Books you should read before you die

[Moksha]

Alright... the point of this thread is to list essential books/essays/works for the brain. In other words, works that are commonly quoted and referenced by intellectuals, academics, etc. (NOT your favorite William Gibson fiction or the latest Michael Moore piece of shit). You don't have to have read the entire thing to list it... but it does need to be an important work. I need to read more productive stuff, and am looking for suggestions!

I'll start things off with a few faves (mostly philosophy/criticism):

Bible
Most of Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida is boring. Skip it.)
Communist Manifesto
Das Kapital
Understanding Media
The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
The Interpretation of Dreams
Civilization and Its Discontents
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
The Psychology of the Unconscious
Symposium
Phaedrus
Republic
Candide
Discourse on the Method
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Social Contract
Confessions (Augustine)
The Power of Myth
Mythologiques
The Transcendence of the Ego
What Is Literature?
Madness and Civilization
Writing and Difference
Any collection of essays that sum up Lacan's major theories


more to come....

[ngeso]

You know we have a DHP Book Club?

[djmarbll]

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"
Lomas and Knight's "The Hiram Key"
Manley Palmer Hall's "The Secret Teachings of All Ages"
Karl Evanzz' "The Judas Factor"
Miles Davis Autobiography w/ Quincy Troupe
Malcolm X's autobiography
The Book Your Church Doesn't want You to Read edited by Tim Leedom
Cheik Anta Diop's "Civilization or Barbarism"
John G. Jackson's "Christianity Before Christ"
George Granville Monah James' "Stolen Legacy" (it's better to start at chapter 7 first and then read the book from the beginning)
Tony Browder's "Nile Valley Contribution to Civilization"

Thats all I can think of so far.

[dj c-los]

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"

i started reading that a month ago.
interesting stuff

[Bill Blake]

Still think this is a damn good collection:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Books-Western-World-Volumes/dp/0852295316/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186410766&sr=8-1

[Moksha]

Still think this is a damn good collection:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Books-Western-World-Volumes/dp/0852295316/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186410766&sr=8-1

God... that IS a good collection!

[Bill Blake]

God... that IS a good collection!

I use to pick at it in High School, best education I got at that time. During my lunch break, can't believe they actually had it, should have stole the whole fucking thing. No I did not get any pussy back then.

I still want my own set. You can find them used for cheaper. It’s one of those thing I always wanted but never got. Unlike like pussy.

[Bill Blake]

O but remember Orion, that collection gets a lot of backlash as ‘old dead white man’ set o-books.

[djmarbll]

i started reading that a month ago.
interesting stuff

Yeah, I read it back in college, but pulled it back out again since Columbus Day will be coming up soon.

[Jozana]

A book that made a major impact on me and its very hard to find. 'Inside Boss' by Gordon Winter. 'Boss' was the South African apartheid regime's CIA and Gordon Winter was their top spy. He infiltrated the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and London all the way to the top and his activities caused much damage and many deaths. Its one of those books that brings out so many different emotions. Makes you so angry that you have to put it down to calm yourself but so interesting that you can't put it down for long. Its very personal for me because a lot of people he really hurt during his spying days were friends of my parents. Made me ask myself, 'should I hate him for all the damge he did to the movement or should I be thankful to him for exposing all the evil that was actually sanctioned by the regime. The fact that he took such meticulous notes during his spying makes you think he always intended to expose it(as his wife claims in the book) and that's one reason I think its an interesting read even if you're not connected or that educated on the subject.

[djmarbll]

O but remember Orion, that collection gets a lot of backlash as ‘old dead white man’ set o-books.

Its still a great collection regardless. My father has it in his library. You used to be able to get a degree in literature once you've read all the books.

[djmarbll]

A book that made a major impact on me and its very hard to find. 'Inside Boss' by Gordon Winter. 'Boss' was the South African apartheid regime's CIA and Gordon Winter was their top spy. He infiltrated the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and London all the way to the top and his activities caused much damage and many deaths. Its one of those books that brings out so many different emotions. Makes you so angry that you have to put it down to calm yourself but so interesting that you can't put it down for long. Its very personal for me because a lot of people he really hurt during his spying days were friends of my parents. Made me ask myself, 'should I hate him for all the damge he did to the movement or should I be thankful to him for exposing all the evil that was actually sanctioned by the regime. The fact that he took such meticulous notes during his spying makes you think he always intended to expose it(as his wife claims in the book) and that's one reason I think its an interesting read even if you're not connected or that educated on the subject.

Sound like an interesting book. I gotta check it out.

[E-Phi]

Almost all of the religious texts in the world are on this DVD-ROM. The site also has links to each one if you chose not to buy the DVD-ROM.
Sacred Texts DVD-ROM (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cdshop/dvd60/whatson.htm)

[DJ Michael Terzian (Sinister)]

"The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran
"The Alchemist" by Paulo Coehlo
"Broken Wings" by Kahlil Gibran

[12th house]

mods, can we get this one into the Book Club forum?

[Armento]

keep it here.. noone goes to the libriary forum.

Amen on Das Kapital. Thanks for the list.

i'd add this one http://www.zorbapress.com/images/mike_hesse300x450.jpg

[DJ Johnny Key]

Purely for the intellectual, I revisit this one for reference every now and then...


http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Cats/Cat-Hat-Book.jpg

[Bill Blake]

The Power of Myth


I would though, replace that with his four part series Masks Of God; probably the most comprehensive work in comparative mythology ever.

http://www.jcf.org/works.php?id=259

[AK]

Invisible Man--Ralph Ellison

[BrazenMuse]

I would though, replace that with his four part series Masks Of God; probably the most comprehensive work in comparative mythology ever.

http://www.jcf.org/works.php?id=259
Absolutely. The series is interesting indeed.
Hero with 1000 faces also.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

[Bill Blake]

http://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0471292753/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186422637&sr=1-1

And so to be all-encompassing, this is the most comprehensive book on sauces ever complied. For humanity purposes—food science, this one is pretty important.

[Moksha]

mods, can we get this one into the Book Club forum?

Wait until it has run its course here before sending it to no man's land

[BrazenMuse]

Nag Hammadi Library.
By Elaine Pagels: "The Origins of Satan," "Gnostic Gospels," "Adam, Eve & the Serpent"

[Moksha]

Some more:

Don Quixote (as unabridged as you can find it)
The Stranger
The Prince
Justine
Dante's Inferno
Canterbury tales
On Photography
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Labyrinths
Odyssey and Iliad
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest Proposal
Genji
The Cherry Orchard
1984


What are the essential works of feminism?
Essential literary criticisms?
Histories? (Should a well-read person have picked up Churchill?)
Poetry?

[BrazenMuse]

If you are going to include The Prince, then:

The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Casteglione

[Moksha]

http://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0471292753/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186422637&sr=1-1

And so to be all-encompassing, this is the most comprehensive book on sauces ever complied. For humanity purposes—food science, this one is pretty important.



Or, skip this and just get a copy of Larousse Gastronomique!

[Friday]

A Course in Miracles :)

[BrazenMuse]

Mythologies - Roland Barthes
Six Myths of Our Times - Marina Warner

Culture & Imperialism - Edward Said
Orientalism - Edward Said

The Price of the Ticket - James Baldwin

[12th house]

fiction:
Black Boy - Richard Wright
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
1984 & Animal Farm - George Orwell
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
anything by Hermann Hesse but in particular Narcissus & Goldman and Siddharta
The Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
something by William Faulkner, probably As I Lay Dying
something by Ernest Hemingway, preferably For Whom the Bell Tolls
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
The Stranger - Camus
something by Kafka, probably The Metamorphosis or The Trial
something by Doestoevsky, The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov
Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Plays
Nikolai Gogol
Anton Chekhov
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Eugene Ionesco - Rhinoceros
the Greeks (Euripedes. Aristophanes, etc.)
key works by Shakespeare (including Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, and Twelth Night)


Non-fiction
Savage Inequalities - Jonathan Kozol
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
The Power Broker: Robert Moses & The Fall of New York - Robert Caro
The Death & Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs


Philosophy, Science, Etc.
Selected works by Sigmund Freud, including The Ego & The Id and Civilization and Its Discontents
Nuerosis & Human Growth - Karen Horney
selected works by Noam Chomsky, preferably Manufacturing Consent, Class Warfare, and Hegemony or Survival
The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Bhagavadgita
The Kama-Sutra
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism - D.T. Suzuki & Carl Jung
The Undiscovered Self - Carl Jung
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
QED: The Strange Theory of Light & Matter - Richard Feynman
Hegel, Marx, Engels, Rousseau, Sartre, Nietzche


*I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them right now

[Bill Blake]

Tell you what though,

Just got Oxford text, hardback for Classical Mythology, The Roman Way and The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton, Merriman A History of Modern Europe, Literature and Ourselves a thematic introduction for readers and writers, and Dissent in America all BRAND NEW and FREE. Sometimes my job rules, kinda not really.

[Moksha]

I wonder if MarkB would approve of my bookshelves.

[djmarbll]

Invisible Man--Ralph Ellison

I remember reading that in college. Did you ever have Professor Fontenot (African-American history) at Illinois?

[12th house]

Stocked bookshelves are thexay. But only if stocked correctly. I think MarkB would approve Moksha, but you must have faith in your own bookshelf!

[DOTSmusic]

"The Origins of Satan,"

i read that.
i didn't really like it.

[BrazenMuse]

Tell you what though,

Just got Oxford text, hardback for Classical Mythology, The Roman Way and The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton, Merriman A History of Modern Europe, Literature and Ourselves a thematic introduction for readers and writers, and Dissent in America all BRAND NEW and FREE. Sometimes my job rules, kinda not really. Take the Hamilton and use it to prop up furniture, please!!! Arrrrrgh!

Free is a good thing though...

[Bill Blake]

Take the Hamilton and use it to prop up furniture, please!!! Arrrrrgh!

Free is a good thing though...



http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mythology-Mark-P-Morford/dp/0195308050

http://www.amazon.com/Literature-Ourselves-Thematic-Introduction-Readers/dp/0321277139/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186501305&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Europe-Second-Revolution/dp/0393924955/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-6581852-9395029?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186501335&sr=1-2

Dude look at the prices for these three that I got! And I’m telling you never been read mint condition. I wracked it up!

Round 210 dollars, 70 a pop for each three! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Moksha]

A book I often find myself coming back to:

http://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Apparatus-Ideology-Theory-Reader/dp/0231058802/ref=sr_1_1/104-5630631-2524739?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186501624&sr=1-1

It's technically about film theory...

With essays from:

Christian Metz, Roland Barthes, Laura Mulvey, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Baudry and more.

[Elbert Phillips]

Democracy Matters - Cornell West

[Bill Blake]

Democracy Matters - Cornell West

Um, no..ha ha ha

There are far more important books on politics one should would read before they die.

[BrazenMuse]

i read that.
i didn't really like it. Really? Why not? I found it interesting and informative...useful, even.

[Moksha]

Analects of Confucius
Beowulf
Utopia
The Origin of Species
Leviathan
On Liberty
Being and Nothingness
Waiting for Godot
Meditations (Francis Bacon)
Something by D.H Lawrence
The Histories (Herodotus)
The Praise of Folly
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
History of the Peloponnesian War

[Fletch]

For all residents of New York City......and anywhere else for that matter!
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0394720245.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1122538370_.jpg

[Elbert Phillips]

Um, no..ha ha ha

There are far more important books on politics one should would read before they die.

We're all entitled to our opinions.

[Bill Blake]

We're all entitled to our opinions.

That there are more important political science and philosophy books than that one is not an opinion, it's a fact.

[Moksha]

"The Alchemist" by Paulo Coehlo


I've never seen a serious intellectual/academic cite this self-help piece of drivel.

Sorry... not on the same level as Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Chaucer, etc.

[ngeso]

Some more:

Don Quixote (as unabridged as you can find it)
The Stranger
The Prince
Justine
Dante's Inferno
Canterbury tales
On Photography
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Labyrinths
Odyssey and Iliad
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest Proposal
Genji
The Cherry Orchard
1984


What are the essential works of feminism?
Essential literary criticisms?
Histories? (Should a well-read person have picked up Churchill?)
Poetry?




That's a tight list.

[ngeso]

fiction:
Black Boy - Richard Wright
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
1984 & Animal Farm - George Orwell
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
anything by Hermann Hesse but in particular Narcissus & Goldman and Siddharta
The Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
something by William Faulkner, probably As I Lay Dying
something by Ernest Hemingway, preferably For Whom the Bell Tolls
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
The Stranger - Camus
something by Kafka, probably The Metamorphosis or The Trial
something by Doestoevsky, The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov
Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Plays
Nikolai Gogol
Anton Chekhov
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Eugene Ionesco - Rhinoceros
the Greeks (Euripedes. Aristophanes, etc.)
key works by Shakespeare (including Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, and Twelth Night)


Non-fiction
Savage Inequalities - Jonathan Kozol
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
The Power Broker: Robert Moses & The Fall of New York - Robert Caro
The Death & Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs


Philosophy, Science, Etc.
Selected works by Sigmund Freud, including The Ego & The Id and Civilization and Its Discontents
Nuerosis & Human Growth - Karen Horney
selected works by Noam Chomsky, preferably Manufacturing Consent, Class Warfare, and Hegemony or Survival
The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Bhagavadgita
The Kama-Sutra
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism - D.T. Suzuki & Carl Jung
The Undiscovered Self - Carl Jung
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
QED: The Strange Theory of Light & Matter - Richard Feynman
Hegel, Marx, Engels, Rousseau, Sartre, Nietzche


*I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them right now


That one as well.

[Moksha]

I have already ordered three books listed on this thread from Amazon.

[Moksha]

Aeneid
Diamond Sutra
Le Morte d'Arthur
Moby Dick
The Waste Land
Sodom and Gomorrah
The Age of Reason
The Division of Labor in Society

possibly the Bhagavad Gita, though not sure if I'd consider it essential

[DOTSmusic]

Really? Why not? I found it interesting and informative...useful, even.

i think it was just a timing thing.
i should probably go back and re-read it.

[RX]

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"
Lomas and Knight's "The Hiram Key"
Manley Palmer Hall's "The Secret Teachings of All Ages"
Karl Evanzz' "The Judas Factor"
Miles Davis Autobiography w/ Quincy Troupe
Malcolm X's autobiography
The Book Your Church Doesn't want You to Read edited by Tim Leedom
Cheik Anta Diop's "Civilization or Barbarism"
John G. Jackson's "Christianity Before Christ"
George Granville Monah James' "Stolen Legacy" (it's better to start at chapter 7 first and then read the book from the beginning)
Tony Browder's "Nile Valley Contribution to Civilization"

Thats all I can think of so far.



that's a gorgeous picture of you in your avatar, eric...i love your choices, but i would love to add:

Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy (The New Marcus Garvey Library ; No. 7) (Paperback) http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/71Y4BWADTAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.gif

it should be carried around every black persons hand and owned and given as coming of age gifts like the bible is.

[RX]

people keep saying that "heart of darkness" is an important read, but i find no redeeming qualities about that book...can comsone please expound on any reasons why they find it such an important book?

[Moksha]

people keep saying that "heart of darkness" is an important read, but i find no redeeming qualities about that book...can comsone please expound on any reasons why they find it such an important book?

I agree - not really very important.

But a fun, easy read... with some insight about human nature.

[Shannon]

Metu Neter - Volumes 1 & 2
The 11 laws of Maat
Tree of Life Meditation System (T.O.L.M.)


:) These will change your life.

[djklas]

I'm not too much of a book reader... but my friend wants me to read this book called "The Four Agreements". He says it changed his life. So that might be something I want to do before I die...lol

[gman]

^

[BrazenMuse]

people keep saying that "heart of darkness" is an important read, but i find no redeeming qualities about that book...can comsone please expound on any reasons why they find it such an important book?

It is significant in that the style is impressionistic...if you're familiar w that style of painting, you can think of it as comparable. Conrad did an amazing job with that. It makes it a bit difficult for some readers.

It is also significant in terms of what it says about the experience of the colonizer in the land of the colonized. It captures a great many of the biases and impressions of Africa from the perspective of the colonizer then critiques it in interesting ways. It is, absolutely, a critique of colonialism. The characterization of a European city as a "whited sepulchre" kind of captures what Conrad wanted to say about Europe. As the basis of Apocalypse Now, it informs a similar critique of US presence and behavior in 'Nam.

It's a brief read. And really, it's important if you are into post-colonial theory. It's relevant if you're wondering why people will look at you and say, "The horror. The horror." and you'd like to understand the context of it...it's also the source of one of my favorite lines: "Mistah Kurtz. He dead."

[Monny JcIntosh]

Take the Hamilton and use it to prop up furniture, please!!! Arrrrrgh!

Free is a good thing though...

I love Edith Hamilton's Mythology. It may be dated, but it is a model of clarity. And it has an infectious love of ancient Greek literature.

Much of the following are a bit idiosyncratic, and perhaps a bit parochial, but are what I am most glad to have read before I die:

St. Augustine Confessions
Borges (everything)
Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chesterton Father Brown Stories, Orthodoxy
Chekhov's, Gogol's and Katherine Mansfield's short stories
Graham Greene Brighton Rock
Hesse Glass Bead Game
Ted Hughes The Iron Man
Aldous Huxley Eyeless in Gaza
Henry James What Maisie Knew (his most accomplished book)
James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Lampedusa The Leopard
Herman Melville Moby Dick, The Confidence-Man
Milton Paradise Lost, Comus
John Donne, John Clare
Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin
Horace's Odes
Sappho, Cavafy
Dante's Divine Comedy (though I gave up on the Paradiso)
The Iliad and Odyssey
Nabokov Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory
Various Icelandic Sagas
Ovid Metamorphoses
Pessoa Book of Disquiet
Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
Darwin Origin of Species
Freud The Case Histories, Mourning and Melancholia

Philosophy-wise, to someone wanting an overview, and a good read, I'd suggest:

Plato Sophist and Theaetetus (the founding texts of modern "analytic" philosophy and linguistics)
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (a terrible writer, but in a different life I'd have devoted my life to this book)
Montaigne's Essays (not particularly strong philosophy, but beautifully written, and resonant for someone with my taste - cf. the Lampedusa above)
Descartes's Meditations, Hume's Treatise (nuff said)

Frege Foundations of Arithmetic
Don't let the title put you off, this is the most important book in the kind of philosophy that makes sense in the last 150 years, and an easy read. If you like Lewis Carroll - and who in their right mind does not? - you ought to be gripped by the problems Frege is wrestling with. Frege's also the father of modern logic, and so - with Cantor - of modern mathematical anxiety (Godel, Turing et al).

I once loved Wittgenstein, but I hardly see the point in reading him before you die unless you're reading a lot of philosophy. In any case, the Frege comes first.

Quine From a Logical Point of View
Austin Sense & Sensibilia

Two opposing greats of the last century. God knows why they aren't read more widely.

[BrazenMuse]

Montaigne's essays are important also in the sense that he really invented the essay as a genre. The informality and the admixture of elements of other genres which are both present in Montaigne's work were NOT the standard of the day at all...

Philosophy: Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death. I read this the first time when I was 11. I still love that text.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is another I'd recommend.

All of Borges.
Ursula LeGuin
Arthur C. Clarke

[Moksha]

I'll add Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth. I think it's the most important work of pomo/meta fiction

[Sal Paradise]

wikepedia link for the great books program. Which I know St Johns University in Sante Fe, New Mexico teaches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books

........ and yes, I've read them all




:rofl5:

[BrazenMuse]

That's really a Great Books of the Western World list.

...and I've been in school too long. I've read nearly everything in that sample list more than once and was thinking of replacements for some of them. I'm amazed that Castiglione is missing from it. Should be there if one's going to include Machiavelli, really. The 2 books were always together as required reading for anyone in the ruling classes of Europe, for centuries...

[Sal Paradise]

That's really a Great Books of the Western World list.

...and I've been in school too long. I've read nearly everything in that sample list more than once and was thinking of replacements for some of them. I'm amazed that Castiglione is missing from it. Should be there if one's going to include Machiavelli, really. The 2 books were always together as required reading for anyone in the ruling classes of Europe, for centuries...

that's impressive Brazen. At best and this is a stretch I've read a third of them. I like the idea of the list being a college curriculem.

[Moksha]

A good collection of theory for film:

"Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology"

[klmn497]

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[LadyA. Acacia]

fiction:
Black Boy - Richard Wright
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
1984 & Animal Farm - George Orwell
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
anything by Hermann Hesse but in particular Narcissus & Goldman and Siddharta
The Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
something by William Faulkner, probably As I Lay Dying
something by Ernest Hemingway, preferably For Whom the Bell Tolls
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
The Stranger - Camus
something by Kafka, probably The Metamorphosis or The Trial
something by Doestoevsky, The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov
Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Plays
Nikolai Gogol
Anton Chekhov
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Eugene Ionesco - Rhinoceros
the Greeks (Euripedes. Aristophanes, etc.)
key works by Shakespeare (including Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, and Twelth Night)


Non-fiction
Savage Inequalities - Jonathan Kozol
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
The Power Broker: Robert Moses & The Fall of New York - Robert Caro
The Death & Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs


Philosophy, Science, Etc.
Selected works by Sigmund Freud, including The Ego & The Id and Civilization and Its Discontents
Nuerosis & Human Growth - Karen Horney
selected works by Noam Chomsky, preferably Manufacturing Consent, Class Warfare, and Hegemony or Survival
The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Bhagavadgita
The Kama-Sutra
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism - D.T. Suzuki & Carl Jung
The Undiscovered Self - Carl Jung
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
QED: The Strange Theory of Light & Matter - Richard Feynman
Hegel, Marx, Engels, Rousseau, Sartre, Nietzche


*I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them right now

aya... i need to step my game up.
this entire thread i've read only 8 books.
and the book i am currently reading, i've already read once before.
i feel dupit :(