Hi all

At the moment I have a lot of free time so, I've benn doing a lot of reading lately. I've read all the books that have been waiting on my bedside table for months and now I was wondering what books I should get now. I was wondering which books you could recommend me and others to read either because they are classics (mayby like Orwells 1984) or Bestsellers people talk about (Dan Browns DaVinci code?)or mayby they adress topics everyone should be aware of(although I'm not in the mood for politics if its a good read please post it)...

The reason I've opened this thread (appart from that I couldn't find one equivalent with the search tool) is because I live in Switzerland its hard to determine if a book is worthy enough to read it.

So please tell me about the heritage of the english language.

I apologise for typos, writing in english has never been one of my stengths...:bugeye:

I'll start with two books:

1984 by George Orwell
Farenheit 451 (forgot the autors name)

If I had a name like I-Am-Invisible, I'd make all of my posts with white letters.

better?

Indeed.

Stephen Hawking- A Brief History of Time
I. Asimov- The Egyptians
Hitler- Mein Kampf
Plato- The Republic
Plato- Phaedo
Llewelly H. Rockwell, Jr.- Libertarianism and the Old Right
Tupac Shakur- The Rose that Grew from Concrete
Morton Liberman- Doors Open, Doors Close
Mary Pipher- Reviving Ophelia
William Pollack- Real Boys
Carl Jung- Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

You forgot who wrote Farenheit 451?!?!?!

Ignore my shock. It's in jest. Ray Bradbury. I recommend "The Fearful Master".

After the Flood by William Cooper.

Stephen Hawking- A Brief History of Time
I. Asimov- The Egyptians
Hitler- Mein Kampf
Plato- The Republic
Plato- Phaedo
Llewelly H. Rockwell, Jr.- Libertarianism and the Old Right
Tupac Shakur- The Rose that Grew from Concrete
Morton Liberman- Doors Open, Doors Close
Mary Pipher- Reviving Ophelia
William Pollack- Real Boys
Carl Jung- Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

hmm... I think Stephen Hawkings might be a bit too advanced but I know Mein Kampf is boring it's just bla bla bla germany is great bla bla bla... I found it on the web in german but I just read a few pages (btw: german books are welcome any time =)
And I don't think Plato is a easy read...

but I'll take a look at the other maybe read some amazon comments^^
Thanks

hmm... I think Stephen Hawkings might be a bit too advanced but I know Mein Kampf is boring it's just bla bla bla germany is great bla bla bla... I found it on the web in german but I just read a few pages (btw: german books are welcome any time =)
And I don't think Plato is a easy read...

but I'll take a look at the other maybe read some amazon comments^^
Thanks

Plato's fairly easy.. the psychology ones are harder, but very interesting.

`
Generation of Vipers - by Philip Wylie

The Pleasures of God by John Piper.

Marcus Aurelius - "Meditations".
Yamamato Tsunetomo - "Hagakure"
Confucius - "The Annalects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean" (average/medium)
Plato - "Meno"
Descartes - "Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on the Mind"
Thomas Hobbes - "Leviathan"
Sun Tzu - "The Art of War"
Mary Shelley - "Frankenstein"
Oscar Wilde - "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
Stephen Crane - "The Red Badge of Courage"
Mark Twain - "Huckleberry Finn"
Jack London - "The Call of the Wild"
Frank Herbert - The "Dune" series
J.R.R. Tolkien - "The Silmarillion", "The Hobbit", and "The Lord of the Rings"
"Beowulf"
Homer - "The Illiad" and "The Odyessy"
James Fennimore Cooper - "The Last of the Mohicans"
Ayn Rand - "Atlas Shrugged"
Tom Paine - "Common Sense"
Rousseau - "The Social Contract"
David Hume - "Concerning the Principles of Morals "
Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
Rudyard Kipling - "Kim"
"The Upanishads"
Lao Tzu - "The Tao Teh Ching"
Louisa May Alcott - "Little Women" (A darling story, no matter how effeminine this might make me sound)
Bram Stoker - "Dracula"
Pearl S. Buck - "The Good Earth"
Alexandre Dumas - "The Count of Monte Cristo"
Niccolo Machiavelli - "The Prince"
Bertrand Russel - "Wisdom of the West".

Pearl S. Buck - "The Good Earth"

OMG that's such a good book.

Jean Auel: "Clan of the Cave Bear"
Saul Bellow: "Henderson the Rain King"
Alan Dean Foster: "Midworld"
James P. Hogan: "Code of the Lifemaker"
Jerzy Kosinski: "Being There"
James Michener: "The Source"
A. A. Milne: "Winnie the Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner" (I read those when I was 35)

Oniw17:

Isn't it?

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

Oniw17:

Isn't it?

Yeah. It was kind of fucked up what they did at the end though.

Yes. The ending is horribly upsetting.

PJ, here's a book you'll probably like:

Black Wind by F. Paul Wilson

It's about WW2 and follows the lives of two boys. One American, one Japanese. They start out as best friends, but one ends up crucifying the other. It covers the entire war, involves ancient Japanese cults practicing bizarre rites, a secret Japanese superweapon, and even gives a reason for bombing Hiroshima.

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

The Wind in the Willows

The Harry Potter books are an easy enough read, but they're not to everyones taste.

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

The Wind in the Willows

The Harry Potter books are an easy enough read, but they're not to everyones taste.Sure. But he's an outsider looking for books written by Anglophones. Much of what's been recommended is "classic" and doesn't present a very broad view of Anglo-American culture. Not to mention some of those books are translations of ancient texts he may have already read in his primary language.

He needs a better cross-section. The Harry Potter stories are popular and therefore good expressions of our popular culture. They also resonate with archetypes and so are good expressions of our civilization. And even passably good literature.

I appreciate your suggestions. Children's literature is powerful and timeless. And "Lord of the Flies" is very timely considering what's going on in the Middle East.

The Lord of the Flies needed a Saddam Hussein to keep everyone in line?

Madanthonywayne:

I'll definitely check out that book. Thanks for the head's up.

I agree with rocker...
I've read all Harry Potter books in english simply because all my friends have to wait for the german translation and I can mess arround with them^^ But it's not the kind of Book I wish to hear about in this Thread. It's simply too popular and gets so much attention with all the movies that nobody misses to know about it. The Idea was to find some good Titles that didn't make the jump over to europe very well and arn't that well known here while they are a part of "general knowledge" in England and the US...

Thanks for all your answers

Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything.

If I had my way I would make it compulsory education :D

Advanced books, which make learning English worth it:

'Of Human Bondage', by Somerset Maugham (novel)

'Lord Jim', by Joseph Conrad (whose native language was Polish, but who is, in my opinion, the greatest English prose author)

'The Denial of Death', by Ernest Becker (non-fiction)

'Blue Highways', by William Least Heat-Moon (non-fiction)

These four will keep you quite busy intellectually.

I agree with rocker...
I've read all Harry Potter books in english simply because all my friends have to wait for the german translation and I can mess arround with them^^ But it's not the kind of Book I wish to hear about in this Thread. It's simply too popular and gets so much attention with all the movies that nobody misses to know about it. The Idea was to find some good Titles that didn't make the jump over to europe very well and arn't that well known here while they are a part of "general knowledge" in England and the US...

Terry Pratchett? Agatha Christie? Fletcher Pratt? Anything by Ray Bradbury is good too.

Ayn Rand, yes.

Start with The Fountainhead, not the other one.

I've always seen that people who read Atlas Shrugged first get a great number of wrong ideas about what Rand is saying. And it's probably much more enjoyable too, if you've already read The Fountainhead. Then the rest of her books too, but I don't guarantee they'll be as interesting (for me they were very interesting though).

Some of the so called classics can be heavy going, it took me ages to get through Tolstoy's War & Peace and i did not find it that interesting. For a good pleasurable read, Robin Hobb's series "the Liveship Traders" is very enjoyable.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Classic.

100 years of lonelyness by garcia. not american, but still a classic

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. if you wanna keep up to date, they are gonna make a movie out of it soon :) neat book, and his second too. havent read more of him, so cant say for his other books

Faust is a must ofcourse :) and Tristan and Isolde, also a classic tale

i dont read fiction so often, so thats all that pops in my mind right now besides russian classics

tolle lege!

Some of the so called classics can be heavy going, it took me ages to get through Tolstoy's War & Peace and i did not find it that interesting. For a good pleasurable read, Robin Hobb's series "the Liveship Traders" is very enjoyable.

I decided it was time I read War and Peace, so I picked up a copy the other day. It's huge! Almost 1400 pages and the print is small. I need to work up the courage to start reading it.

Y'all should really read "The Swamp Monster from the Black Lagoon" ...really great novel, and highly intellectual, too. :D

Baron Max

Killjoy,

"Generation of Vipers - by Philip Wylie"

Now were talking. This is the stuff that makes you question your own beliefs and challenges you to use logic and reason. It's about raising the hard questions. The important questions.

Also love his "The Magic Animal" "Triumph" and "When worlds collide"

Kurt Von. is another favorite, I love his dark humor about the end of the world. He uses comedy so well throught his books.

FRESHMAN YEAR

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
HERODOTUS: Histories
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
EUCLID: Elements
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust

SOPHOMORE YEAR

HEBREW BIBLE
THE BIBLE: New Testament
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics>
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar," "Cato the Younger," "Antony," "Brutus"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
MAIMONIDES: Guide for the Perplexed
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
KEPLER: Epitome IV
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: Introduction to the Analytical Art
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Third Symphony
SCHUBERT: Songs
MONTEVERDI: L'Orfeo
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

JUNIOR YEAR

CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
HOBBES: Leviathan
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: Le Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers"
"Articles of Confederation," "Declaration of Independence," "Constitution of the United States of America"
HAMILTON, JAY AND MADISON: The Federalist
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
WORDSWORTH: The Two Part Prelude of 1799
Essays by: Young, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli, Orsted, Ampere, Faraday, Maxwell

SENIOR YEAR

Supreme Court opinions
GOETHE: Faust
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
WAGNER: Tristan and Isolde
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
WILLIAM JAMES; Psychology, Briefer Course
NIETZSCHE: Beyond Good and Evil
FREUD: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HUSSERL: Crisis of the European Sciences
HEIDEGGER: Basic Writings
EINSTEIN: Selected papers
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
FAULKNER: Go Down Moses
FLAUBERT: Un Coeur Simple
WOOLF: Mrs. Dalloway
Poems by: Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Valery, Rimbaud
Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Millikan, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Mendel, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy

Link (http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/readlist.shtml)

any thing by James A. Michener

Herman Hesse - "Siddhartha", and anything by H.P. Lovecraft.

Mika Waltari: The Egyptian
Truly a masterpiece, "insight" to Egypt in ancient times and human mind in general.

Norman Leigh: 13 Against The Bank
Great story of man with obsession to blow the bank in roulette in Monte Carlo, true story in hes own words, but that is still in debate, anyway, entertaining book about gambling and human nature.

For light fun reading, crime scene, anything from Donald Westlake or Elmore Leonard