10 Books Everyone Should Read
 

A friend asked me today to recommend him ten books I think are required reading. (I only included fiction, so essential stuff like "The Myth of Sisyphus" or "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" got omitted.)

My list would be:

Alfred Jarry: Ubu Roi
Gustav Meyrink: The Golem
Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones
Lautreamont: Les Chants de Maldoror
Stanislav Lem: Solaris
Strugatsky Brothers: The Doomed City
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
Voltaire: Candide
William S. Burroughs: Naked Lunch

What's yours?

Including all books/plays in this.

W.G. Sebald: The Rings of Saturn
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
John Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings (this changed the way that I see the world)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
Elie Weisel: Night (for the historic elements)
William Shakespeare: Hamlet (granted that you have the time and will for some in-depth analysis)
Joseph Heller: Catch-22
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
Virginia Woolf: The Waves

I've read almost none of those.
Bookmarked.

I'd read Sebald for the more introspective stuff. It must be nice to be able to read the original German version too (though there was a LOT of work put into the English translation, and it shows).

My other choice would be Turn of the Screw to start with because it's short, it's legitimately scary, and it's got ambiguity that opens up analysis and theories out the *******.

I'm guessing you've read Silence and...Hamlet?

The only book from your list I've read is Catch-22. And I didn't finish it.
Yeah, I'm that uneducated.


I just noticed, that my list is missing Kafka's Trial. I omitted it, since the friend I compiled it for already read it in school, same as me. It's definitely in the top ten for me though.

Did you go to school in Germany? I would think that Weisel would be read in public schools.

And I didn't put any Kafka on because I felt like suggesting a compilation of his stories would be a copout. The Judgement is my favourite from him.

Nope.
Never even heard of him before.

Holocaust survivor and writer. Really uplifting stories about camps.

I'm not really into holocaust, but the summary does sound intriguing.

Ja, it's honestly not one of my favourite books to read, but I put it on there because I think everyone should read it, get some perspective of how truly awful it was. You can be told about it at length but the first person details makes it more real.

Like, for someone who isn't scared by movies and books? Would love some literature that actually make me nervous to go outside at night to smoke a cigarette.

Yes, depending on how realism affects you.

I think it's more the lack of direct interaction that leaves me unscared. I love a lot of horror movies and books, but for reasons other than adrenaline flashbacks. Video games can scare the pants off of me though. Will read Turn of the Screw.

Anyone read Lem's The Investigation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Investigation
It's amazing and I also remember being really scared, when I read it for the first time. I was pretty young though. Still, a fascinatingly creepy story.

I'll look into it.

Well it might not scare you in that case but you should still read it.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
World War Z by Max Brooks
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infinite Jest by Savid Foster Wallace
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

I have this savid on my harddrive but haven't gotten around to finishing it.

And damn, is WWZ really that good?

The way the book is crafted just really hit with me. Some of the stories in there are just out of this world good.

I like their idea of zombies in the movie (especially the part with the wall), but it failed everywhere else so I didn't really ever think to check out the book.

Yes.

i just started House of Leaves :)....loving it so far

1q84 - Haruki Murakami
Death on the Installment Plan - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
The Decline of the West - Oswald Spengler
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
The World as Will and Representation - Arthur Schopenhauer
The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Les Chants de Maldoror - Comte de Lautréamont
Apocalypse Culture I and II- edited by Adam Parfrey

Glad to see Lautreamont among those.
That book is the ****.
Frown, if you haven't read it yet - do it.

Its essential for anyone even remotely interested in Dada and surrealism

I'm not joking when I say this...

The movie is NOTHING like the book. The only connection is the name.

The book the most realistic approach to zombies I've ever read. Its starts at the beginning of the outbreak and tells the story like a timeline. Each "chapter" is about a different person/organization/government/family in different parts of the world who are dealing with it. You have blind Japanese dudes with a samurai. You have the story of bomb delivering dogs. You have full on accounts of military gaffs and successes. It's written in first person from the perspective of a reporter who is travelling the world collecting these stories. It's just an incredible read.

Too difficult to narrow down, so I'll list off the top of my head.

God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita – Paramahansa Yogananda
The Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz – Geoff Dyer
My Book House (series) – Olive Beaupré Miller
The Street of Crocodiles, and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass - Bruno Schulz
Night– Elie Weisel
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
Blue Highways – William Least Heat Moon

I read the sister novel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zombie_Survival_Guide) and I can assure that he's a pretty powerful/convincing writer.

That was more of a gimmick though. A How too. Informative? Yes. Literature? No.

I found it well written. Hmph.

*disappointment*

Off the top of my head:

The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Ghost Story - Peter Straub
On The Beach - Nevil Shute
Blindness - Jose Saramago
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
Wool - Hugh Howey
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Iron Coffins - Herbert Werner

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Shrek
1984

Is this just a bunch of blank pages?

At least it has pages.

It's an empty space on a bookshelf, actually.

:) I;m still terribly amused that 4'33" is 99¢ on iTunes.

A lot of great stuff there. On the Beach in particular would probably be on my list as well.

I had a really hard time getting through the final chapter because I had tears in my eyes and running down my face through most of it.

Have you seen the 1959 film adaption?

No, I haven't seen it. Is it good?

Considering how old it is, yes. Captures the desperation and impending doom really well. Fred Astaire plays the scientist and it was his first dramatic role. He nails the part. The only miss-step is they cast an older Eva Garner in the lead role. Once you get past that she's great acting opposite Gregory Peck.

Check it out and let me know what you think. The ending scene will give you goosebumps.

I'll have check it out sometime. I think I saw it on Netflix or Amazon recently.

My list:

Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
Blackburn—Bradley Denton
The Mezzanine—Nicholson Baker
The Nuclear Age—Tim O'Brien
Johnny Got His Gun—Dalton Trumbo
Slapstick—Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles—Ray Bradbury
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break—Steven Sherrill
A Scanner Darkly—Philip K. Dick
On the Beach—Nevil Shute