Thread: Books that are must reads before you die ?

A Short History of Nearly Everything- Bill Bryson

I think everybody should read at least one book of which they think "Mmmmneh", but which is recommended by many for its "classicness", in whichever way that is. And then be honest whether it was actually worth your time or not! I guess many people will find themselves positively surprised, but not everybody of course.

I'm still struggling with the thought of opening up one of the many classic yet still 'readable' philosophy books. I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance a few years ago after thinking about and discarding it for years and was on the one hand positively surprised by the points brought forward, but on the other hand it suffers from the hippie-disease that makes my skin crawl. I read Kerouac's On The Road and got annoyed with it. Finished it, but that was it. Perhaps it's the style of that time, combined with an over-abundance of self pity that I dislike. I got annoyed with Generation X as well, which is in my opinion one of Douglas Coupland's worst books, and I love all his fiction stuff.

I find myself at a distinct disadvantage here being illiterate and all: illiterate and disnumerative both; NFLD, number flubber and letter dumb. It's a terrible heavy burden, lemme tellya.

In these times : The Road by Cormac McCarthy, others, the list is so long....

A quick contribution:

The Theogony: Hesiod
Clouds: Aristophanes
The Symposium: Plato
The Politics: Aristotle
De Rarum Natura: Lucretius
The Federalist Papers: Publius
The Red and the Black: Stendhal
A Place to Come to: Robert Penn Warren
Brothers to Dragons: RPW
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Three books come to the top of my mind that were extremely powerful to me at the time I read them. Maybe it was the timing but I can remember them like it was yesterday.

Ayn Rand The Fountainhead
Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent
Eugene O'Neil The Iceman Cometh

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Walden, Thoreau

Doyle, Verne, C.S Lewis, William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Orwell, and of course, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

I would like to read some Kipling's books. Also, I would like to tackle "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli. I highly recommend "The Book of Five Rings" by Myamoto Musashi. Those are the ones that come to mind at present.

My all-time favorites:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Testament by John Grisham

I have Plato's The Republic, but never finished it.