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  4 1 My feeling is every adult should just read 10 books. Doesn't matter what they are, trashy to high brow bullshit, if your reading something you are expanding yourself and using your brain. Too often adults get busy with life and don't have "time" to sit around and read. Basil answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  2 0 I'm taking "everyone" to mean, well everyone. -The Poisonwood Bible -Guns, Germs and Steel -The Selfish Gene -1984 -The Illustrated Man -The Color Purple -Midnight's Children -The Sun also rises -The Handmaids Tale -Lolita so-so answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 4 comments by Basil, David Wright, and so-so… 0 0 I second Guns, Germs and Steel. That book needs to be read by a LOT more people. Basil commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Disagree about Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's interesting to see how Diamond thinks, but it's very poorly supported. Diamond knows it too, so he spends quite a bit of time on rather unconvincing arguments about why he shouldn't be held to rigerous scientific standards. David Wright commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 David, do you have specific examples? I find that his major thesis, that cultural differences and history are in a sense a result of biogeography, has support. His subject overlaps quite a bit with my profession, and I thought his arguments and evidence were well thought-out. His thesis is in contrast to common cultural concepts of "race," the impact of which we shouldn't downplay. That he wrote an accessible book on the subject is the reason I included it. so-so commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Unconvincing arguments? So you aren't convinced by the concept of European civilizations success being dependent on a series of factors that were unique and beneficial to them as a society? Do you instead ascribe to a different theory that has more scientific support perhaps? Sticking with the tried and true method of Phrenology? Basil commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  3 1 Hoo boy...Let's see: The Duino Elegies - Rainer Maria Rilke The Divine Comedy - Dante Allegheri The Surgeon of Crowthorne - Simon Winchester (Titled "The Professor and the Madman" in America) The Doctor is Sick - Anthony Burgess The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami Red Sorghum - Mo Yan The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde The Magus - John Fowles London Fields - Martin Amis Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro I could keep going and going with this but these are some of the ones that really shaped the way I read. j_lee answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 2 comments by j_lee and virginia mason… 0 0 Also neglected to mention Middlemarch by George Eliot...which provides an outstanding portrait of early 19th century Britain. j_lee commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 I loved "Never Let Me Go." Too bad his other books seem boring. I tried reading Remains of the Day but couldn't get into it. virginia mason commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  3 1 East of Eden - John Steinbeck Lolita - Nabokov For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare Paradise Lost - John Milton Metamorphosis - Ovid The Odyssey - Homer (Uhh, yes, I was a liberal arts student, why do you ask?) Edited to add: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Flannery O'Connor The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury (or any of his short fiction) MyrnaMinkoff answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 1 comment by Chaos Routine… 0 0 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was written by Carson McCullers, not Flannery O'Connor. Both admirable southern female writers, but yeah...I've read the McCullers book (loved it - glad you mentioned it) but I haven't read anything by O'Connor. Yet. Chaos Routine commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  4 2 I really thought this was a dumb question because nobody over the age of 16 should be making or soliciting Top 10 Favorite lists besides Dave Letterman, Casey Kasem, and the editors of Tiger Beat. But I have to say--and I am anything but a PC cop--I am shocked at how overwhelmingly white and male a bibliography the Stranger's readership has produced thus far. Waugh, Morrison, the "Our Bodies" editors, two South Asians, two Japanese, and Garcia Marquez? That's it? Really? Nobody has thought to mention Virginia Woolf? Austen? Octavia Butler or Ursula LeGuin for you sci-fi geeks? I saw a shout-out to Conrad; how about a mention of "Midnight's Children" which would be amazing just for its embedded post-colonial reimagining of "Heart of Darkness." I can't believe how much this list resembles an Intro to the Western Canon syllabus from 1973. EDIT: I started composing my rant before so-so's and fnarf's answers, so maybe my judgments are skewed by a small sample size. But still. capicola answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  2 0 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy (it's actually 5 books), Douglas Adams And another 3 recommendations: The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson Both (or rather all 8) are absurdist fiction and a riot to read. nseattlite answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  5 4 "War and Peace" is a children's book. Read "Anna Karenina" instead. It's a proper novel. "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen. Every adult should know all of her works; THIS is how novels are constructed. Any of Dickens's biggies, "Oliver Twist", "Bleak House", "Great Expectations". Deservedly pillars. "Tristram Shandy" by Laurence Sterne. Postmodern lit 200 years before postmodernism. "Lolita", "Pnin", and "The Gift" by Vladimir Nabokov. The first of these is The Great American Novel. Virtually everything he wrote is virtuosic. "Zazie Dans Le Metro" by Raymond Queneau. A little slip of a thing, funny and perfect. "Life On The Mississippi", "Roughing It", "The Innocents Abroad" and especially "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". You're not an American if you haven't read these. "Lucky Jim", "Fat Old Englishman" and "The Old Devils" by Kingsley Amis. Britain's greatest 20th-century novelist (not his mediocre show-off son). Try to avoid translated works of fiction or poetry wherever possible, though I know I've included several here. The history field is vast, but I suggest you MUST read "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell (unsurpassable look at how the horrors of WWI influenced literature and culture) and "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson, probably the greatest work of American history ever written. "The Life and Times of Mexico" by Earl Shorris will help you understand our most important neighbor. Everyone should read some John McPhee, the greatest journalist ever. There are no bad ones -- you'll surprise yourself by how interesting "Oranges" is -- but his series on American landscape and geology is his masterpiece, especially the first one, "Basin and Range"; they are all collected in "Annals of the Former World". "The Control of Nature" is amazing as well. I don't think it's possible to understand the ecological history of the world without reading two books by Australian scientist Tim Flannery: "The Future Eaters" and "The Weather Makers". Jane Jacobs's "The Life And Death Of Great American Cities" is THE CENTERPIECE of every discussion about urbanism that has ever taken place; if you haven't read it, you simply can't understand cities. But you should read Grady Clay's "Close-up: How to Read the American City", Mike Davis's "City of Quartz", and especially William Whyte's "City: Rediscovering the Center" for a broader picture. Finally, you need a little comic relief. Read some Bill Bryson. Try "Notes From A Small Island". Shit, that's more than ten, isn't it? Fnarf answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 8 comments by Dustin Hansen, Fnarf, and Dustin Hansen… 0 0 Bummed I put in the time to read War and Peace when it's not even a "proper" novel. I suppose I've always been a fan of the lowbrow though. Dustin Hansen commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 It's not lowbrow, it's just a "book for boys". Fnarf commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Thanks for the clarification Dustin Hansen commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Thanks for the Paul Fussell recommendation. I learned about anapests, trochees, and iambs from his book on poetic meter during a course in undergrad, but I didn't realize he did cultural history, too. I will also look up the John McPhee recommendation -- I've been on the lookout for a readable (ie, non-technical) book about the geology of the American West. MyrnaMinkoff commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Fussel's book on prosody is wonderful! He apparently was a bit of a dick, but so's everybody. His extremely-former wife, Betty Fussell, who has written brilliantly on food topics as well, ripped him a new one in her autobiography. Fnarf commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 This is a great list. I'm particularly glad to see McPhee. Got to quible about Austen, though; no one should have to read any of her work. (I forced myself through because she's important, but I didn't enjoy it.) Also disagree about translated works. If you are fluent in another language, by all means take advantage of that. But if not, you'll miss a lot of great stuff if you never read foreign literature in translation. Kafka and Mann, for example, translate pretty cleanly. (Yes, I speak German and have read them in the original.) David Wright commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 You should read Nabokov's lecture notes on Austen. The thing about her work is that it is presented typically as soap opera -- who's in love with whom, blah blah blah. But they are in fact intricately constructed worlds, where every word is fitted together, like a boat made without nails or screws. This is what novel-writing is all about. And her psychological insights into the characters she created is unbelievable. She really makes the little bastards work! Fnarf commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Thanks for the tip, Fnarf! I've put in an order at Amazon. David Wright commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Fear of Flying- Erica Jong In Cold Blood-Truman Capote Sarah-JT Leroy In the Bedroom-Andre Dubus (the whole book, not just the short story "Killings" which the movie In The Bedroom is based on) The Secret History-Donna Tartt Valley of the Dolls-Jacqueline Susann Grimm's Fairy Tales Middlesex-Jeffrey Eugenides I Like You-Amy Sedaris Naked-David Sedaris Victoria Anne Liss answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 1 comment by virginia mason… 0 0 Oh, "The Secret History" was so great. I couldn't put it down. It's the first book I loan my friends when they're looking for something to read. virginia mason commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole "Don Quixote" by Cervantes "A Bend in the River" By V. S. Naipaul Aesop's Fables "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov "Immortality" by Milan Kundera "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton "The First Man" by Albert Camus "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh Larry answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 1 comment by MyrnaMinkoff… 0 0 How could I forget A Confederacy of Dunces in my list?! That's where my namesake is from! MyrnaMinkoff commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 1. The Broom of the System: David Foster Wallace 2. The Brief Wondrous, Life of Oscar Wao 3. The Koran 4. The Second Inaugural Speech of Abraham Lincoln. 5. Histories: Herodotus 6. The God Delusion: Richard Dawkins 7. What is the What: Dave Eggers 8. On Beauty: Zadie Smith 9. A Year of Endless Sorrows: Adam Rapp 10. Insert Book Title Here Adam Mohr answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Blood Meridian- McCarthy Trout Fishing in America- Brautigan  Moby Dick Journal of a Trapper- Russell Rings of Saturn- Sebald The Brothers Karamozov- Dostoyevski One Hundred Years of Solitude- Marqeuz The Snow Leopard- Matthieson The Odyssey- Homer Walden- Thoreau ...no extra salt needed. whiskeydick answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Right now I am obsessed with Patricia Highsmith. I'm reading everything written by and about her. Man, was she evil. I'd recommend the anthology Selected Stories which contains my favorite of her books so far, "Little Tales of Misogyny" and "The Black House." I would recommend skipping the tedious "The Price of Salt," though it is a lesbian classic and is rumored to have been the inspiration for Lolita. virginia mason answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Some that have stood out to me recently: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert Jessica answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger Les Miserables by Victor Hugo The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Tower by William Butler Yeats Max Blair answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Second recommendation for: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Doctor is Sick by Anthony Burgess Not included on other lists (and in no particular order) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson The Alienist by Caleb Carr The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery Actually, read this one 1st. A lot of the narrative centers on classic and popular culture and is great inspiration for other reading. I reread Anna Karenina right after finishing this book. Wuthering Heights (even though that horrible Twilight author seems to have spoiled it) Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Moxie answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  2 1 There are plenty of books that everyone should read because they`re damn good books, and many of those have been listed by others so I won`t go into them. But I would like to add some that are valuable when read or re-read as adults: The Bible - I`m an atheist raised in an atheist household, and learned a lot when I read the Bible for the first time in college. It`s amazing how what`s actually printed in the pages sometimes differs from what people think is in there. Both people who grew up with it and people who`ve never touched it before should take a look and see what it really says. The same goes for the Quaran. Harry Potter, Twilight, Dan Brown, and any other massively bestselling books that "real" readers look down on. If all the respectable readers say they`re crap they probably are, but if you`ve read them you can offer your own opinions on why they`re crap rather than just regurgitating others` criticisms. And maybe you`ll be pleasantly surprised. At the least, you`ll gain some insight into how the rest of the population thinks. Any classic you haven`t read since junior high English class, especially if you hated it then. It`s an interesting test of your own mind, comparing what your read to what you remember, seeing what you pick up on now that you didn`t see then. I still don`t like "The Scarlet Letter" and haven`t forgiven the teacher that made us read it, but now I can see why she made us do it. And all those Shakespeare plays are so much better now that I can get more of the dirty jokes. Lidididi answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Their Eyes Were Watching God....Zora Neal Hurston The Trial...Franz Kafka Old Man and the Sea...Ernest Hemmingway The Great Gatsby....F. Scott Fitzgerald Bel Canto...Ann Patchett King Leopold's Ghost...Adam Hochschild The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle...Murikami Lolita...Nabokov Anna Karinina...Tolstoy The Heart is a Lonely Hunter....Carson McCullers Oh god, there are so many amazing novels and books to read; how could there only be ten? Night...Elie Weisal The Poisonwood Bible & The Prodigal Summer...Barbara Kingsolver Jane Eyre....Bronte The River Why...Duncan The Best thing I Ever Tasted...? The Omnivores Dilema...Pollan The WasteLand...T.S. Eliot Jennifer Alphonsine Haslet-Phillips answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Really there's only one answer: - One Hundred Years of Solitude But if I had to pick ten more, in no particular order: - The Big Rock Candy Mountain - To a God Unknown - The Great Gatsby - All the Pretty Horses - Anna Karenina - The Poisonwood Bible - Slaughter House Five - Sula - To Kill a Mockingbird - Nine Stories (Salinger) DCista answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Here's the list that I'd personally recommend. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky Ficciones - Borges Jane Eyre - Bronte Tale of Two Cities - Dickens anything by Rushdie Tried to vary it up a little bit, but it's hard to choose 5. Dustin Hansen answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 The First Circle, A. Solzhenitzyn. Explains modern politics, public & corporate with incredible insight. 1984, G. Orwell. Hardly worth reading, we're living it right now. Just about anything by H. Murakami. Wild Sheep Chase, for example. Walter Mellon answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 0 Herge' - Tintin: The Blue Lotus Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment Plato - Euthyphro Aristophanes - Lysistrata Melville - Moby Dick vooodooo84 answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 1 Pick at least one from each set: Contemporary English (Kundera, Delillo, Hornby) Contemporary Foreign or Diaspora (Marquez, Roy) 20th Century English (Pynchon, Steinbeck, Nabakov) 20th Century European (Camus, Frisch, Calvino) 19th Century English (Poe, Dickens, Doyle, Twain) 19th Century European (Mann, Kafka, Zola) Pre-19th Century (Voltaire, DeFoe, Swift) History (Tuchman, McCullough) Manners (Austin, Forster) Plays (Wilde, Brecht, Miller, Simon, Shakespeare) Rules for picking a book for each Genre: (1) Start with an authror's best-known works. If you pick Nabakov, read Lolita. If you pick Kundera, read Unbearable Lightness. Go back an read an author's lesser-known stuff only after you have decided you like him. (2) Start with something short. If you pick Pynchon, read Crying of Lot 49, not Gravity's Rainbow. If you pick Mann, read Death in Venice, not Magic Mountain. If you pick Tuchman, read the Guns of August, not Distant Mirror. Go back and read the long stuff only after you have decided you like him. (3) Start with something you have a connection with. Pick a book set in a place you have visited, or used in the adaptation of a movie you liked. David Wright answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 2 comments by j_lee and Fnarf… 0 0 Kundera isn't English. j_lee commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Nabokov, not Nabakov, and the accent is on the "bok" not the "nab". Sting was wrong. His name rhymes with "redeemer, to walk off". And I disagree strongly on Pynchon: read "Gravity's Rainbow", even though it's long, and don't read "Crying" at all unless you're obsessive. And definitely don't read Thomas Mann at all. Fnarf commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 0 Moby Dick, no question Mehal Shah answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 1 comment by MyrnaMinkoff… 0 0 Oooh, this should have been on my list, too. So good. MyrnaMinkoff commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 0 Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr-Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo Johnny Got His Gun- Dalton Trumbo People's History of the United States-Howard Zinn Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe Fear and Trembling-Soren Kierkegaard The Divine Comedy-Dante Aligheri The Prince/The Discourses- Machiavelli Ficciones-Jorge Luis Borges Dubliners/Ulysses or Finnegans Wake-James Joyce The Wasteland- T.S. Eliot Free Busch answered in Books & Writing about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 0 "One Hundred Years of Solitude" - Gabriel Marquez "Regeneration" - Pat Barker "The Fountainhead" - Ayn Rand "1000 Acres" - Jane Smiley "What is the What" - Dave Eggers In no particular order, and please future commenters, spare me the anti-Rand rhetoric. Anna G answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 0 There's already a lot of good answers here, but I would add: The Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin. Which is five books all by itself. It's also one of the four great classics of Chinese literature, and the Hawkes/Minford translation is really wonderful. Kitts answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 0 A Separate Peace - John Knowles Andersonville - MacKinlay Kantor Points for a Compass Rose - Evan Connell Balthazar - Lawrence Durrell Midnight’s Children - Salmon Rushdie Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut East of Eden - John Steinbeck The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving Burr - Gore Vidal The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass Fred Ketteman answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 1 (this list definitely includes stuff one might encounter in their formative years, but still.) The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald 1984 - Orwell Hamlet - Shakespeare Bonfire of the Vanities - Wolfe Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey Women In Love - Lawrence Walden - Thoreau Cannery Row - Steinbeck Oedipus Rex - Sophocles Tacomacoma answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  2 2 I will go with some lighter reading because we can't be so goddamn serious all the time, and I really think everyone should read these books. Watership Down Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing The World According to Garp To Kill a Mockingbird The Illustrated Man In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Lord of the Barnyard (my absolute fave of all time). Rotten666 answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 1 "Brothers Karamazov" "War and Peace" (Seriously, it is a good book) "The Republic" Plato "The Federalist Papers" Madison etc. "The Magic Mountain" Thomas Mann (and not because he is a cousin of mine either!) Cato the Younger Younger answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 2 "Tomorrow's Children" by Isaac Asimov "The Samon of Doubt" by Douglas Adams "Live and Let Die" by Ian Fleming "Our Bodies, Ourselves" by the women's collective "2010: Second Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke "Cagey" answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 3 comments by Robert Taylor-Manning, "Cagey", and Dustin Hansen… 0 0 other than our bodies, ourselves, this is a silly answer. the books, themselves, are fine. but they may not even be in the top 1000. Robert Taylor-Manning commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Hey, the question was what books I WOULD RECOMMEND. You get your own list. These are the onces I would want to recommend. Read the question. "Cagey" commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Isn't Tomorrow's Children a collection of Sci-Fi stories from a bunch of different writers, including Asimov? Dustin Hansen commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  0 2 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Perfectly written, full of allegory and interesting perspectives that you probably wouldn't get naturally as an American currently browsing the internet. It makes me want to learn Spanish and read the original text. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein - Maybe a little sci-fi for some people, and it goes a little unhinged in the last 1/4, but it's as close as sci-fi gets to be taken seriously (not that it stands alone in this) and is a great story by the sci-fi master himself. White Noise by Don DeLillo - There are some problems with this book but it still manages to portray 90s and, to a lesser extent, 00s life scary well for being written in the early 80s. Amazing writing, totally readable story that keeps moving along, and one of the few essential books written by a living American author. Heart of Darkness by Joeseph Conrad - My personal favorite book. Every sentence is packed with literary cleverness. Every time I read this little 75 page "book" (really, more of a novella) I learn something new about it. Not for everyone, but if there could be a benchmark for modern general fiction, this is a hot contender. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig - Any serious book nerd is better off reading the original philosophy texts worked off of in this book, but if you want a totally readable and engrossing overview of some Big Ideas from philosophy, Pirsig is happy to explain to you his view on life. He's very smart and very open about being very crazy. Some chapters are kinda meh, most are good, and a few are absolutely amazing. protosaurus answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 1 comment by protosaurus… 0 0 where did my paragraphs go :( protosaurus commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  5 9 There are hundreds and hundreds of books, any 10 of which, could be called books every adult should have read. I definitely think you are some kind of ass, if not a fascist, if you look down on anyone because they haven't read a particular book that you happen to be smitten with. And I'd much rather have a conversation with someone whose 10 "essential" books are entirely distinct from mine, rather than someone who has read every book I think I couldn't live without. elenchos answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report 12 comments by Kristin Bell, protosaurus, and Robert Taylor-Manning… 0 0 umm, okay. I wasn't talking about looking down on people who hadn't read certain books, but okay. Kristin Bell commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 i did not get the look down vibe protosaurus commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 well, i didn't get the look down vibe either, but the larger point is true - it's sort of a silly question. a better one might be "what are the 100 books of which i should read at least 10." Robert Taylor-Manning commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Right. It's just that you're saying there are people who somehow made it to adulthood without reading all the books they should have read. No offense. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Not saying that a so-called "adult" who has not read the books which one would normally expect to be the minimum has anything wrong with them. Not judging. Oh, my, no. Not judging at all. Got it. Thanks for interpreting the vibrations for me. elenchos commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 God you're a miserable asshole. Rotten666 commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 I just used the word "adult," because there are so many wonderful children's books that I was trying to exclude them in the question, because I was more curious about books for adults. Seriously, I'm not saying people should or shouldn't read certain books. I was just trying to frame the question so it would be easier to answer. I didn't think people would want to list 100 books. When I say what should people read I mean, what books do you really, really like and what books do you think are important. That's all. Kristin Bell commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 I like the new phrasing of your question a lot better. capicola commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 wow, people really get snobby about books! When I read the question, I simply took it as "what great adult books would you recommend" and went on to copy everyone's answers for my own new reading list. If you took the question in any way personally or thought it had any negative connotation, maybe you have some serious insecurities you need to get over. Hokusai commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 My observation is that wrong answers get ignored. Answers that reveal an uncomfortable truth get a dozen indignant replies. So maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe somebody doth protest too much... elenchos commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 Wait till you start getting called a cunt, then you know your in a good discussion. My first couple weeks posting here I had that pleasure. Internet rule number 254: as soon as people start calling you names, you know you have made a good point. But yeah, sounded more like she was after recommendations personally, than judging others. But I know the attitude that you are talking about, and it bugs the shit out of me. Basil commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 As far as I'm concerned, in these kind of questions there is no "wrong" answer. I just get irritated when there is miscommunication. I'm not into elitism if that is what you think. Some people are into it...whatever, but it doesn't float my boat. And I guess what I mean by "should read" has more to do with books that are good and interesting rather than books that make a person a better snob. I really don't believe in reading for snobbery purposes and it bothers me too. Basically, this all started, because I had this reading list from a long time ago, but I lost it, so I thought: why not ask people what to read? I do get caught in the same circles of things to read and am always on the lookout for good books. Why I ask now is that I got an increase in medication and I'm able to concentrate better on reading, so I am finding myself actually finishing books lately! It is great! Kristin Bell commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 elenchos, I agree with you completely. Thanks for saying this. (Nothing against you, Kristin; I know what you meant.) Irena commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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  1 8 Part of the problem is that you don't identify what is a book. Nonetheless . . . The Bible Something by Shakespeare. Something by Voltaire. The Great Gatsby. Something by Toni Morrison. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles. Something by Joyce (I'd choose Ulysses). Something by Kobo Abe (I'd choose The Box Man). The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera Something by J.M. Coetzee (I'd choose the Life and Times of Michael K, or Elizabeth Costello) Something by Foucault and so on, and so on. I think the larger point is to read. And keep reading. I read lots of different things, including "Airport Thrillers" and non-fiction. Robert Taylor-Manning answered in Books & Writing over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

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