What Books Should Every Intelligent Person Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

William God­win’s “Polit­i­cal Enquiry” to be remind­ed what books inspired us to be: Free.

Just ask Harold Bloom

Rubaiy­at of Khayyam to learn that skep­ti­cism is an inevitable con­di­tion of human life and one can get rid of it pes­ter­ing your mind with a joy­ous life

Zen and The Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance ~ Robert Pir­sig : a mod­ern study of the schism between clas­si­cist and roman­ti­cist think­ing.

Absolute­ly every­thing by Tom Rob­bins

Jonathan Liv­ingston Seag­ul — R. Bach
Myth of Sisy­phus and oth­er essays — A. Camus
Car­los Cas­tane­da — all books:)
Mos­qui­to — Roma Tearne

Vic­tor Fran­kl’s ‘Man’s Search for Mean­ing’
C.G. Jung’s ‘Mem­o­ries, Dreams, Reflec­tions’ (actu­al­ly pret­ty much every­thing by Jung)
‘A Short His­to­ry of Near­ly Every­thing: Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion’ by Bill Bryson
‘The Impor­tance of Liv­ing’ by Lin Yutang

Lorainne Hans­ber­ry “A Raisin in the Sun”

bell hooks “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Ben­jamin Hoff “The Tao of Pooh”

Edward Said “Ori­en­tal­ism”

I’ll also per­mit myself to quote 5, only the first of which is freely avail­able:
1. Lud­wig von Berta­lanffy, Gen­er­al Sys­tem The­o­ry (a the­o­ry that per­haps is the sin­gle most impor­tant one since it was announced, con­sid­er­ing its influ­ence over so many areas);
2. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Cap­i­tal (I believe it’s kind of self-explana­to­ry why);
3. Pla­to, The Repub­lic (Idem);
4. Augus­tine, De Libero Arbi­trio (birth cer­tifi­cate of the most impor­tant con­cept of free­dom in West­ern thought);
5. Wal­ter Ben­jamin, The work of art in the age of its tech­ni­cal repro­ducibil­i­ty (ok, not a book, but essen­tial to an under­stand­ing of cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na from the XXth cen­tu­ry on).
of course, lists are lists, and as based on impres­sions, are very weak. But it’s fun any­way :) thanks!

Love on the Dole
Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don
Nau­sea
In Search of Lost Time (1–7)
Diary of a Nobody
Post Office
Don Quixote
The Great Gats­by
King Rat
The Princess Bride

Bill Bryson, “A Short His­to­ry of Near­ly Every­thing”

René Descartes “Dis­cours de la méth­ode”

Octavia But­ler’s “Para­ble of the Sow­er” — SO time­ly right now! — and “The Spar­row” by Mary Doria Rus­sell.

The Way of All Flesh, Samuel But­ler
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Pearl, John Stein­beck
For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hem­ing­way

The list is long, but I would­n’t miss these five.
Crime and Pun­ish­ment — Fiodor Dos­toievs­ki
Moby Dick — Her­man Melville
Light in August — William Faulkn­er
The Alienist — Macha­do de Assis
Mal­one Dies — Samuel Beck­ett

One more to add to this already great list:

John Uri Lloyd — Eti­dorh­pa, or, the End of the Earth: the Strange His­to­ry of a Mys­te­ri­ous Being and the Account of a Remark­able Jour­ney (1895)

My absolute, must-have, car­ry around in my heart book is “F*ck It: The Ulti­mate Spir­i­tu­al Way” by John C. Parkin. A half seri­ous self-help book that has helped me many, many times. It’s fun­ny, irrev­er­ent and com­plete­ly true. (Kin­dle edi­tion, audio­book & paper­back)

I have brainpickings.org in my RSS feed (along­side open­cul­ture), they have reviews of all man­ner of excel­lent books.

Read about Ger­many in the 1930s to see how a thought can turn and over­turn a soci­ety; read about the rise of Stal­in to see how a per­son with­out scru­ples lead­ing the admin­is­tra­tive back­bone owns the sys­tem; read “Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man”, the Richard Feyn­man biog­ra­phy, to learn about com­bin­ing knowl­edge, curios­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty; read Cos­mos by Sagan to under­stand your size in it all — no more and no less — and the nature of exam­i­na­tion and explo­ration; read Fathers and Sons by Tur­ge­niev to feel what hap­pens between gen­er­a­tions.
And final­ly, learn about sta­tis­ti­cal infer­ence. It will help you every day of your life to pre­vent you from get­ting screwed or at least to know when you are.

Neu­ro­mancer by William Gib­son to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between cyber­space and the Inter­net; while not being sat­is­fied until the Inter­net resem­bles cyber­space.

There are way too many books, but these are essen­tial: Just about any­thing by George Eliot (but espe­cial­ly Mid­dle­march) or Hen­ry James for their insight into the human heart and psy­che. Her­man Hes­se’s Sid­dhartha and Mau­ra O’Hal­lo­ran’s Pure Heart, Enlight­ened Mind for great exam­ples of a spir­i­tu­al quest and enlight­en­ment.

Crypto­nom­i­con — Neal Stephen­son
Diplo­ma­cy — Hen­ry Kissinger

Unbear­able light­ness of being
And any Kun­dera writ­ten in Czech.
If on a win­ter’s night
And all oth­ers by Calvi­no.

Why is this list even being cre­at­ed? It seems like an attempt to cre­ate an objec­tive list from sub­jec­tive sources. Read­ing the books list­ed here will not make one intel­li­gent.
I would that an intel­li­gent per­son should read every book that he/she can on what­ev­er top­ic that inter­ests him/her.
Are we say­ing that the books not in this list should NOT be read by intel­li­gent peo­ple?

‘Wind, Sand and Stars’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It’s part trav­el adven­ture, part phi­los­o­phy and pro­found­ly beau­ti­ful in its entire­ty.

With­out sep­a­rat­ing books as for intel­li­gent and unin­tel­li­gent peo­ple, I rec­om­mend these:

Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie’s all books

Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man

Joseph Con­rad “Heart of Dark­ness”

3 Books, not par­tic­u­lar order:
The Rest is Noise (Ross)
Godel, Esch­er and Bach: An Eter­nal Gold­en Braid (Hof­s­tadter)
Par­adise Lost (Mil­ton)

A book that changed my view of his­to­ry is THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF CIVILZATION: Myth or Real­i­ty by Cheikh Anta Diop.

Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

She begins the book with a quote by Moliere:
“It infu­ri­ates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.”

It’s a very pow­er­ful mes­sage to learn that you could be wrong, even if you are absolute­ly pos­i­tive­ly sure you are right. It changes your life to under­stand that. It changes your rela­tion­ships. It changes EVERYTHING.

(There­fore, it made my “must read” list, although it’s not a clas­sic.… Love these oth­er sug­ges­tions as well.)

The Tri­al (and every­thing else he ever wrote) by Kaf­ka

Notes From Under­ground is my favorite book by Dos­toyevsky, but again, every­thing he ever wrote.

The Stranger and Myth of Sis­aphys by Camus if you haven’t time to read every­thing he ever wrote as well.

My per­son­al favorite Philip K Dick book is Man in the High Cas­tle and think every­one should read it. I’d rec­om­mend pret­ty much every­thing by him too, but I know some peo­ple might not love VALIS and that is under­stand­able.

Every­thing ever writ­ten by Jorge Luis Borges

Every­thing ever writ­ten by Nabakov, although my per­son­al favorite is Invi­ta­tion to a Behead­ing.

Let’s see…

Invis­i­ble Man
Being And Noth­ing­ness
Left Hand of Dark­ness
The Ili­ad.
‎Don Quixote

My mem­o­ry isn’t great, so I know I’ll leave out a lot of stuff. More recent fic­tion like A Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, The Road and House of Leaves should be men­tioned.

*Myth of Sisy­phus

(that mis­spelling is a tes­ta­ment to my aging mind. Yikes!)

No edit but­ton?

Off the top of my head, these were good reads:

‘On the Short­ness of Life’ (Seneca)

‘Finite and Infi­nite Games’ (James Carse)

‘Tragedy and Hope: His­to­ry of the World in Our Time’ (Car­roll Quigley)

‘Body Elec­tric’ (Robert O. Beck­er)

‘Pat­tern Lan­guage’ (Christo­pher Alexan­der)

‘Under­ground Histroy of Amer­i­can Edu­ca­tion’ (John Gat­to)

“Stranger in a Strange Land” (Robert Hein­lein) has a com­pre­hen­sive yet pop­u­lar par­a­digm for reli­gion’s being both ubiq­ui­tous and dan­ger­ous;
“Slaugh­ter­house Five” (Kurt Von­negut) pro­vides a view of real­i­ty through minds exposed direct­ly to and shaped by aer­i­al war­fare; “The Hand­maids Tale” (Mar­garet Atwood) fore­tells a log­i­cal out­come in a not-too-dis­tant future of unspo­ken bases of men’s fear and hatred of women; “The Pil­grim’s Progress” (John Bun­yan) paves the unborn usa’s path of a fan­ci­ful and fun­da­men­tal jour­ney of Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty applied as gov­ern­ment before the Con­sti­tu­tion sep­a­rat­ed Church and State; “East of Eden” depicts hypocrisy of evil and sin as the usa’s inher­i­tance; “The Grapes of Wrath,” (John Stein­beck) account of how the wages of usa sin are paid and who pays them and how noth­ing’s changed in feu­dal­ism

I agree with most of the sug­ges­tions already giv­en and would say them again, but want to add a few I think deserve con­sid­er­a­tion too. And, as an aside, those of you whin­ing about the list and whether it can/should be made, and whether there’s any rea­son to think these books and not oth­ers will make peo­ple intel­li­gent, and whether there are enough books writ­ten by les­bians in swahili or some­thing, and who do we think we are pre­scrib­ing read­ing to each other.…just relax. It’s just a fun exer­cise the point of which is sim­ply to tell oth­er read­ers about books that touched us and to maybe hear about one we can go read and be touched by in turn. Geez. I also have noth­ing against either les­bians or swahili speak­ers, some of whom are ter­rif­ic writ­ers I’m sure, so just relax about that too.

That said:

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
One Flew Over The Cuck­oo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
Essays, R.W.Emerson
The Geneal­o­gy of Morals, F. Niet­zsche

The Adven­tures of Augie March by Saul Bel­low.
The Gold­en Notebook—Doris Less­ing, who’s smart, tough and fair, or my favourite by her The Chil­dren of Vio­lence (the Martha series).
Lolita—Nabokov’s play with lan­guage will leave you in a dolor­ous haze. a ter­rif­ic take on mid-20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.
Dis­grace, by J.M. Coet­zee

Infi­nite jest by dfw

1.Siddartha by Her­mann Hesse, A mans jour­ney through life and the attain­ment of the enlight­ened
2.The Repub­lic by Pla­to, The cre­ation of a just soci­ety
3.The Analects of Con­fu­cius, A prac­ti­cal guide to life which has influ­enced bil­lions
4.Discipline & Pun­ish by Fou­cault, Under­stand­ing the evo­lu­tion of mech­a­nisms of pow­er
5.Answer to Job by C.G. Jung, A Psy­cho­log­i­cal look into the ques­tion of evil, also any oth­ers from Jung
6.The Cap­i­tal by Marx & Engels, the name explains it
7.One Dimen­sion­al Man by Mar­cuse, advanced cap­i­tal­ist expose
8.The Stranger by Camus, A look into the Absurd
9.Thus Spoke Zarathus­tra by Niet­zsche, The “mad­man” comes down from his moun­tain to edu­cate the mass­es
10.Discourses on Livy by Machi­avel­li, The Prince looks to the ruler but Dis­cours­es looks to the Repub­lic
11. There are many more that have not been ref­er­enced but this is a decent start.

Have you read through this list and thought “I would­n’t like that?” Per­haps you missed read­ing the one book that would tell you “try it! You may like it!” Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

What books should intel­li­gent peo­ple read is one of the most insult­ing, igno­rant, state­ments I have ever read.

Utopia — Thomas Moore
I read it the first time when I was 15 and it opened my eyes like only Catch­er in the Rye opens 15 year old boys’ eyes.

The Gulag Arch­i­pel­ago — Alexan­dr Solz­jen­it­syn

I agree, it’s not a fun, relax­ing or sat­is­fy­ing read. But it’s the only book I ever had to stop read­ing on a train because I was cry­ing.

Win­nie-the-Pooh — A. A. Milne
Because it’s prob­a­bly the best book ever writ­ten.

Can­ter­bury Tails, in it’s orig­nal form, I read it in my 20’s and boy was it hard, for a per­son who’d nev­er fin­ished high school. How­ev­er, I did and loved it. It was on MY per­son­al list of books I should read, and stood out, still does.

Sec­ond is To Kill a Mock­ing Bird, I read it every year from when I was about 13 to well into my 20’s and I got some­thing dif­fer­ent out of it every time!

A Move­able Feast is so inter­est­ing.

I would def­i­nite­ly add “Sapi­ens” by Yuval Harari and also his more recent “Homo Deux”. The first book has received high­ly pos­i­tive acco­lades from many includ­ing Barack Oba­ma and Bill Gates. Thes sec­ond book, though retract­ing some of the steps of the first is as viable pre­dic­tion of humankinds future as you will find out in these in our cur­rent “noos­phere” (cf. Teil­hard de Chardin).

1. The Bible (NAS)

2. The Nag Ham­ma­di Scrip­tures: The Revised and Updat­ed Trans­la­tion of Sacred Gnos­tic Texts Com­plete in One Vol­ume

3. The Kybalion: A Study of The Her­met­ic Phi­los­o­phy of Ancient Egypt and Greece

4. Mary’s Mosa­ic: The CIA Con­spir­a­cy to Mur­der John F. Kennedy, Mary Pin­chot Mey­er, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Jan­ney

5. The 12th Plan­et by Zecharia Sitchin

6. Chem­trails, HAARP, and the Full Spec­trum Dom­i­nance of Plan­et Earth by Elana Free­land

7. Dark Alliance by Gary Webb

8. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruc­tion of Cam­bo­dia by William Shaw­cross

9. Anoth­er Nine­teen: Inves­ti­gat­ing Legit­i­mate 9/11 Sus­pects by Kevin Ryan

10. The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky