Most Important Books

more to follow

Phillip K. Dick (POO: A Scanner Darkly)
Kurt Vonnegut (POO: Cat's Cradle (this was a difficult choice))
William Gibson (POO: All short fiction)
Neal Stephenson (POO: Snowcrash)

For some entertaining and well-written modern fiction:

-The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
-The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
-Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks
-Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (Also "Snowcrash")
-The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber

For some entertaining and well-written modern non-fiction:

-The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
-The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester
-Orchid Fever, by Eric Hanson

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species"
Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure"
Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"
F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"
Dawn Powell's "The Locusts Have No King"
__________'s "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
DeLillo's "White Noise"
Mark Twain's "Huck Finn" (also "Innocents Abroad")

Lanark, Alasdair Gray
Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brian
Time's Arrow, Martin Amis

Also: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian.

Non-fiction:

Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves
Um....

(OK, this is the thread where I feel awfully poorly-read)

Some of my favorites:
Robert Aickman - Painted Devils
James Joyce - Portrait of the aritist as a young man
Umberto Eco - Name of the Rose
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim
Some Guy - Godel, Escher, Bach
Thomas Ligotti - The Nightmare Factory
Nabakov - Bend Sinister

'the waves' may be her best... the opening chapter...

queer studies has ruined 'orlando'...

NON-FICTION IS HERE

FICTION IS HERE

If it makes any difference to you, note that the Modern Library is a division of Random House.

i try to avoid parties where people say to each other, it's an 'important book'.

Thoug I try to avoid them, I seem to always be running into people who have to mention the "importance" of some book they have read, are reading or want to read.
These people, along with those who are constantly mentioning how such and such is a "genius," are driving me to the limits of my sanity. I never knew there were so many geniuses running loose.

my friends don't often approach me, offering to tell me about the importance of a book I have never heard of, etc. in fact. I cannot think of a situation like that ever occuring, ever.

I don't think I am smart enough to tell whether or not they are important but I think they were good reads.

Sound advice.

Gertrude Stein said somewhere that when she was approaching middle age she used to worry that she'd run out of worthwhile reading material, but later she realized that there's tons of good stuff to read, if you aren't too highbrow to notice what's good. This was in conjunction with her reading The Girl of the Limberlost(?) as an adult, I think.

If I had to place one idea on my list of the most important ideas to grasp before you die, I'd probably mention Darwin's theory of the origin of species through descent with modification. But it doesn't matter much how you come by that understanding. Stephen Jay Gould does a good job of explaining it. So do some television programmes.

Jesus Christ. I must make a note to avoid Gertrude Stein at parties.

Mockingbird also has an overall theme about the folly of being judgemental, which is handled wonderfully. I like almost everything about it. But then, I wasn't forced to read it in school because I went to a lo-grade dump that never rose above Gregory's Girl...

Re. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon: someone sent me a copy of that a couple of months ago, but I only read a few pages. Everyone I know who's read it really likes it, so perhaps I need to persevere.

Perhaps I need to go to bed eventually, too...

It'll take you the rest of your life.

The stuff about Fowler etc. above had reminded me of George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language. Could almost have been written for today. Had a huge effect on me, anyway.

Dope Fiend: Donald Goines
The Forever War: Joe Haldeman
Hell's Angels: Hunter Thompson
Death in Venice: Thomas Mann
Shock Value: John Waters
The Summer of '42: Herman Rauscher
Dillinger (poetry): Todd Moore
The Happy Hooker: Xaviera Hollander

Read by starlight,

lucas

B-but this actually-very-sound idea is precisely why the average American is overweight and reads at a 5th grade level!

I think a better question would be: how do you acquire, or are there any (?) ''reading skills'' you can acquire so that you can attempt to read something like 'Capital'. how would someone who hasn't studied philosophy be able to understand this, for instance.

Oh, whoever mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach earlier: it's by Douglas Hofstadter. I want to read it myself, but the only copy my local library has is in German. Grr.

Are you hot and if you are, can I get some?

if so: yes, I'm sure anyone would jump at the chance to let you have some.

As far as Julio's question, I don't think you need to know philosophy at all to read Marx! That is the whole point of the Communist Manifesto. It neatly summarizes his major ideas but was meant to be a readable tract for the "working class". Although, yes, I wouldn't recommend starting with Capital; I don't think you need much of a background for some of his other important writing. You certainly don't need to have read Kant->Hegel->Feuerbach to grok his early writing on alienation or ideology. I mean, compared to Hegel, Marx is like reading the newspaper. Anyway, at a certain point you just have to jump in and learn to swim unless, as fletrejet said, you start with Plato and read the whole Western history of ideas.

Anyway, here's my totally subjective all-time dead-white-male top 15!

Plato The Republic
Aristotle Poetics
The Confessions of St. Augustine
Machiavelli The Prince
Rousseau The Social Contract
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
J.S. Mill On Liberty
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
The Marx-Engels Reader, Robert C. Tucker, ed.
Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism
Sigmund Freud Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Ferdinand de Saussure Course in General Linguistics
Claude Levi-Strauss The Savage Mind
Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality
Roland Barthes Mythologies

If I had to pick one, it's the Marx, no question. Read the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", "Wage, Labor and Capital", "The Grundrisse", and the "Manifesto". It sounds like a lot, but it's really not. Shorter articles that get to the gist of what he's talking about.

Next most important probably the Plato. I'd try to read de Saussure, essential for all this "sign" <-> "signifier" structuralism. I don't know, I mean, it's not a ridiculously hard book and I think it's worth knowing the original texts that formed the discourse.

Also, a lot of these you don't need to read the whole damn thing. Like de Tocqueville and Adam Smith. Just check out the adam smith from a library and read like the first 100 pages, you'll get the gist, and the most important part. Most people would prolly say The Order of Things is Foucault's most important work, but it's fucking long. And besides, reading about sex is more fun.

anyone else want to talk abt 'reading skills'? or do you just acquire them by reading? (bcz there are diff levels of reading as nabisco says above).

Are you hot and if you are, can I get some?

You'd best ask the people who've met me what they think

You'd best ask the people who've met me what they think

I have met caitlin before, and i don't think jethro can get some.

You've met me, though.

(well, kind of)

caitlin, i'm happy to know people think highly of you and your looks. as a man of the world i am honored to have traded posts with you!

Religious texts (mostly for their social significance, not for whatever big truths might possibly be gleaned from them); anicent writing in general (to see the earliest recorded form that certain ideas took--the earliest written glimpse at how human minds were working); philosophy; history (which I have largely neglected); the sciences (which is difficult for me, given my limited math). Some key literary works, as well, though I am rarely convinced that they are as important and profound as people often make them out to be. (Maybe I am just crude and literal-minded. No floral wall-paper: flowers don't grow on walls!) Mr. Diamond's list is close to the sort of things I would pick (particularly in philosophy).

I don't agree with whoever said that pre-20th century non-fiction writing was mostly poorly written. Some of it is a good read.