THE 3 everyone should have read

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Which 3 books do you consider to be those among the whole lot that one should read and why?

― Torben Hansen, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 14:04 (twenty-one years ago)

The Bible
The Iliad
Hamlet
because I'm a sadistic snob.

― otto, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 15:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, you are!
But thanks anyway!

― Torben Hansen, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 15:41 (twenty-one years ago)

The Brothers Karamazov
How To Talk Dirty & Influence People (Lenny Bruce)
Either: Flowers In The Attic (V.C. Andrews) OR Oedipus Rex

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 15:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Catcher in The Rye (early in life to appreciate cynicism)

some Nietzsche (to strengthen your ability and urge thereafter to questions things in life)

A dictionary (so your "savviness" can be conveyed untainted by spelling OR Usage and Style by Bryan Gardner (because grammar (and minutia) is important)

IF this list is limited to Fiction then

2) Virgin Suicides

3) To Start a Fire (short story) Jack London

― Franz Kafka (Franz), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know, the three books I would want for some people might not work for others; they might need something else to polish and improve their souls and minds, in my god-like opinion. Perhaps "Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass", and "The Art of Eating" by MFK Fisher- a cheat because it's a collection of 5 books. Will think more about a third...

― Rabin the Cat (Rabin the Cat), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 18:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Many will be inclined to run in panic from the notion that there are 3 books that all should read. The homogenization, the generalization, of something that the individual reader loves -- in a way the request is contradictory.

Much less so, though, for it insists again on individuality not universalization, is a version of the old ILM query: what musical would most attract you to someone and what repel? Or: what 3 books would someone have to have read for you to ... o, to desire them?

The obvious answer - books are irrelevant to such matters - may presumably be disregarded as unhelpful.

Even thus rephrased, actually, the question is fairly absurd.

(I did not mean to derail the original question.)

― the pomefox, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:09 (twenty-one years ago)

'musical' = music / but then, why not leave it as... 'musical'?!

― the byrdfox, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried - the best American fiction to come out of Vietnam, somewhat underappreciated

Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn - if only our national myths were defined by Twain, America would be a more enjoyable place

Albert Camus, The Stranger - it strikes me as the literary equivalent of a genre-based art-film

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Aiuto! Fascisti! Only three?!?!

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, that's right, not enough of them, but on the spur of the moment i'll just say
Hamlet, because I keep reading it and feeling physically moved by its words every single time;
War and Peace by Tolstoj, because I read it recently and I was surprised to think I found all Life in there;
Bluebeard by K. Vonnegut, because it did save my self esteem a hundred couple of times, and also because it makes me feel relaxed about the fact that I haven't produced a masterpiece of art yet, and am not a super-deep real artist, but a bit on the normal side instead...
there is still time to do/to be that...

― misshajim (strand), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 07:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Probably first mention on ILB for Virginia Andrews (courtesy of Scott). I loved that series which started with Flowers and developed through Seeds of Yesterday, If There be Thorns and one other (and in a different order too probably). The writing was impaired slightly by Virginia's death, but her post death output is prolific too. I think she deserves her own thread. These books are hated too. I blame the embossed covers.

I think The Pirates of Penzance is the answer to the Whatever Fox's question.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 08:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Everytime I see the newer post-death VC Andrews stuff i want to buy them just for the covers, but then i feel silly and don't get them. Flowers is in a class by itself. My sister and I loved that book. We were always trying to find something completely insane to read. I only listed it cuz I was trying to think of 3 books that displayed the full range of human emotion.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 10:57 (twenty-one years ago)

The new ones are written by a guy! I read them all (Petals on the Wind was the other book in that first series btw) when I was about 16. Not sure I would appreciate them now. I was thinking of suggesting it for the bookclub I belong to, but would probably get clubbed around the head.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 11:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I read the first 3. Maybe THOSE are the 3 books everyone should read. Who needs the Lord of the Rings anyway. We should probably just start a trilogy thread and leave this nice thread alone.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 12:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Thread shoots off at a girlie tangent as two blokes discuss Virginia Andrews.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 12:26 (twenty-one years ago)

If I only get three, I'll cheat.

The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde,

Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham,

and, the Collected Works of Jorge Borges.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 17:08 (twenty-one years ago)

- The Lord of the Rings
- Complete Works of Isaac Asimov
- Complete Works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
¡Agree fully, three is unfair!

― Nelly Mc Causland (Geborwyn), Saturday, 1 May 2004 11:57 (twenty-one years ago)

1) Ulysses, no seriously
2) Catch-22
3) Lolita

If you can read and enjoy these 3 books, there's no stopping you.

― Fred, Saturday, 1 May 2004 18:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Bollocks to "everyone," this list is about listing my three favorites:

1. Gravity's Rainbow
2. In the Skin of A Lion
3. Ulysses

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Tuesday, 4 May 2004 05:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, let's say, in no order:

1. Ted Berrigan, On The Level Everyday
2. Samuel Delany, The Motion Of Light In Water
3. James Kochalka, Sketchbook Diaries

Because otherwise how will you know that life is great?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 4 May 2004 07:13 (twenty-one years ago)

1. The Comic
2. The Tragic
3. The Hard to Decipher But Educationally Invaluable
(Fill slots with well-done books that appealed to your neuroses at a formative age)

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 02:55 (twenty-one years ago)

M.Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
R.Bradbury, Farenheit 451
G.Perec, La vie mode d'emploi

why?
Perhaps because one is about love, one about books and one about "life"? Difficult to say...

― demiurgo, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

in no particular order:

'franny & zooey' by j.d salinger
'the waves' by virginia woolf
'the brothers karamazov' by dostoyevsky

the latter has already been mentioned, but i think it's abolutely magnificent & also offsets my first two choices in a pleasant way.

― j c (j c), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

that's scarily like what my list would be, minus the waves for to the lighthouse.

― andrew s (andrew s), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 22:04 (twenty-one years ago)

1. Gravity's Rainbow
2. Marriette in Ecstasy
3. As I Lay Dying
4. Ironweed

OK, remove the one you dont want to read. :o)

― Pat Sheehan (Pat Sheehan), Thursday, 6 May 2004 17:42 (twenty-one years ago)

here's a bit of a strange collection

1. collected aesop's fables
2. dante's the divine comedy
3. the rose that grew from concrete by tupac shakur

.....cogito ergo sum.... >the pands :)

― Lana Knezevic (child_of_a_pisces), Thursday, 6 May 2004 20:48 (twenty-one years ago)

When I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a teenager, my feeling upon reaching the end was "everybody in the world should read this book." Still not a bad idea. And maybe "The Last Unicorn" by Peter Beagle, and Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" (send that one to every politician).

Those are just the ones that come to mind right now. Ask me tomorrow and I'll have three others.

― Carol Robinson (carrobin), Friday, 14 May 2004 22:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Cronopios y Famas, Julio Cortazar
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, edited by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson

alternate: The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), Ellen Raskin

― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Sunday, 16 May 2004 13:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Mmm, Cronopios y Famas...

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 16 May 2004 16:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Kafka - The Trial (comic)
G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday (philosophic)
Grahame - The Wind in the Willows (tragic? ;)

― Tom May (Tom May), Sunday, 16 May 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

The Ambassadors
The Wings of the Dove
The Golden Bowl

― Scott & Anya (thoia), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Camus, The Plague
Keegan, The Face of Battle
Saul, Voltaire's Bastards

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 15:05 (twenty-one years ago)

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