books every home library should have

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Originally Posted by beroq

Don Quixote, no matter what speciality is attributed to it, is but a book that satires chivalry. As these books are hardly read by anyone but experts and even a hero like King Arthur is unable to inspire younger generations, anyone reading Cervantes might think that the author is whipping an already dead mule...

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Well you could say that Monty Python's "Holy Grail" is just a film that satires chivalry, but it shows that chivalry, and its mockery, is far from a dead topic. And what kid doesn't like tales of knights of old? Given that the Python gang were clever clogs, they had no doubt read Cervantes, and realised a good thing when they saw it.

This is certainly one for the library, get the excellent Everyman hardback... it's a good, readable, translation. Note, I'm a common person, no literary titles to my name, and I found this book wonderful. That's why it's available in Everyman, Penguin, and all the main mass market publishers... it is indeed for ever man (& woman).

In the past I would suggest that every home library should have a good dictionary, a good atlas, and a good almanac. Now that everyone has computers and internet access, these are no longer necessary.

I know this doesn't list specific books, but I decided a while back (when trying to reduce the size of my library) that every great home library should include only those books that one will/should (the difference between will and should is where we keep getting tripped up on the subjective) reread.

The Glasgow cook book!

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

In the past I would suggest that every home library should have a good dictionary, a good atlas, and a good almanac. Now that everyone has computers and internet access, these are no longer necessary.

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Power can go out and the internet can be inaccessible. I think those are still good suggestions.

I agree with the line of thinking that says one should build a collection of books known to stand the test of time as great works of human thinking and imagination, and that a library should also reflect that person's specific interests.

I have many works that are near universally agreed to be some of the best western works in human history, but I also have books on Ninjutsu, strength training, and sci-fi/fantasy that I thoroughly enjoy, and are representative of some of my most personal passions and interests since childhood.

Shakespeare
Bible
Divine Comedy
Canterbury Tales
Don Quixote
Persuasion
All major Dickens
Middlemarch
Wuthering heights
Jane Eyre
Checkov Stories
Kafka stories
Most Tolstoy
Most Dostoevsky
Moby Dick
Norton poetry anthology
The Waste Land
In Search of Lost Time
Ulysses
Magic Mountain and Mann stories
USA Trilogy - Dos Passos
The Sun Also Rises
Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
Blood Meridian
White Noise
Lolita
The Stranger
Catch 22
American Pastoral
Sabbath's Theater
Gravity's Rainbow
Crying of Lot 49

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Anything by Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Potter series.

Only buy what you will read - that probably helps the environment.