Autumn of the Patriarch Lucky Bastard God Is Not Great Patriot Acts The Road to Serfdom

I am not cocky, I am confident, and when you tell me I am the best it is a compliment. -Styles P
 

I had to include several finance related titles... psychology, philosophy, classics:

The Black Swan Extreme Money The Numerati Why People Believe Weird Things How We Know What Isn't So Predictably Irrational Money Game The Education of a Speculator A Demon of Our Own Design A People's History of the United States The Misbehavior of Markets The Crowd Thus Spoke Zarathustra The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

*Guns, Germs, and Steel (as posted earlier... amazing book)

 

2001: A Space Odyssey

/nerdass... sorry, I loved that book. It was assigned for a class and I blew through it.

I also liked City of Glass but I can see why some people wouldn't want to read it.

Freakanomics was good too

If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough. "There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
 

The ones I have read that you should:

Catcher in the Rye Great Gatsby 1984 A Brave New World Fahrenheit 451 Atlas Shrugged The Sun Also Rises The Old Man and the Sea From Beirut to Jerusalem Liar's Poker Outliers Animal Farm All The King's Men To Kill a Mockingbird Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Ender's Game Lord of the Rings

Books I haven't read that I've been told I have to:

As I Lay Dying Point Counter Point For Whom the Bell Tolls Catch-22 Slaughterhouse Five The Sound and the Fury The French Lieutenant's Woman On the Road A Clockwork Orange Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance A Farewell to Arms

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

Also have to give an honorable mention to the 4 Hour Body and the 4 Hour Work Week, they aren't great literature, but they show you different ways to think about how you live life (which is really what literature is in the most basic sense).

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 
farmerbob:
The Count of Monte Cristo is by far the best book I've ever read. I read it at least once a year. Get the full version, why our society creates abridged versions of books is beyond me.

Shit, don't know how I missed this one. I absolutely agree with CMC being the best book I've ever read. Well, it's a close tie between that and The Catcher in the Rye.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 
D M:
farmerbob:
The Count of Monte Cristo is by far the best book I've ever read. I read it at least once a year. Get the full version, why our society creates abridged versions of books is beyond me.

Shit, don't know how I missed this one. I absolutely agree with CMC being the best book I've ever read. Well, it's a close tie between that and The Catcher in the Rye.

I heard its great too.. but having already seen the movie do u think its still worth reading since I know how it ends?
 

For anybody who even remotely likes watching sports - Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

In the war against you and the other qualified candidates out there, the best arsenal is to prove that you have outdone yourself.
 

Wow, this thread has my name written all over it.

Anything by Leo Tolstoy or Fyodr Dostoyevsky must be read by default. Anna Karenina is truly beastly. Also rounding out the top 10 would be All Quiet On the Western Front, Brave New World, Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1984, Brothers Karamazov, anything by H.P. Lovecraft, complete works of Edgar Allen Poe (especially Arthur Pym of Nantucket), For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Trial by Franz Kafka. Honorable mention to "Count of Monte Crisco by Alexandree Dumbass." :)

The Alchemist, I'm sorry to say, is a terrible book. This girl I liked begged me to read it, and by the time I was done with it, I didn't like her anymore. No development, no conflict, and the main character just has all these random flashes of inspiration that aren't brought on my anything. "And then he realized X, Y, and Z. And he was happy." But I am thankful for all of the above.

Metal. Music. Life. www.headofmetal.com
 
In The Flesh:
Wow, this thread has my name written all over it.

Anything by Leo Tolstoy or Fyodr Dostoyevsky must be read by default. Anna Karenina is truly beastly. Also rounding out the top 10 would be All Quiet On the Western Front, Brave New World, Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1984, Brothers Karamazov, anything by H.P. Lovecraft, complete works of Edgar Allen Poe (especially Arthur Pym of Nantucket), For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Trial by Franz Kafka. Honorable mention to "Count of Monte Crisco by Alexandree Dumbass." :)

The Alchemist, I'm sorry to say, is a terrible book. This girl I liked begged me to read it, and by the time I was done with it, I didn't like her anymore. No development, no conflict, and the main character just has all these random flashes of inspiration that aren't brought on my anything. "And then he realized X, Y, and Z. And he was happy." But I am thankful for all of the above.

Since you like Dostoyevsky, quick question, did you enjoy Notes From UNderground? I am reading it right now but it just seems like he is rambling on, gets to a point then does a 180 and goes off on a different direction? What are your thoughts on Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenevov (Sketches from a Hunter albums?)

My List: The Selfish Gene 48 Laws of Power The Game My Journal

 
TheOneandOnlyRD:
In The Flesh:
Wow, this thread has my name written all over it.

Anything by Leo Tolstoy or Fyodr Dostoyevsky must be read by default. Anna Karenina is truly beastly. Also rounding out the top 10 would be All Quiet On the Western Front, Brave New World, Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1984, Brothers Karamazov, anything by H.P. Lovecraft, complete works of Edgar Allen Poe (especially Arthur Pym of Nantucket), For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Trial by Franz Kafka. Honorable mention to "Count of Monte Crisco by Alexandree Dumbass." :)

The Alchemist, I'm sorry to say, is a terrible book. This girl I liked begged me to read it, and by the time I was done with it, I didn't like her anymore. No development, no conflict, and the main character just has all these random flashes of inspiration that aren't brought on my anything. "And then he realized X, Y, and Z. And he was happy." But I am thankful for all of the above.

Since you like Dostoyevsky, quick question, did you enjoy Notes From UNderground? I am reading it right now but it just seems like he is rambling on, gets to a point then does a 180 and goes off on a different direction? What are your thoughts on Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenevov (Sketches from a Hunter albums?)

My List: The Selfish Gene 48 Laws of Power The Game My Journal

I read Notes From Underground a couple of years ago. It's a good primer for Fyodr's broader style, and his stories in general are very character/conversation-oriented. It's kind of open-ended and chaotic that way. There isn't a clear 180-degree turn, but treat it as a journey rather than as a destination.

Metal. Music. Life. www.headofmetal.com
 
Best Response
Blake Donaghy:
For those of you out of school, where do you find the time for pleasure reading? Right before bed for 30min a night or something?
You'd be surprised at how many hours there are in a day once you cut out distractions such as TV or surfing WSO (I'm still working on that one obviously). I usually read in bed before falling asleep or I block off a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. I also bring a personal book with me when traveling for work so I can get some time in on the plane or at my hotel if I'm not busy. I try to read for at least 30 minutes a "session" cause that's otherwise it is just too short. Once you start dedicating time to it you'd be surprised at how fast you can get through books. I just bought a Kindle DX for Black Friday and I'm hoping it will make it easier to read on the road.
CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

i know ill catch shit for this but the girl with the dragon tattoo series is pretty gripping. The mark of a good book to me is the inability to stop reading even when your dead fucking tired and want to go to bed.

Here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, you are the sucker.
 

Franz Kafka - The Trial Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations Dostoyevsky - Brothers Karamazov John Updike - Terrorist Coetzee - Disgrace Kant - Critique of Judgement Hamid - Reluctant Fundamentalist James Joyce - Ulysses Hemingway - Men without Women

This is a great thread. Got so much to still catch up on.

 

Ayn Rand- The Fountainhead Erich Maria Remarque- All Quiet on the Western Front Herman Wouk- The Winds of War and War and Remembrance John Steinbeck- The Grapes of Wrath James Michner- Poland Leon Uris- QB VII, Exodus, Mila 18 Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian Larry McMurtry- Lonesome Dove Jack London- The Call of the Wild Frank McCourt- Angela's Ashes Anne Frank- The Diary of Anne Frank Richard Adams- Watership Down Ernest Hemingway- For Whom the Bell Tolls William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury Kurt Vonnegut- Slaughterhouse Five Upton Sinclair- The Jungle George Orwell- 1984 and Animal Farm Ken Kesey- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Harper Lee- To Kil a Mockingbird Joseph Conrad- Heart of Darkness Leo Tolstoy- War and Peace Salman Rushdie- The Satanic Verses Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quixote Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude Alex haley- The Autobiography of Malcolm X Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita Jules Verne- Journey to the Center of the Earth / 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Henry David Thoreau- Walden Voltaire- Candide Stephen Crane- The Red badge of Courage Rudyard Kipling- The Jungle Books, Kim, The White Man's Burden Homer- The Odyssey, The Illiyad John Milton- Paradise Lost Charles Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities Sophocles- Oedipus Rex Victor Hugo- The Hunchback of Notre dame, Les Miserables James Cooper- The Last of the Mohicans Harriet Beecher Stowe- Uncle Tom's Cabin Robert Louis Stevenson- Treasure Island Alexandre Dumas- The Count of Monte Cristo, The Vicomte of Bragelonne Aldous Huxley- Brave New World Virgil- The Aeneid Machiavelli- The Prince Daniel Defoe- Robinson Crusoe Dante- The Divine Comedy H.G. Wells- The Time Machine Bram Stoker- Dracula William Golding- Lord of the Flies George Eliot- Silas Marner Mary Shelley- Frankenstein F Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby Ralph Ellison- The Invisible Man J.D. Salinger- The Catcher in the Rye Richard Wright- Native Son Joseph Heller- Catch-22 Franz Kafka- the Trial, The Metamorphosis Joseph Conrad- Nostromo Nathaniel Hawthorne- The Scarlett Letter W. Somerset Maugham- Of Human Bondage

I can probably think of more

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 

Not a book, but an essay: George Orwell - A Hanging; You're lurking this forum, you have spare time. Read it now!

Aldous Huxley - Island Herman Melville - Moby Dick

I have "Too Big to Fail" but am waiting til I finish some others til I read it.

Nothing short of everything will really do.
 

Books all cultured people should have read: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and the things inspired by it e.g. Achebe's Things Fall Apart Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 100 Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a death foretold TS Eliot's the Wasteland (not really a book, but the most amazing piece of modern literature, save perhaps Ulysses) His four quartets are also amazing. Even if you don't understand him, you can read eliot purely belletristically Catcher in the Rye Gulliver's Travels Ezra Pound's the Cantos Philip K Dick: Man in the HIgh Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the MOuntain and Invisible Man Wuthering Heights (yeah, laugh if you want. Great novel) Tolstoy's War and Peace, Anna Karenina (better than War and Peace imo) Sophocles' Oedipus cycle Goethe's Faust -- a fundamentally modern novel written hundreds of years ago. Flaubert's letters to Madame Bovary Charles Baudelaire's poems. Huck finn, tom sawyer (huck finn's better imo) Rimbaud's poetry. Virgil's Aeneid Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, WCW, Yeats, Keats poetry Ovid's Metamorphoses George Orwell's 1984, Animal Farm Cervantes' Don Quixote Melville's Bartleby the scrivner (whatever, moby dick) Homer's Illiad and Odyssey Virginia woolf (imo the greatest female writer who's ever lived): Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Jacob's Room Chaucer's canterbury tales Dante's divine comedy As much dostoevsky as you can Nabokov- Ada or Ardor, Lolita, Pale Fire (1st or 2nd best writer in past 100+ years imo, rivaled possibly by Joyce) Proust's remembrance Becketttt - Endgame,Waiting for Godot Milton's Paradise Lost Joyce's Dubliners, Portrait of the artist, ulysses All Shakespeare, including sonnets Kafka's Penal colony, metamorphosis, and the trial Faulker's sound and the fury, as i lay dying Great Gatsby All Quiet on the Western Front The THings They carried I, Claudius Em Forster's Howard's end

Can't really say anything about other famous novels as I haven't read a lot of them. Read dickins and hawthorne but im omitting them as I don't really like them much as writers.

More modern/lighter/for fun stuff after you've got a good grounding in the western canon:

Catch-22 Slaughterhouse Five Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon (The philip k dick stuff I listed above belongs in this fun section)

Really modern stuff: David Foster Wallace: A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again, Consider the Lobster, Infinite Jest (would not recommend to those who aren't "readers," it's quite heavy). Has anyone read the Pale King? Been meaning to look into it, as i love DFW

Murakami: Kafka on the shore, A Wild Sheep Chase. Wouldn't recommend 1q84 so far, im the middle of it right now.

Other fun reading: Godel, Escher, Bach Elegant Universe, Fabric of the Cosmos, Liar's Poker Moneyball Barbarians at the gate random walk down wall street Ascent of money Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek

Writers to avoid because I hate them: Dave Eggers (though McSweeney's is marvelous) Dan Brown (can't write for shit, he gets enough hate though. At least he knows how to attract a large audience.)

Writers I don't want to but feel like I have to comment on because im on WSO: Ayn Rand:- I've come around a bit with my utter hate for Ayn Rand. One of the things I hated about her was how smug she was about how logically and intelligently she thought she had the answer to philosophical and political problems, when she didn't introduce a single novel idea to either philosophy or political philosophy. I must admit, though, that for someone with political views as strong as hers, few have written a novel that as many people find entertaining. As someone who's well versed in philosophy and political philosphy as well as literature, however, her terrible style of writing (objectively speaking, it is pretty bad), along with old points and ideas makes Atlas Shrugged painful for me to read thorugh. For those who don't want to go through the nerdiness and time of reading through libertarian arguments, various ethical philosphies, etc, I guess Atlas shrugged may be an important book for the budding libertarian mind.

 

Which reminds me, Philosphers everyone should be familiar with (top 10 greatest philosophers imo). I only deal with modern philosophers, as most of what Plato/ARistotle talked about is really taken for granted as philosophical ideas by us nowadays. If you've gone through modern LIFE, you won't feel that much satisfaction becoming rigorously familiar with Plato/Aristotle/pre Socratic philosphers. Those are really only useful for helping you understand later philosophers who responded to them. But you can just read summaries.

  1. Immanuel Kant (Can’t really argue this…)
  2. Friedrich Nietzsche (Some would probably place him below 3 and 4 but I think he’s way cooler. Beautiful writing style, too, unlike fucking Kant.)
  3. Rene Descartes (“father of modern philosophy…” so yeah. Wrong about mad stuff though, but raising the questions was important)
  4. David Hume (Best Empiricist thinker. Better than Locke, imo. Heavily influenced Kant’s ethics, in the sense that Kant reacted against him)
  5. Martin Heidegger (I have a huge boner for Heidegger [im not a nazi] but didn’t have the balls to put him above Descartes and Hume. Might go up in the future. Best formulation of existentialism, though he didn't call it that)
  6. Edmund Husserl (No Husserl, No Heidegger. So yeah.)
  7. Karl Marx (Had to include political/social philosophers. Also a great economist. Crushes Rousseau, Hobbes, Rawls, Mill IMO)
  8. John Locke (First real empiricist. Also nice political shit. I really don’t care about political stuff but w/e.)
  9. Ludwig von Wittgenstein (Analytic philosophy’s best dude. Probably close to top 5 if you ask anyone who’s crazy about analytic philosophy, so nuff said. Some of his stuff’s too cryptic for me but his influence is undeniable. Though his influence on the logical positivists of the Vienna circle are largely due to misreadings of his Tractatus)
  10. G.W.F.Hegel (Idealism, yeah w/e. I don’t like him much but he’s hella important. I like him more for the people who disagree with him)
  11. Gottlob Frege (No Frege, no Russel/Wittgenstein, probably).
  12. Bertrand Russell (a G logician not as G as Frege though. Also no Russel, no Wittgenstein)
  13. Arthur Schopenhauer (Cool guy. Heavily influenced Nietzsche and most other German philosophers. Good writer to boot. His stuff on will is the shit)
  14. Baruch de Spinoza (His theories of the mind crushed Descartes)
  15. Soren Kierkegaard (existentialism’s pretty cool, man. No Merleau-Ponty on this list though. Didn’t want to seem too biased. Also JPS is a cock. so there)
  16. Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (more political guys. Don’t care for them. Threw them in a random place because whatever, people say they’re important. The Leviathan is a fun read ^^)
  17. John Stuart Mill (W/e utilitaranism. I guess it was inevitable) Jeremy Bentham (Though I've never really cared for utilitarianism, it's influence on the way we think is inevitable. When people have to reason out moral choices, a lot instinctively go towards utilitarian explanations, even if logically flawed.
 

+1 to Enders Game Watchmen Dune series Foundation series The Cosmos

“...all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” - Schopenhauer
 

The Brothers Karamazov Crime and Punishment To Kill A Mockingbird Black Swan Atlas Shrugged The Catcher in the Rye Invisible Man Beloved Tropic of Cancer Don Quixote

-O.K.
 

I'll have to agree to classics like The Great Gatsby and The Count of Monte Cristo- they are both excellent reads.

I would also strongly recommend Eric Larson's Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts. Malcom Gladwell is also great.

Additionally a truly amazing read that is without a doubt the most humorous novel ever written: John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. You will laugh out loud while reading this book. Also most people have never heard of J.K. Toole because the book was published posthumously after his suicide. You will develop serious street cred among avid readers and literary critics after reading this cult classic.

 

There are far too many to name here, but a few that might be of interest to WSO users are: 1. Anything by Jim Collins 2. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow 3. Anything about Warren Buffett

"It's very easy to have too many goals and be overwhelmed by them... The trick is to find the one thing you can focus on that represents every other single thing you want in life." -- @"Edmundo Braverman"
 

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