5 books everybody should read

[lokariototal]

What are the 5 most important books everybody should read? Please don't include the bible in the list!

[mayneverhave]

To what purpose?

That question is so general that its nearly impossible to answer. Perhaps some books on asking more precise questions?

[stlukesguild]

What are the 5 most important books everybody should read? Please don't include the bible in the list!

Why not the Bible? It certainly would rank among the top books in my pantheon. To eliminate the Bible seems as arbitrary as eliminating Dante, Homer, or the Mahabharata.

Off the top of my head I'd say the following five are essential reading...
(not to suggest that there aren't many others as well):

1. Dante- The Divine Comedy
2. Shakespeare- The Collected Works
3. Cervantes- Don Quixote
4. Homer- The Iliad and The Odyssey
5. Montaigne- Collected Essays

Of course 5 "must-read" books is absurd in that it is so grossly limited. One might easily replace almost anything on my list (excepting perhaps Dante and Shakespeare) with the Bible, Aeschylus, Virgil's Aeneid, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Milton's Paradise Lost, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Kafka's Collected Writings, J.L. Borges' Collected Writings, etc...

I would also suggest that in a world that in growing increasingly interconnected it is no longer possible to ignore the contributions of non-Western writers and literature. As such I would also suggest 5 essential non-Western books:

1. The Mahabharata
2. The Qur'an
3. The Arabian Night's Entertainments
4. Firdowsi- The Shanameh
5. Laozi- Tao te ching

Again, almost any of these could be replaced by any number of alternatives from the Ramayana, to Hafez, to certain collections of Japanese poetry. I, admittedly, am enamored more of Indian and Middle-Eastern culture (which influences my choices) where JBI would more likely name any number of Chinese classics from The Dream of the Red Chamber and The Three Kingdoms to poetry collections including especially Tu Fu, Li Bo, and Wang Wei.

[Modest Proposal]

This is a hard question to ask because it isn't just the "best" books but being the ones everyone should read it seems to insist on diversity and length to truly lend a list full weight. Unfortunately my list would be about identical to StLuke's first one with the possible exchange of Emerson's essays for Montaigne's

For variety's sake I'll make a list without any of those StLuke covered.

Plato's "The Republic"
Melville's "Piazza Tales" or "Moby Dick"
Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov"
Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads"
Sophocles' Theban Plays

Again these could be switched out freely with others. I do think however that "The Republic" is the single most important philosophy book and deserves a more serious consideration. I might switch out Wordsworth for either Pope's poetry or Swift's satires(acknowledged alliteration).

[mortalterror]

1. The Mahabharata
2. The Qur'an
3. The Arabian Night's Entertainments
4. Firdowsi- The Shanameh
5. Laozi- Tao te ching

You know, I just read the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata last week and it was as good as Job. Problem is, I'm having trouble finding a suitable translation for the entire work. I found one for the Ramayana but I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as the Shahnameh. My Qur'an isn't up to the level of the KJV Bible so far, though at least it's shorter and the quality of the Arabian Nights varies from story to story. As for the Tao Te Ching; I tried reading that earlier this year, figured it's short enough to toss off in an afternoon, but it's full of all this crazy legalistic doublespeak, like reading Wittgenstein.

[Etienne]

1. Dante- The Divine Comedy
2. Shakespeare- The Collected Works
3. Cervantes- Don Quixote
4. Homer- The Iliad and The Odyssey
5. Montaigne- Collected Essays

I had thought about the same at first, but with Rabelais instead of Montaigne.

[Red-Headed]

1/ Shakespeare (collected works)

2/ Crime & Punishment ~ Dostoyevsky.

3/ War & Peace ~ Tolstoy

4/ Beowulf

5/ Le Morte Darthur - Malory

If we are going to limit the list to novels only, I would replace Shakespeare with The Once & Future King by T.H. White & Beowulf with Zola's Germinal or Hesse's Steppenwolf. I can't quite decide...

(for now...)

[Modest Proposal]

1/ Shakespeare (collected works)

2/ Crime & Punishment ~ Dostoyevsky.

3/ War & Peace ~ Tolstoy

4/ Beowulf

5/ Le Morte Darthur - Malory

If we are going to limit the list to novels only, I would replace Shakespeare with The Once & Future King by T.H. White & Beowulf with Zola's Germinal or Hesse's Steppenwolf. I can't quite decide...

(for now...)

Would you want Le Morte D'arthur AND The Once and Future King? That's a little repetitive for only having 5.

[Red-Headed]

Would you want Le Morte D'arthur AND The Once and Future King? That's a little repetitive for only having 5.

OK, good point. In that case I'll swap White for Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker.

[Telemann]

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey- simply put, these are foundational works to Western thought. Not only do they shed light on the customs and norms within ancient Greek society, but they also bring forth central concepts with which those people were concerned, and, as much of Western thought is based upon the Greeks, it might be best to concern ourselves with such fundamental works.

Isaac Newton's "Principia"- When making a list such as this one should always be practical. Newton's great work sets classical physics which, unless taken to macroscopic or particle levels, is still a valid form of study. As such, that this was one of the major works on which later physicists had to work, much of modern physics can be extrapolated from it. Furthermore, I would posit that, if one had the time, and the drive, a fair amount of many sciences could be derived from Newton's "Principia" (and later discoveries you could make from working beyond such a work) as chemistry is largely dependent upon physics, and biology is largely dependent upon chemistry.

Euclid's "Elements"- if you're going to understand physics, you'll need math. Though not the one and only father of math, studying Euclid not only gives an individual lessons on how to work through problems logically, but teaches many concepts of mathematics while doing so, from constructing (and showing that it is as such) equilateral triangles, to the Pythagorean theorem.

Herodotus' Histories and Thucydides' History of the Peloponessian War- Many of the later political philosopher's would draw from at minimum, Thucydides. Furthermore, reading Thucydides and Herodotus gives an individual two very different ways in which to perceive history. Herodotus presents history as a way in which we can learn morals, and also, by focusing on individuals rather than events. Herodotus focuses on history and culture, whereas Thucydides sticks to year-by-year history, focusing on what happened in the events, treating history as a large procession of causes-and-effects. Though, arguably, at times Thucydides steps away from an impartial reporting of history and moralizes, it is much less moralizing than Herodotus.

"Lycurgus" and "Solon" from Plutarch's "Lives"- these two passages on leaders present material for both leaders and the led. A reader is given the perspective on a totalitarian and democratic society, seeing the pitfalls and pinnacles of each society.

So, I bent the rules, and this is a far from definitive list, but, I hope it satisfies to some extent.

[Red-Headed]

Also...I think that everyone should read Joyce's Finnegans Wake at least once some time in their life.

[lokariototal]

Perhaps some books on asking more precise questions?

That was offensive, I was only asking a question. You don't have to attack me like that when I make a mistake or when you don't understand things clearly!

[MarkC]

Hi,

These are 5 books everybody should read:

Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls
Andre' Gide: The Immoralist
Sean O'Casey: Mirror In My House
William Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet
Samuel Beckett: Godot

MarkC