Books Everyone Should Read

since i lost all my books in hurricane katrina, i feel i need to start a new collection. so what are some books that everyone should read? here's a few of my recommendations.

East of Eden by Steinbeck

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Childhood Friend of Jesus

Snow Crash

Watership Down

Stranger in a Strange Land

Dune

the divine comedy by dante
paradise lost by milton
the silmarillion by tolkien
the iliad by homer

i should've added those to mine *grr*

almost forgot about this one

Hellfire by Nick Tosches (seriously one of the best books ever written, even though it's a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. Read that shit, I promise you it's worth it.)

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (Haha, just kidding! No one's actually read Infinite Jest.)

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James "Irish" Joyce

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by some hippies

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Campbell

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

is there a book group? if not there definately should be.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

How To Make Love Like A Porn Star by Jenna Jameson

Goomba's Guide To Life by Steve Schairippa

But if you're over 16 -- which, presumably, hopefully, everyone reading this is -- and you haven't read Catcher in the Rye yet, don't bother, or else you will want to choke Houlden Caulfield, not sympathize with him.

Meditations (or To Myself) by Marcus Aurelius

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

The Perfumed Garden by Sir Richard Burton

Not for everyone

The Rum Diaries - H.S. Thompson
What's Eating gilbert Grape -Peter Hedges
The Beach - Alex Garland
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Favourite Game - Leonard Cohen
All involve young men undergoing some transformation.

[Edited on Oct 13, 2005 by Scissorfingers]

agreed, i'm simply stating that everyone should read these sometime in their life, not necessarily now.

haha, so true...

kafka - metamorphosis and other stories
neitzche - beyond good and evil
kesey - one flew over the cuckoos nest
dostoevsky - notes from underground

The Harry Potter series of course....

but for the more serious folks out there I'd recommend the following.

The Book of Five Rings
Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai
The Art of War

Three classics for a good collection.

Also, don't forget these.

The Story of Ferdinand the Bull
Corduroy
Mr. Popper's Penguins
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Curious George
Go Dog Go
Goodnight Moon

[Edited on Oct 12, 2005 by StrongBhoy]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Virgin Blue and Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

anything by Jane Austen

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis---this is the story of Cupid and Psyche (also his Space Trilogy)

The Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart

Jack Kerouac

Edgar Allen Poe

also, LOTR series and the Hobbit by Tolkien

The Metamorphoses by Ovid

(edited because I made a mistake)


[Edited on Oct 13, 2005 by Avivah]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

trying not to post any repeats....

Complete works of W. Shakespeare
1984 - George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Immense Journey - Loren Eiseley
Dark Tower series - Stephen King
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster.

best to read it early, though. Louis Sachar's Wayside series, too, and Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott.

edit: Alice in Wonderland.

[Edited on Oct 12, 2005 by InLikeFlynn]

1984 is a must
Culture of Fear
No Logo
The Contortionist's Handbook