What books do you think are essential to have read in order to consider yourself "well read"?

Question

Feel free to add long lists, links with long lists, etc. I'm trying to compile a master list for myself.

Answer 1

Oh, what a hard question! And what an interesting one!

I have now reached my three-score-and-ten. I've been an avid reader since I was ten or so, so that's six full decades. And guess what? I've finally had to come to terms with the inevitable. Even if I were to live to be 101 and did nothing in my retirement but read I would never become really well-read. There will always be a stack of books in my study that I am "gonna get to one of these days." Always.

So let me give you some advice on your list (and, by the way, a few titles to consider putting on it).

1. Don't think you have to read all those classics that show up on most everyone's list of "books that the well-read person should read." Three of the top ones on those lists are often Moby Dick, Don Quixote de la Mancha, and James Joyce's Ulysses. Now don't tell anyone, but there are passages in all of them that put me to sleep. I've read-at two of them and still have one, in a great new translation (!), in my stack of books I'm "gonna get to one of these days."

2. Don't get too involved in loooong lists. Probably the more important list for the genuinely well-read person is that short list of books that will be read over and over again, always with new insights, new satisfactions, and yes, new questions. Try to limit that list to around twelve or so titles. For me they include Shakespeare's Hamlet, Eudora Welty's Losing Battles, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the Odyssey, Antigone, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (in dozens of translations), William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Charles Dickens (choose one), and--my most recent edition, read twice already--Shelden Cheney's (NOT that Cheney!) Men Who Have Walked with God.

3. Don't neglect poetry, but don't expect to read any volume all the way through, from beginning to end. Browse and reread. Mine include Blake, Keats, Lyrical Ballads, James Dickey, Howard Nemerov, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and esp. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. To keep up with what's going on these days, each year I purchase Best American Poetry, and read two or three poems a day, identifying a few poets whose work I may want to check out of the library.

4. And don't neglect biography. In this case, I recommend you choose people in whom you are interested; then find one or two well-written, interesting but well-researched books about each one. For example, I think I may have read four biographies of John Keats, all of them different and all enlightening. But occasionally I do identify a biographer whose works always engage me, no matter who their subject is; for example, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin (well, even though she has admitted to plagiarism!), and Peter Ackroyd.

5. What most well-read readers who concentrate on literary classics in their list neglect are books on contemporary issues that are important to our survival and the survival of our democracy, indeed our planet. I rely on book reviews in such works as Nation, New Republic, American Prospect, and American Conservative (to get the full spectrum) to find two or three of these each year. Right now, I am reading, for the second time, the well-researched Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson. Whatever one's political persuasion or attitude toward American imperialism, it has the kind of information citizens need to know and NEVER get from news media.

6. OK, I read the One-Year Bible (fairly faithfully), but whatever your religious persuasion, or even if you have none, a brief meditative reading each day is good for the soul.

7. Now to those long, long lists. There are many, many of them, interesting, provocative, idealistic, and each one limited in one way or another. Check the internet site listed below. My old favorite (maybe a bit dated now) is Good Reading: A Guide for Serious Readers (1990, 23rd edition). But, just for fun, check out Jorges Luis Borges' Selections for the "Library of Babel," or The 100 Most Meaningful Books of All Time as selected by an international poll of authors in 2002 and published in the Guardian in May 2002, or Utne Reader's "Loose Canon." [All of these are among the lists linked to the site below.]

Good luck! Of the making of many books there is no end. Of the making of many booklists there is also no end. The lists are almost as much fun as the books.

Answer 2

Jules Verne
Mark Twain
Robert Louis Stevenson
Alexandre Dumas
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Edgar Allan Poe
John Updike
John Irving
Terry Pratchett
Douglas Adams
Neil Gaiman

If you are of the nerd persuasion like I am, then you need to hit these:

Tom Clancy
Michael Crichton
Robin Cook

I call these nerd fiction because they are riddled with too much technical information that is amusing to you if you are a nerd, but it is distracting if that is not your cup of tea. We joke that while most authors describe a pistol shot as "he shot her," Clancy will tell you the exact brand of the pistol, the kind of bullet, how fast it left the bore, how the bullet fragmented and if the shooter held the pistol in one hand or if he used a weaver stance, etc. Cook is the same way but with medical stuff.

"Well read" is a very relative term. All it really means is you read a hell of a lot more than the common person. It is a process that goes on an on for the rest of your life, it is not as if you just read a stack of books off a list and you are considered well read. I am 35, been reading at least a book a week since I was 11 years old and there are still hundreds of classics I have not had a time to read.

Answer 3

To Kill a Mockingbird
Anything by Joanne Greenberg
Anything by Laurie R. King
Colin Wilson
No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again; A Symphonic Novel by Edgardo Vega Yunque

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman

The Bible
The Koran
The Torah

Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Robert A. Heinlien (Especially: Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Methulesah's Children.)

Answer 4

I agree with Hobbz, I have a library. Amazon if it was a phone service would be on speed dial. I did an inventory of my books today to see how many books I have to read and I have 20 pages. Haven't had time to count them all up yet! And I still haven't included the ones that are in the dining room (the research/historical section). With so much day time drival on its easy to switch off and pick up a book. Just after Judge Judy. I do wish I could have more focus

Answer 5

Some older books:
Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities...Sometimes hard to stay with, but worth it at the end. A Christmas Carol is an awesome story to read.
Anything by Jane Austin..I had to read it for school, but my wife is hooked on them.
Don't miss poems by Tennyson and others in that same period.
Every American should read Grapes of Wrath, The Godfather, Rich Man Poor Man, and just because they are really good..Lonesome Dove and Dune.

Answer 6

ha ha! I decided to do the same thing a while back. I'm still expanding my list today and have no hope of finding the end of it. I started about 12 years ago.

First thing I did was go through all of the college intro to lit classes' (intro to world lit, american lit, brit lit, etc.) anthologies and read the complete versions of all the titles listed in them. Doing so would make you ridiculously well read in most circles. It may seem excessive, but if your a fast reader it should only take several years. Even if you just quickly read through most of them I recommend picking about one in every five or ten that look interesting to you and really studying it closely. Having a depth of knowledge about the things you read is part of being well read.

Answer 7

All classics if possible. It takes a huge time but well worth it. It may sound boring to you but i cant tell you how excited it was to read The Red & The Black by Stendhal.

or you may find it too romantic to read Alexandre Dumas but how enjoyable was reading the Count of Monte Cristo :))

and all Agatha Christie's and Sherlock Holmes series..

I will tell you the authors; ie. masters in my opinion. any book by them is fine enough.

gabriel garcia marquez
john fowles
milan kundera
salman rushdie
umberto eco
scott fitzgerald

it is really difficult...

Answer 8

You should read education of a body builder from Arnold schwarzanegger I m serious about that cause there s not just about bodybuilding , he told about self-confidence , liking yourself , and being healthy by keeping fit .You can see the willingness of schwarz.
And you should read something Zen , it s usefull for medication
You should read some of the Freud's books.
I advise you to read Loise Hay
I like reading poems also and read some good poet's books.
try to read about happy and hopeful things so it makes you happy and mentally strong.

Answer 9

The Darwin Awards and the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. All 5 books of the guide not just the first one.

Answer 10

It is a personal thing really, only snobs judge you by what you have read real people don't judge you at all. It is an insecure person who goes around judging people by what they have read and what they have not. I like the sci-fi fantasy genre, a lot of people laugh at that, no matter. I know what I like.