well read.....?

Question

I love to read books, from biographies to novels to short stories to poems....I love the written word. In your opinion, what books do you think a person should read to be well read?

Answer 1

Frankenstien by Mary Shelley
I'm Ok You're Ok by Thomas A Harris, MD
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Answer 2

All the classic literature! (Ha ha.) After Beowulf and Homer's epics, well-read people have encountered at least a handful of authors from each century or period: medieval/early modern, eighteenth century and Restoration, Victorian, modernist, postmodernist/contemporary.

I guess must-reads include; Dante's Inferno (Purgatorio and Paradiso are alluded to less often), a few Shakespeare plays (everyone has to read Hamlet, of course), Fielding's Tom Jones or Defoe's Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders... Austen's Pride and Prejudice -- but Persuasion or Mansfield Park are taught more in university right now. At least one Dickens (probably Great Expectations)...Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Twain's Huck Finn, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby-Dick.

Even if people think it's pretentious, Joyce's Ulysses is amazing and worth the time...as is anything by Virginia Woolf. Definitely Catch-22. Everyone's read The Great Gatsby; I think Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night is just as good. Oh - of course - Nabokov's Lolita is an absolute priority. And Ellison's Invisible Man, too!

Short story writers -- Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Carson McCullers.

I'm not a poetry buff...so I pretend you can be well-read without reading a ton of poetry, but I know that's wrong. Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" -- famous Victorian poems that are among my faves. John Donne's work is also tremendously good, especially his earlier, more bawdy, hyper-sexed poems. "Busy old fool, unruly sun..."

Answer 3

I'm pretty well read myself, from Beowulf to Shakespeare, from Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King, from short stories to series, and from classics to pulp. I used to spend time figuring out what qualified as 'classic' or 'literature' but gave up when I realized that very often I get more enjoyment from one of the latest best sellers than from the so-called classics. Life is too short. Being well read is more about gaining knowledge in whatever topics interest you and (in the process) absorbing enough of the language that you become articulate.

Some of the best books I've read, that may or may not qualify: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Stand by Stephen King, Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons; and the following authors: Nevada Barr, Janet Evanovich, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, John Sandford, Thomas Harris, Larry McMurtry, and many, many more.

Answer 4

I have read twentyfour of my twenty seven years and I don't think that anyone can ever read enough. on the average i can read eight full length novels a week. Just read anything that interests you. If you try to force yourself to read things that you can't get into, readig will become a chore. Also if you find a book that doesn't interest you now come back to it in a year or two. Tastes change! There is no suck thing as well read. Popel who say that are just trying to impress you!

Answer 5

Plato's 'Republic'
Plutarch's Lives
The Comte De Monte Cristo
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Just a few of the classics

Answer 6

You can consider---
1. Born to Rebel -- by Frank j sulloway
2. structures of scientific Revolution(Why is it Just scientific revolution?)
3.Auto Biography Of Anwar Sadat

Answer 7

a non fiction book publish some 50 years ago called the intellectual life . i can't remember the author's name .

compassionate. lovely and caring book dedicated to young upstarts who haven't got it together quite yet.

it brought tears to my eyes.

but really, the moore u read the more forgetful u become.
the more forgetfull u become , you might as well close the books and sleep.

Answer 8

The life is too short to read bad books! so pick careffully:
Read- Dan Brown:"The Da Vinci Code"
Dostoievski, Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Miguel Cervantes:"Don Quijote"
Mark Twain, Jack London
This is super-Umberto Eco:"The name of the rose"
and of course-Paulo Coelho:"VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE" and
"THE ALCHEMIST"

Answer 9

I would say a lot of classic literature and some philosophy books. Also whatever book everyone is talking about at the moment so that you can have intelligent conversations about it.

Answer 10

There is not enough time in life to become well read.