My preference is for essays.
— Tom Storm

Any in particular? — T Clark

It's a bit of a cliché I'm afraid - George Orwell, Gore Vidal and Pauline Kael (film essays), Susan Sontag, PL Travers, Clive James, Martin Amis, Andrew O'Hagen, Gideon Haigh, Martin Gardner, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Hunter Thompson, Evelyn Waugh, George Packer.

Who is "everyone"? And why "should" they read exactly the same books (like "true believers" re: e.g. the Bible, the Qur'an, Mao's "Little Red Book" ...)?

Good ole American style pragmatism. I like it! I could use a copy of the Plumbers Bible right now.

Good ole American style pragmatism. — Dermot Griffin

Oh dear, I've really let myself down there! :grimace:

It's a bit of a cliché I'm afraid - George Orwell, Gore Vidal and Pauline Kael (film essays), Susan Sontag, PL Travers, Clive James, Martin Amis, Andrew O'Hagen, Gideon Haigh, Martin Gardner, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Hunter Thompson, Evelyn Waugh, George Packer. — Tom Storm

Thanks.

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. — Bitter Crank

Whenever I hear anyone complaining about the quality of books I always want to say - We get to choose from 5,000 years of written works. There are tens of thousands of wonderful books, not even counting the merely good ones. They're available without leaving our homes, many of them free. Starting in the past 20 years, the same has been true for TV, movies, and music. This is the golden age of access to art of all kinds.

If you like Titus Groan read the second book too. Gormenghast is just as good. — jamalrob

I did read "Gormenghast" finally. I was....disappointed isn't the right word, but it didn't have the magic for me that "Titus Groan" did. While reading, it struck me that might be the point, at least partly.

My interests overlap with many of the books you and the other posters mention as important to them. I am going to check out a number of titles mentioned that I have not read.

Books not mentioned yet, that are important to me, are the wittings of Greeks from Homer onwards. I have spent most of my time in that neck of the wood on the works of philosophy but the plays and poems interest me too.

Some other books I love without having to think much about it are:

Rupert Thomson's Five Gates of Hell
The Poetry of Rilke, Auden, Neruda, C.S Merwin, and Charles Olson.
Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class
Yuri Slezkine's The House of Government
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.
Virgil's Aeneid translated by Dryden

I like Bitter Crank's idea for a worst ever list. I am going to slip into a Hazmat suit before entering that conversation.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. — Paine

I've just started reading this and I'm enjoying it a lot.

It has given me a boost when my other guilty pleasures did not.

Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class — Paine

There's more to it than my favorite part about the stupidity pf lawns.

C. Peter Domhoff Who Rules America and The Bohemian Grove and other retreats;: A study in ruling-class cohesiveness and others. Domhoff has (surprisingly) also written about dreams. Some of Bomhoff's material is on line at https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu.

C. Wright Mills The Power Elite 1956, but still true. "C. Wright Mills was a radical public intellectual, a tough-talking, motorcycle-riding anarchist from Texas who taught sociology at Columbia University."

Dorothy Day The Long Loneliness: (the autobiography of the legendary Catholic social activist)

Flannery O'Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find and other stories.

John Rechy City of Night 1963 Lets hear it for a great account of sexual adventures (cruising the streets and parks of Los Angeles) If you prefer your erotica served up as sociology, try Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places his scandalous PhD dissertation about gay sex in St. Louis, Missouri city park toilets in the 1960s. The scandal was much less about men having sex in public toilets and much more about his methods of studying it.

Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited & the BBC's dramatization

Robert Brooks I Claudius & the BBC's dramatization

The very hungry caterpillar.

Yes, much more than the lawns.

I am familiar with Mills, Waugh, O'Connor, and Brooks. Will check out the others.

I think Steinbeck is a part of this. Conformity as a means to survival in contrast to people imagining their future in Dickens.

Rupert Thomson, lives in Veblen's basement, should you check him out.

Understanding Power interviews with Noam Chomsky

And then whatever you think is interesting. :cool:

Well, then, what is Chomsky's reading list?

It's extremely long, and should only be of interests to those who think what he's saying makes sense.

I was only half-joking about "having" to read that book.

I agree with others here that there is no must read, especially in philosophy - there are too many ways of thinking about the world and people often feel attracted to very different perspectives, making recommendations pointless.

Unless they are looking for a specific branch of philosophy, then one can throw out some suggestions.

I don't think recommendations are pointless. I disagree with Chomsky in many ways but respect the way he pulls together what he thinks is coherent. I don't think he would be cool with the idea that his ideas are just one of many. He wants his idea to win.

Recommendations without a area of interest are very strange to me. If you specify, I'm interested in Chomsky's political (or philosophical) recommendations, then that's fine.

But to ask, what book must be read? Assumes there has to be such a book. The onus is on the person providing the book to say what this book must be read, out of all possible books.

He's happy to get people thinking for themselves. I think he wants to find out the truth, but knowns that in human affairs, there are likely no final answers.

The onus is on the person providing the book to say what this book must be read, out of all possible books. — Manuel

Yes. Let the onus fall on you.

Bukowski's Post Office. Pirandello's Kaos. Gomorrah. Life of a Day. Farewell to Reason. Constructing quarks. Florinda Donner's cheat.

1984 (or anything by Orwell)

I wouldn’t recommend any work of philosophy as a ‘must read’ tbh. If I had to pick one I’d go for The Republic.

If we are talking purely about philosophy then I think anyone serious about the subject should tackle Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

I second that. Other than Shakespeare Orwell is a must and I think Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy are must reads also. The Republic in my opinion is more literature than philosophy but I definitely think it is more than accessible to high schoolers. Kant I personally think might be a tad too difficult but you never know.

Kant if you are serious ;)

Crime and Punishment is certainly one I’d highly recommend to most people (and have done). 1984 was one that really cut through the nonsense and conveyed a message everyone needs to take seriously though.

I agree. I personally think Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s work needs to be taken seriously, too. What communism did to Eastern Europe and East Asia is not widely spread knowledge among today’s youth.

Go Dog Go is a book I highly recommend for its life study and discussion of basic philosophical truths. Consider the following quotes:

“The sun is up. The sun is yellow. The yellow sun is over the house. It is hot out here in the sun.”

Who among us haven't noticed these very same things yet never were able to put them in verse?

“The dogs are all going around, and around, and around.”

Ha! What a whimsical thought! Dogs spinning, turning, and doing such non-dog things! Who doesn't love this imagery?

“A dog party! A big dog party! Big dogs, little dogs, red dogs, blue dogs, yellow dogs, green dogs, black dogs, and white dogs are all at a dog party! ”

We're all thinking the same thing! Why wasn't I invited to this canine fiesta? Dogs of all stripes and colors partying at the most diverse of galas!

Go Dog Go is a book I highly recommend for its life study and discussion of basic philosophical truths. — Hanover

If we are going to evaluate children's books as philosophy, I put my money on "Goodnight Moon."

If we are going to evaluate children's books as philosophy, I put my money on "Goodnight Moon." — T Clark

That's on my reading list. I've started it a few times, but I haven't been able to get completely through it yet.

Here ( https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3496762-josh-alfred ) are my first number of books I read from about 2007-2010 on goodreads.com . I didn't post more on this site since then. Kind of lost interest in keeping track of everything I have read over the years.

Here are some other suggestions:

Self-Reliance by Emerson
Everything by Steven Pinker.
Everything by Dawkins.
Everything by Hawking.
Everything by Jack Kornfield
Everything by Ken Wilber
Everything by Aristotle
Everything by Hume
Everything by Locke
Everything by Smith
Meditations by Aurelius
A history of Western Philosophy by Russell, Durant, Voltaire. I would suggest my own one, but removed it from the net.

There is probably 400-500hrs of reading here. And to think that I've read so much more.

First Aid Manual 11th Edition, Red Cross.

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