Must-read books

evil^milk

evil^milk

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What are the basic books one should not go without reading? You know, like 1984 and stuff.
 
The only ones I've read recently:

1984
Animal Farm
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts
House of Leaves

I'm currently only halfway through House of Leaves, but it's successfully made me afraid of the dark again.
 
Everybody Poops

Im on chapter 4 entitled "wiping"
 
Stigmata said:
The only ones I've read recently:

1984
Animal Farm
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts
House of Leaves

I'm currently only halfway through House of Leaves, but it's successfully made me afraid of the dark again.
Click to expand...

I heard house of leaves was really good, no way I could read that book though, it would take forever
 
metamorphosis - Kafka
art of war - sun tzu
the prince - Machiavelli
tuesdays with morrie - albom
 
Johnny Got his Gun
Huck Finn
The Count of Monte Cristo
Black Beauty
 
zombieturtle01 said:
I heard house of leaves was really good, no way I could read that book though, it would take forever
Click to expand...
It does take a while, but it really is an excellent read. Go get it from the library, even if it takes you a month to get through it :P
 
Playboy.

No no no no..

Wait..

Yea yea yea.
 
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
Grendel - John Gardner
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Sirens of Titans/Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevesky
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Watchmen - Alan Moore
The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor L. Frankl
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
 
To kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee.

Everything else I can think of has been said already.
 
fear and loathing in las vegas by hunter s thompson
the entirety of philip k dick's works
naked lunch by burroughs
everything by vonnegut (esp cats cradle, slaughterhouse 5, player piano)
fight club and survivor by chuck palahniuk
on the road by jack kerouac
thus spoke zarathustra by nietzsche
everything william gibson ever even THOUGHT about writing

i could go on for days
 
And nobody had mentioned Lord of the Rings?

FOR SHAAAME.
 
Having not read the entire LOTR trilogy sort of devalues your opinion on it, I'm afraid.
 
The style and manner of writing doesn't change from book to book and I've seen the movies so my opinion is still pretty valid.
 
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Any short stories by H.P. Lovecraft.
 
I have read all of LoTR and Deus is right. Pity I didn't quit at the first book either. Although I did learn my lesson after reading LoTR, and applied it to Wheel of Time.

Read anything by Asimov. Read Robot Dreams.
 
Kyorisu said:
The lack of Terry Pratchett is most disturbing.
Click to expand...

He's not absolutely essential reading, imho. He's one of the best I've read, yes, but he's not... essential.
 
- The Night Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
(made of The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God)

- Pandora's star and Judas Unchained - Peter F. Hamilton

- Illium and Olympos - Dan Simmons

- Hyperion, The fall of Hyperion, Endymion and Rise of Endymion - Dan Simmons

Every book with Dean R. Koontz!

Epixx
 
Recently read ender's game and all of the bean series again, was pretty awesome - I'll have to go through the ender's series again soon too D:

This book is a must-read too imo (if you're into competitive gaming): http://www.sirlin.net/ptw (he released it for free on his own website)
 
I'd say Terry Pratchett was essential. He'll help anyone fend off the madness in this world with a wry smile and a rat on a stick.


I don't read as much as I used to, but did find The Railway Man by Eric Lomax to be an excellent and deeply moving autobiography. It focuses on the horrible torture he received at the hands of the Japanese during WW2 and his struggle to come to terms with it.
 
Kyorisu said:
The science of discworld alone is a must read book.
Click to expand...

I take back my previous statement.

I quite forgot about the Science of the Discworld books... but there's no one PTerry book I would classify as a 'must-read'.
 
Just ask your local university professor for the entire English canon. It's revered for a reason. Most of it is pretty good.

Read Shakespeare. Read Webster and Johnson. Read old seminal texts like The Prince and the Art of War; read the texts that have shaped politics and philosophy (Rights of Man, Leviathan, Das Kapital, etc). Go back in time a bit and read Beowulf (there's a good Seamus Heaney translation), and Gawain, and, later, Chaucer. Read Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre and Dickens; read Dracula and Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe and all the Romantic poets and Wilde, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Yeats, Kafka, Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and every damn thing we remember from 1890 to 1945, including Orwell and Hemingway, read all the beat poets, see Brecht plays, Harold Pinter, Waiting for Godot, all the seventies British political playwrights - Edward Bond, Trevor Griffiths, Caryl Churchill...read Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban. Read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Read everything by Joseph Heller! Read John Updike. Read all the modern classis that people rave about like Fight Club and American History X. Read Angela Carter, because she's brilliant. Read the magical realists and Martin Amis and Iain M Banks and Iain McEwan and A History Of The World In 10/half Chapters by Julian Barnes and maybe stuff like Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton which is just a short easy-to-read primer type thing on interesting ideas.

Read 'The Art of Fiction' by David Lodge, then read every single book he mentions, then read every single book by every single author that he mentions and by every single author of every single book that he mentions!

Mix this all up with everything that Ennui named, and everything that Deus Ex Machina mentioned, Nietzsche and Hunter S Thompson (I like The Rum Diary myself) and Philip K Dick short stories William Gibson and any comic written by Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, because although this is a self-consciously high-arty list not a single one of these things I've just mentioned is any less valid and any less enjoyable and don't ever ignore anything just because arty types sniff at it; read Terry Pratchet, and the Science of Discworld, and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is pretty good too.

Read Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban - I'm saying it again because it is my favourite fucking book in the world.

Finally, read anything that anyone recommends to you, and read anything and everything that you want to.

PS: Never read Lord of the Rings.
 
Ender's Game

Ennui said:
Having not read the entire LOTR trilogy sort of devalues your opinion on it, I'm afraid.
Click to expand...

Personally, aside form The Hobbit, I really can't stand the way Tolkien writes fantasy, it just doesn't appeal to me at all. Though I have a huge amount of respect for him for creating what is essentially the bread and butter of every modern fantasy book / game / movie etc. I just genuinely find the LotR trilogy to be incredibly mundane. Obviously Hunter Thompson is one of my favorite authors though, along with Vonnegut.

Sulkdodds said:
Just ask your local university professor for the entire English canon. It's revered for a reason. Most of it is pretty good.

Read Shakespeare. Read Webster and Johnson. Read old seminal texts like The Prince and the Art of War; read the texts that have shaped politics and philosophy (Rights of Man, Leviathan, Das Kapital, etc). Go back in time a bit and read Beowulf (there's a good Seamus Heaney translation), and Gawain, and, later, Chaucer. Read Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre and Dickens; read Dracula and Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe and all the Romantic poets and Wilde, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Yeats, Kafka, Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and every damn thing we remember from 1890 to 1945, including Orwell and Hemingway, read all the beat poets, see Brecht plays, Harold Pinter, Waiting for Godot, all the seventies British political playwrights - Edward Bond, Trevor Griffiths, Caryl Churchill...read Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban. Read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Read everything by Joseph Heller! Read John Updike. Read all the modern classis that people rave about like Fight Club and American History X. Read Angela Carter, because she's brilliant. Read the magical realists and Martin Amis and Iain M Banks and Iain McEwan and A History Of The World In 10/half Chapters by Julian Barnes and maybe stuff like Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton which is just a short easy-to-read primer type thing on interesting ideas.

Read 'The Art of Fiction' by David Lodge, then read every single book he mentions, then read every single book by every single author that he mentions and by every single author of every single book that he mentions!

Mix this all up with everything that Ennui named, and everything that Deus Ex Machina mentioned, Nietzsche and Hunter S Thompson (I like The Rum Diary myself) and Philip K Dick short stories William Gibson and any comic written by Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, because although this is a self-consciously high-arty list not a single one of these things I've just mentioned is any less valid and any less enjoyable and don't ever ignore anything just because arty types sniff at it; read Terry Pratchet, and the Science of Discworld, and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is pretty good too.

Read Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban - I'm saying it again because it is my favourite fucking book in the world.

Finally, read anything that anyone recommends to you, and read anything and everything that you want to.

PS: Never read Lord of the Rings.
Click to expand...

Great post, I'm definitely going to check out The Art of Fiction asap. I start classes at the uni on the 4th and have a pretty Lit heavy schedule (In fact I always will, as I plan to have some kind of writing related major) so I'm sure I'll come across some of this stuff in class.
 
Discworld. Go buy the Night/City Watch collection now.
 
bloody hell, I can stand Pratchett's style of writing. Rubbish I tells yah :)

I'd recommend the original Conan, light books, clearly, but so vividly descriptive and entertaining, and after all that's all you need in a book.
 
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

As well as many Swedish novels that you've never heard of.
 
I'm not commenting on LOTR at all, just pointing out that by definition you cannot be fully qualified to judge or comment on something that you haven't actually taken the time to read, regardless of whether you liked it or not. You might have an idea, but you're essentially talking out of your ass by that point.

I don't like LOTR that much, but I can say that definitively as I have read The Hobbit and all three books of the trilogy completely.

Darkside, I lol'd at the Wheel of Time bit, after the fifth or so book I gave up on it :D

I'm adding: all Russian authors, particularly Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment is essential), Soltzhenitsyn (short stories are best IMO, Ivan Denisovitch and We Never Make Mistakes and Matronya's House), all the works of Tolstoy (again, I prefer his short works), Anton Chekhov, the list goes on.

Ayn Rand everyone should read to know what a colossal ****head she is. Atlas Shrugged is like hiking to the top of a mountain that's been converted into a concentration camp (that is, not a fun walk, nor short), but Anthem warrants a read (and isn't too infuriatingly infused with her stupid ideas), and I'm currently about to read The Fountainhead which I hear is worthwhile.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is excellent.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna.

The Hitchhiker's Guide books.
 
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