What is your list of ten "must-read" books?

[The Hooded Claw]

Waaaay back in January 2002, I created the following list of books that I felt everyone should read, and posted it on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/2GFTKI477D5C4/ref=cm_pdp_lm_title_1

As you can see, I focused on stuff that involved being successful in life and understanding how the world works and how it got this way, since those were on my mind a lot at the time.  If I made the list over again now, I'd make some changes, but most of these books would still be on the list.  Your priorities may be different, you may be inclined to recommend profound fictional experiences or very hands-on books on things like being a fix-it wizard in home or garage.

Anyway, what are YOUR list of ten essential books everyone should read?  you don't have to make an Amazon list, just post 'em here.  (but if you want to make an amazon list and link to it, that would be cool also!)

[BoomerSoonerOKU]

Wow!  This is definitely an ambitious thread.  I'm going to have to think a while before I commit to my list, so this is my placeholder.   

[Geoffrey]

The more I think about it, the harder it will get.  So I pulled 30 books I adore, read and re-read and sorted and re-sorted until I decided to stop.  I'm sure if I did this exercise again tomorrow, it would be a different list.


1.   The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2.   A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
3.   The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling
4.   Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card
5.   Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
6.   Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
7.   Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
8.   I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
9.   The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden
10.   Intervention by Julian May

[Malweth]

I don't know if this is even possible for me.

There have to be 10 classics I think everyone should read. Most of us probably have read them -- in High School. I can't find myself qualified to write such a list, and cannot possibly try.

There may be 10 books that most define me or most define my "reading style." This list I could probably come up with, but I can't recommend the books to others unless they have a similar "reading personality" to mine. This is my list:

• 1. Mastery, George Leonard (Non-fiction)
• 2. The Once & Future King, T.H. White
• 3. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
• 4. The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• 5. Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, & Dragondrums, Anne McCaffrey
• 6. Rascal, Sterling North
• 7. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
• 8. Dune, Frank Hebert
• 9. The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan
• 10. My latest favorite book, currently The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Disclaimer:
This list subject to change without notification. This list is based on a poor memory and instantaneous whim of its creator. This list does not include certain books that could not be located (out of print and out of mind), but which should have made the list because of their personal influence. This list does include books I don't well remember, but whose influence was greater than most. Other books make the list due to the number of times I read them.

[Malweth]

It seems like these lists can be written in many different ways. The problem being (my first point above) that it's difficult to define the list of books everyone should read.

My list above contains some of the books most influential in my life. One could also provide a list of one's most recommended or recommendable books.

Is the aim the latter? My list would be significantly different.

[jmiked]

So subjective that it changes from minute to minute, but ones that made a big enough impression on me that I still recall them:


My Top Ten Essential Non-fiction books

1. Levels of Knowing and Existence - Harry L. Weinberg
2. The Manhood of Humanity - Alfred Korzybski
3. Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
4. The Natural History of Nonsense - Bergen Evans
5. The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
6. Kicking the Sacred Cow - James P. Hogan
7. A Glimpse of Nothingness - Jan Van de Wetering
8. How We Know What Isn’t So - Thomas Gilovich
9. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - Leonard Mlodinow
10. Language in Thought and Action - S. I. Hayakawa

My Top Ten Essential Fiction books

1. The Hollow Man (The Third Coffin) - John Dickson Carr
2. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Dune - Frank Herbert
4. The Guns of Avalon - Roger Zelazny
5. The Egyptian Cross - Ellery Queen
6. Way Station - Clifford D. Simak
7. The Doorbell Rang - Rex Stout
8. Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert Heinlein
9. The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
10. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller


Mike

[Winter9]

Okay this is just so hard!  (Some are series or more than one book as in the Bible, they count as one) My list is as follows:

- The Bible
- The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
- The Long Walk by Stephen King as Richard Bachman
- The Shack by William P. Young
- Constance Ring by Amalie Skram
- The District Governor's Daughters by Camilla Collett
- Victoria by Knut Hamsun
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- The Legend of the Ice People by Margit Sandemo
- The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

puh, that was hard!

[NogDog]

I'm going to treat some multi-volume books as single entries. I'm not sure how much this list "should" be read by others, but if they do read it, they'll probably have a better understanding of me. The order is in great doubt, other than I'm sure Zelazny's "Amber" series would always remain on top.

1. The original "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny (Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, The Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, and The Courts of Chaos)
2. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
3. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
4. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
5. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolstein
6. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
7. Dune by Frank Herbert
8. The God Particle by Leon Lederman
9. Always Faithful by William Putney
9.5 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (Had to squeeze this into the list somewhere )
10. The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (or A Bridge Too Far - I'm not sure which of his I'd choose)

[Geoffrey]

Quite a few of the items on other lists made it into my top 30 .... but this was hard - and subject to change at random.

At first I was going to put together a should list but most of the books that we just HAD to read as a lit student didn't do much for me ... like Milton's Paradise Lost - such a snoozefest that I didn't even keep it like I did all my other college books.

[NogDog]

Quite a few of the items on other lists made it into my top 30 .... but this was hard - and subject to change at random.

At first I was going to put together a should list but most of the books that we just HAD to read as a lit student didn't do much for me ... like Milton's Paradise Lost - such a snoozefest that I didn't even keep it like I did all my other college books.

Oooh...I looked at your list again and realized I left A Canticle for Leibowitz off of mine. Now the problem is deciding what to bump for it. Maybe I'll just make mine 11 long....

[Thalia the Muse]

Essential Books (or at least, ones that had a major impact on me – your mileage will probably vary!)
Non-Fiction:

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
Gastronomical Me, M.F.K. Fisher
Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore
The Orchid Thief, Susan Orleans
The Diary of Ann Frank
The Panda’s Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman
The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes
The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wade Davis
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

Fiction:

Watership Down, Richard Adams
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Leopard,  Giuseppe di Lampedusa
A Shower of Gold, Eudora Welty
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Claudine at School, Colette
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
American Gods, Neil Gaiman

Poems:

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World, Richard Wilbur
The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats
The Duino Elegies (I can’t choose among them), Rainer Maria Rilke
Falling, James Dickey
Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas
Wild Swans, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sonnet 73 (that time of year thou mayst …), Shakespeare
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens

[Geemont]

01. The Stranger by Albert Camus
02. The Trial by Franz Kafka
03. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
04. A Collection Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
05. Dune by Frank Herbert
06  Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
07. Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky
08. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kenndy Toole
09  In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
10. The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy

[Margaret]

1. Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb
2. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
3. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouke
4. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
5. The Joy of Cooking by Erma Rohmbauer
6. Anotated Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
7. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
8. The Chosen by Chaim Potok
9. The Poems of Gerard Manly Hopkins
10.Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

These are the books I come back to again and again for various reasons.  They are also books that i would replace without question if they disappeared from my personal collection.

I forgot And then There Were None by Agatha Christie.  That should probably be in there someplace.

[DYB]

Wow, as with many people, this list is subject to change without notice or reason!  

Not in a top-ten order.

1. The Count of Monte Cirsto by Alexandre Dumas
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4. Howards End by E.M. Forster
5. The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy
6. "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje
7. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
8. "Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
9. "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kozinski
10. "The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

And I must beg for an 11th.

11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

[The Hooded Claw]

Thanks for all the great replies!  I'm surprised how many books on some of the list are also books I really like, even if they don't make my "top ten".  As for whether to do nonfiction or fiction, I think the choice people make between those fields is pretty interesting in itself.  I chose nonfiction for my books, but clearly many people feel differently (which is great).  So I'd say to go with whichever category (or mix of them) you choose!

Keep on posting, folks!

[eldereno]

The more I think about it, the harder it will get.  So I pulled 30 books I adore, read and re-read and sorted and re-sorted until I decided to stop.  I'm sure if I did this exercise again tomorrow, it would be a different list.


1.   The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2.   A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
3.   The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling
4.   Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card
5.   Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
6.   Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
7.   Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
8.   I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
9.   The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden
10.   Intervention by Julian May

Since The Handmaid's Tale is #1 on your list, I may have to check out every other book there.  I loved that book!!!!

[Geoffrey]

Since The Handmaid's Tale is #1 on your list, I may have to check out every other book there.  I loved that book!!!!

*blush*

Well, thank you for the vote of confidence.  If you're going to try some, I suggest A Canticle for Leibowitz - unfortunately, it's not available for kindle yet.  It's the story of a monastery in Colorado or somewhere about 500 years, 1000 years and 1500 years after a nuclear holocaust.  I had to read it in high school and I've read it many times since then ...

[Leslie]

*blush*

Well, thank you for the vote of confidence.  If you're going to try some, I suggest A Canticle for Leibowitz - unfortunately, it's not available for kindle yet.  It's the story of a monastery in Colorado or somewhere about 500 years, 1000 years and 1500 years after a nuclear holocaust.  I had to read it in high school and I've read it many times since then ...

I have it on my Kindle. It was a free download at Joshua Tallent's site last spring, during the International Week of the Ebook or whatever promotion was going on. Of course, I haven't read it yet, but I own it.

L

[MConti]

1. The Odyssey, Homer
2. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
3. King Lear, Shakespeare
4. Othello, Shakespeare
5. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
6. A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
8. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
9. Post Office, Charles Bukowski
10. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

[TheSeagull]

*blush*

Well, thank you for the vote of confidence.  If you're going to try some, I suggest A Canticle for Leibowitz - unfortunately, it's not available for kindle yet.  It's the story of a monastery in Colorado or somewhere about 500 years, 1000 years and 1500 years after a nuclear holocaust.  I had to read it in high school and I've read it many times since then ...

A Canticle for Leibowitz is available in an extra large print format here:
http://ebooks.ebookmall.com/title/canticle-for-leibowitz-in-extra-large-print-kindle-compatible-miller-ebooks.htm

[Geoffrey]

A Canticle for Leibowitz is available in an extra large print format here:
http://ebooks.ebookmall.com/title/canticle-for-leibowitz-in-extra-large-print-kindle-compatible-miller-ebooks.htm

Coolness.  I was looking around after Leslie mentioned there was a version, but everywhere I looked had it listed as unavailable ...    .... a little worried about the large print though ....

[summerteeth]

1. A Happy Death by Albert Camus
2. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Euginides
3. The Importance of Being Earnest
4. The Autobiography of Andy Warhol: from A to B and Back Again
5. White Oleander by Janet Fitch
6. Anthem by Ayn Rand
7. Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kasey
9. Sula by Toni Morrison
10. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

[TheSeagull]

Coolness.  I was looking around after Leslie mentioned there was a version, but everywhere I looked had it listed as unavailable ...    .... a little worried about the large print though ....

Well I'm pretty sure you could change the font size, through the Kindle itself or maybe Calibre.

[MLPMom]

Must reads for me would be:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (the whole series actually)
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (for some reason this story stuck with me in high school although at the time it wasn't an easy read)
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowlings (technically more than one books but I really think this is a great series)
The Diary of Anne Frank (such an important part of our worlds history that should not be forgotten)


That is all I can think of at the moment. I will edit this post when I think of more.

[The Hooded Claw]

As I mentioned in the OP, I wrote my Amazon list on this back in 2002.  Now that time has passed, I think I'd still include the following books on my ten:

1.  Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin
2.  Decision in Philadelphia:  The Constitutional Convention of 1787, by Christopher Collier  (I'll admit there are other books that would probably serve as well, but I think the topic is one US readers should be familiar with)
3.  In Search of the Light:  Adventures of a Parapsychologist, by Susan Blackmore
4.  Toxic Sludge is Good for you:  Lies, d*mn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry, by John C. Stauber (he's published a "sequel" but I don't think it is as good)
5.  Guns, Germs, and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond (though I'll admit I'd consider substituting his later book, "Collapse")
6.  Say What You Mean, Get What You Want, by Linda McCallister
7.  The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management, by Hyrum Smith (I just reread this one a few months ago)
8.  Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
9.  How to Lie With Statistics, by Darrell Huff

Actually, that means there's only one book I'd leave off!  But I'm going to have to think about what I'd replace it with.