeds anything else I’ve ever read. Peake’s ability to to spell out exactly what a scene looks like, down to small details, while still making it all interesting and readable, has never been matched as far as I know.
I will never get tired of that book. I’ve read it something like four times, and I ought to read it more. Great read.
Fiction:
-The Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett. Yeah, it has some clunkers, but overall it’s fantastic.
-Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
-To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
-Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King, but especially “1408”
Nonfiction:
-The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
-Denialism by Michael Specter
-Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
I love this book. Though for years I would quote “The sun was a red wafer pasted in the sky” until I recently reread it and learned it was “The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer” which is kind of silly, 'cause wafers aren’t usually pasted in the sky. But that tangent aside, the prose is just crazy-amazing.
