Here is a great book…
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Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie, a great starting book on memetics.
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The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom
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The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley
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Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini. It’s amazing how many little tricks go unnoticed in an average day
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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, for when you ever start to feel sorry for yourself.
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The Diamond Age, or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson.
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Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character. by Richard P Feynman.
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Just about anything by Dostoyevsky
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The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
elliot007: You said that the Republic was ok, but you prefer dialogues… perhaps you are confusing the Republic of Plato with the Politics of Aristotle? The Republic is in dialogue form.
Romo my life on the edge. good read so far, insane how many supplements this guy has messed with
Youth in Revolt by CD Payne, really funny
Bulgakov Mihail: The Master and Margarita
Where prince of darkness visits 1930s Moskov (this was banned in USSR for nearly 30 years).
Harms Daniil: I don’t know any titles in English. Lots of absurd short stories. A shitload of fun!
Sepulveda Luis: The World at the End of the World, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. This man will teach you to love the jungle and the ocean.
Becker Jasper: hungry ghosts, China’s secret famine. A real life horror story about the millions and millions of people that died during Mao Zedongs ruling in China
Waltari Mika: The Egyptian. Historical fiction
Bighorn
I like “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.
Bobby Jones on Golf by Bobby Jones
Theory of Poker by David Sklansky
Not such a great “must read” list, but these are the one’s I’m most glad to have read.
Stories:
“The Mahabharata” by Krishna Dharma
“The Ramayana” by Krishna Dharma
“The Masnavi, Book 1” trans. Jawid Mojaddedi
“Don Quixote” by Miguel Cervantes
“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
“Requiem for a Dream” by Hubert Selby Jr.
anything by Kurt Vonnegut
Non-Storylined:
“Tao Te Ching” trans. Gia-Fu Feng
“The Way of Chuang Tzu” trans. Thomas Merton
“The Sacred Pipe” by Joseph Epes Brown
“The Upanishads” trans. Swami Prabhavanada and Frederick Manchester
“Bhagavad-Gita” trans. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood
the “graphic novel” presentations of Eastern philosophy by Tsai Chih Chung
“Meister Eckhart” trans. Raymond B. Blakney
“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” trans. Edward Fitzgerald
“The Universe is a Green Dragon” by Briane Swimme
“The Naked Ape” and “The Human Zoo” by Desmond Morris
A species in denial.
by Jeremy griffith
I HATE THE AUTHOR…
He writes with a “Ive got the secrets that will transform you” kind of thing. Which i found extremely annoying and a HUGE turn off. The info is EXCELLENT. So good in fact, i pardoned him.
Usually when i read something by authors like this i toss it, but i recommend it to everyone. Biological sources of good & evil and how they exist in man. The whole human condition thing. Its not a book you read in one go. You read a chapter, read it again, put it down, restart at the beginning. Its something you study.
How I Play Golf - Tiger Woods
Wow, I thought I was pretty well read; but most of you make me look like shit (technical term)
[quote]TDog305 wrote:
Wow, I thought I was pretty well read; but most of you make me look like shit (technical term)[/quote]
There are far more books available in print than it would ever be possible to read, so don’t feel too badly about it. Whenever I read Montesquieu and his extensive footnotes to ancient sources, I get just a little bit depressed.
Jobe, a Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein. Also read Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein.
The entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Hobbit.
All of HP Lovecrafts short stories.
Currently I’m reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. deals with Vlad Tepes and the legends surrounding him.
Also reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Non-fiction historical piece on the developemnt of civilizations, quite interesting.
Classics? Here you go, classics so obvious, you’ll hit yourself in the head if you haven’t read them yet:
Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet
Dickens - David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities
Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Stowe - Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Melville - Moby Dick
Homer - Odyssey
Dante - Il Divinio Comedia
Balzac - La Comedie Humaine
Kafka - The Trial
Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men
Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
Some are more “classic” than other, but I say if you haven’t read any Dickens, Shakespeare, or Twain, those are the three you should start with. David Copperfield may very well be the greatest book of all time (if there ever was such a thing). Huckleberry Finn is also perhaps the greatest American story ever written.
As for my recommendations, try The Sea Wolf by Jack London. It’s one of those really wild, incredibly fun adventure books to read, but it deals with a good deal of socialism. If you don’t get much out of it in that regard, it’s at least really fun to read. I’m quite partial to Vonnegut, although he’s a weirdo. Breakfast of Champions is REALLY wild, I suggest reading that at least for the sake of saying “I read Breakfast of Champions.” Sirens of Titan is a “tame” Vonnegut, but a humorous and intriguing book nonetheless.
For philosophy classics, get Plato’s Republic, and any other Socratic dialogues you want, Aristotle’s Ethics, Euclid’s Elements (I know this isn’t philosophy but neither was Pythagoras and people call him a pre-Socratic), Sartre’s existentialism books, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the Tao-te-Ching, Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditation essays, Rousseau’s Social Contract, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathusra (sp), and some Bertrand Russel. My parents have a big book of his collected essays that has a dark purple cover, I don’t know what it’s called but that’s a great place to start they say.
Enjoy!
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
Euclid’s Elements (I know this isn’t philosophy but neither was Pythagoras and people call him a pre-Socratic), [/quote]
Good list, but Euclid definitely had a philosophic project, as did Pythagoras. Math seemed mystical to many philosophers (including, probably, Plato), in that it seemed to hold the key to a rational universe accessible to reason. Just saying.
seconded on the chuck palaunik
others:
infinite jest - david foster wallace
confederacy of dunces - john kennedy o’toole
zodiac - neal stephenson
jesus son - denis johnson
requiem for a dream - hubert selby, jr.
perfume - patrick susskind
and i’m presently reading don quixote while my school’s on strike - its brilliant.
Can’t believe no one else mentioned this one:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
I can’t say many books actually influenced my life, but this one did.
oi, read the iliad(the better of the two) before the odyssey…but definitely read both.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
elliot007: You said that the Republic was ok, but you prefer dialogues… perhaps you are confusing the Republic of Plato with the Politics of Aristotle? The Republic is in dialogue form.[/quote]
i might be confused, i thought thdialogues of plato, and the republic were different(it has been about 15 years since i read these)
i thought one was the life of socrates, and that the republic was about plato’s utopian society [i could definitely be wrong about the titles]