26
May
2009
Twenty Books Everyone Should Read (and a few honorable mentions)
As requested, here’s my list of 20 books everyone should read.
In response to the supposed BBC list going around [on Facebook] about what books have you read, some of us have decided to come up with our own lists of books that you *should* read. Here’s mine. I think that I have reviewed most of them at www.bibliofreakblog.com (since these are my fav books I have refused to give them up, regardless of apartment size/cost of transportation, and so far for the blog I’ve mostly gone through books I have in my house).
1. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
2. Freakonomics by Stephen D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
3. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
4. Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell
5. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
6. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
7. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
8. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
9. At least one work of Shakespeare that is not Romeo and Juliet
10. The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
11. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
12. The Foutainhad by Ayn Rand
13. Paradise Lost by John Milton
14. The Illiad by Homer
15. Genesis, Exodus, the Four Gospels, and probably Acts, Romans, and Corinthians I & II and also I’d recommend Psalms, Isaiah, Revelations, and Song of Songs, really everyone should be Gen, Ex, and the Gospels because it informs much of the symbolism in our Western culture, regardless of the reader’s own personal beliefs
17. Something by Thich Nhat Hanh, my fav being Living Buddha, Living Christ
18. Girl by Blake Nelson
19. 1491 by Charles C. Mann
20. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Honorable mentions:
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Leaves of Grass by Robert Frost
Fear of Dreaming by Jim Carroll
Sisson’s Synonyms: an unabridged synonym and related-terms locater by A.F. Sisson
As this was originally posted on Facebook, here’s my friends’ comments…
I was just searching around about this when I discovered your post. I’m just visiting to say that I definitely liked seeing this post, it is very clear and well written. Are you thinking of posting more about this? It seems like there is more fodder here for more posts.
Great blog! Thanks for visiting Rose City Reader, because that is how I found you.
I keep track of all kinds of Must Read lists on my blog. This is my list of my current Top 10 Favorites. I won’t go so far as to say that I think everyone should read them, but I think they are pretty good.
(I keep getting error messages when I try to post this, so I apologize if it gets posted more than once.)