This is intended as a serious comment.

Boy. Pretty depressing. I don't think teenagers need to be more depressed than they already are. Also, a lot of this stuff is specifically Christian. I'm not a big fan of the ram it down their throats approach. Teach them to read and show them things worth reading, which can include stuff on your list. Allow them to find things of their own they like to read, even if it's auto repair. Teach them to write. Teach them history and geography. Teach them science and math. Teach them German (or Japanese, or Latin).

Here are books I've given to my children because they've meant so much to me:

"Freedom not License" by A.S. Neill
"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
"The Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu. I give the Stephen Mitchell translation
"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
"The Poetry of Robert Frost" by Robert Frost
"The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts
"Life's Ratchet" by Peter Hoffman
"The Panda's Thumb" and other books of essays by Stephen J. Gould
"The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin
"Titus Groan" by Melvyn Peake
"As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner
"The Education of a Poker Player" by Herbert Yardley because my father gave it to me
"You Have the Right to Remain Innocent" by James Duane

I could keep going. I don't suggest making students read these books and I don't think these are by any means the best or the most important. I don't think that matters. Well written matters. Taste matters - not that it's important that students agree with yours, but they should learn that they need to find their own.

Solzhenitsyn in particular should be required reading. Was going to add Lao Tzu along with Chuang Tzu as well as the Dhammapada and stuff from Confucianism but I got caught up at work. Being a native of Massachusetts I love Robert Frost. I made this list irrespective of age group; perhaps the books I posted are geared more at higher education. Solzhenitsyn however, as I said, needs to be taught in both secondary and higher education. Darwin is also good (wasn’t at the top of my list when I was typing it up). I wholeheartedly agree with you that students needs to find their own interests in reading, but books like these are called “classics” for a reason.

I, unfortunately, don't have a ready list of books which I could reproduce at will. Alas, my memory isn't what it used to be.

I've often heard it said that we should eschew viewing TV and instead cultivate a reading habit, but really, how different are books from TV programs? :chin: Did pre-TV times see people telling each other not to read books but do something else?

Wittgenstein reportedly read very little of his predecessors' and coevals' works. Look how he turned out. Dead! :lol:

We
Don't
All
Have
To

Be the same, read the same books, agree about everything. Some of us need to read The Plumber's Bible, but not all of us.

Be the same, read the same books, agree about everything. Some of us need to read The Plumber's Bible, but not all of us. — unenlightened

Are you a Plumbatarian?

No, but some of my best friends are.

:up:



From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that students needs to find their own interests in reading, but books like these are called “classics” for a reason. — Dermot Griffin

I got beaten up here on the forum for starting the discussion "You don't need to read philosophy to be a philosopher," so you can sort of see where I'm coming from. I'm not really a classics kind of guy. On the other hand, as I noted, I think taste is very important. Students need to figure out what their taste is. There's no better way to do that than by having someone passionate show them theirs.

I left "Self-Reliance" by Emerson off my list.

A book about a dystopian society where everyone is forced to read Kierkegaard should be required reading for anyone who suggests everyone must read Kierkegaard.

A book about a dystopian society where everyone is forced to read Kierkegaard should be required reading for anyone who suggests everyone must read Kierkegaard. — Baden

Relax, relax. We'll make them read Yeats, Joyce, and French too.

Mandatory 'Finnegan's Wake'? That'll teach 'em. :naughty:

“The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?“ - Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Gotta have my Yeats; one of the perks of being half Irish is hearing the older folks recite his poetry on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Regardless of what we think students should be reading (we can make a cause for all of these books) it is unfortunate that other states here in America don’t encourage reading like this. There are many reasons for it but speaking as a native of Massachusetts there is a worrying fusion of politics and education that I see rearing it’s head.

And maybe Kierkegaard should be reserved for college… but he’d definitely have something to say about politics in the classroom.

Do young people still read books? BITD long ago when the English teacher would assign a classic novel we would go to Classic Comics. Nowadays they probably go to Youtube for their quick analysis.

Sinful, ain't it? :snicker:

I have read books by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn; Fyodor Dostoyevsky Leo Tolstoy; Soren Kierkegaard; Franz Kafka; George Orwell; plays by William Shakespeare. Little Milton; no Nietzsche; no Schapenhauer; no St. Thomas Acquinas; a little by Augustine and St John of the Cross; very little Hannah Arendt.

I count some of the items on your list as great literature. I can't think of any reason why everyone should read everything on your list. I majored in English (a long time ago) and have since read quite a bit in classics, religious studies, science fiction, history, and science. Many of the books I read were good FOR ME to read. Should everyone read my long list of books? Of course not!

The best advice I can offer "everyone" is this: If you have the inclination to read a lot, then read widely. If you don't feel inclined to read a lot then you probably won't. If you can, at least find a few books that you enjoy.

There are authors who I love--Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg. I also like Allen Ginsberg and some other beat poets. William Blake is on my A-list, and so is John Donne. There are a mixed batch of poets I have read with pleasure (and not a few I tossed aside with disgust).

Load the cannons with insufferable canons of literature (and every other art) and fire away.

It's not canonical books; it's canonical lists.

Interesting - care to explain why those books? Not trying to be a dick, but they seem to reflect a very deliberate and mid century, Jordan B Peterson type sensibility. :grin:

I've read many of those, and some I started but they were too dull and/or irrelevant to my experience. I don't hold to a worldview wherein everyone should read key books. Dostoyevsky I find awfully turgid - I like The Gambler over all his other works, concise, biting - a wonderful and gruesome depiction of addiction, perhaps the only subject D really knew.

I can't say I am a big reader any more and I generally don't read for pleasure. My preference is for essays. I draw little from poetry or Shakespeare... As far as Solzhenitsyn is concerned, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich will suffice - the other stuff is interminable but of historical significance. I would read Anne Applebaum's Gulag for a stunning overview of the Soviet approach.

Some of my preferred authors have been: George Elliot, Saul Bellow, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Bruce Chatwin, John Steinbeck, Patrick White, Joseph Conrad, Cervantes, Flaubert, and Joris-Karl Huysmans.

I can't say I have read any philosophy that has made a big impact - but I have not been voracious in this area - Nietzsche, Seneca, Schopenhauer (I enjoyed some essays), Montaigne, Camus, Thoreau, Rorty, Murdoch, and lots of essays/papers by everyone from Thomas Nagel to Susan Haack. Mostly forgotten now.

If I was recommending a couple of books to a 20 year-old, they might be The Great Gatsby (for it's acute observations about people and its use of English) and Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt for its arse-kicking politics. My favourite novel might be Voss.

I can't say I am a big reader — Tom Storm

You clearly once were though.

My preference is for essays. — Tom Storm

Any in particular?

"Titus Groan" by Melvyn Peake — T Clark

This has been on the back burner for awhile; should it move up?

St John of the Cross — Bitter Crank

One of the most beautiful things I've read in a long time (to me at least, highlighting the sentiment in the thread here) was from his "Spiritual Canticle":

Return thou, dove,
For the wounded hart appears on the hill
At the air of thy flight, and takes refreshment.

This has been on the back burner for awhile; should it move up? — Noble Dust

Here's a link to a review I did.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/642269

Sounds like I need to order it. It was in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, of which I once had a hair-brained goal of collecting them all...but I can't find a cheap Ballantine copy. Guess I'll have to settle for something else.

Scratch that, found one. Ordered! I also saw below your review that @jamalrob is a fan. Extra motivation to read.

The Wee Free Men.

Titus Groan stayed with me a long time. Unique and very evocative.

I think it's hopeless getting other people to read books, there's something about recommending a book that immediately makes people not want to read it. Askng for recommendations is different. I've never read any of the Russian ones in the OP.

Fun facts:

1. The Diamond Sutra (The Earliest Dated Book; 11 May 868).

2. The most printed book in history: The Bibila Sacra (5 billion copies).

3. The most translated author: Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) aka the Duchess of Death.

Going by the above list of authors and topics, it appears that there's a mystery of a religious nature; in all likelihood a murder has been commited (Jeeeezuz!). Friends, Romans, countrymen, we have corpus delecti. Our task is to solve this case!

Can we?

:lol:

Books I've particularly enjoyed:

Tomorrow's Children, edited by Asimov
Farmer Giles of Ham, Tolkien's best work IMO
Assassin's Apprentice and sequels, Robin Hobb. Best fantasy author I've read.
Ronald Dahl's short stories
The Remains Of the Day, Ishiguro
Loud Hands, various autistic authors
The Once and Future King, T H White

Titus Groan — T Clark

Extra motivation to read. — Noble Dust

A favourite of mine. If you like Titus Groan read the second book too. Gormenghast is just as good. In fact, the two books read as one.

Regarding the OP, I used to think there were "books that everyone must read", but now I don't.

Rough list of 10, tried to stick with slightly more accessible ones:

Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition
Linda Zerilli - Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom
Ellen Meiskins Wood - The Origin of Capitalism
Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu - How the West Came to Rule
Andre Leroi-Gourhan - Gesture and Speech
Miguel de Beistegui - Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology
Alicia Juarrero - Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behaviour as a Complex System
Alva Noe - Action in Perception
Fredrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil + On the Genealogy of Morals
Alphonso Lingis - The Imperative

:up:

lol

As Levendis, the daemon in THE MAN WHO ROWED Christopher Columbus ASHORE by Harlan Ellison said, "It is not surprising that there is bad art; what IS surprising is that there is so much good art everywhere."

This applies to books too. There are so many great books of all kinds. That's the reason I reject "must read" or "best books o all time" lists. It might be more helpful to present lists of bad books.