Which books every home "library" must have?

Question

No religious books please

Answer 1

Fiction: Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain); Call of the Wild, Sea Wolf, White Fang, John Barleycorn & The Valley of the Moon (Jack London); The Sun Also Rises (novel), "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" & other short stories from The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway); The Iceman Cometh & Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neill); On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, Big Sur & Vanity of Duluoz (Jack Kerouac); Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller); Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden & The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck); A Fan's Notes (Frederick Exley); The Lost Weekend (Charles Jackson); Steppenwolf, Siddhartha & Narcissus and Goldmund (Hermann Hesse); Burden of Proof (Scott Turow); The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ichiguro); Bonfire of the Vanities & A Man in Full (Tom Wolfe); Florence of Arabia (Christopher Buckley)

Non-Fiction: Life On the Mississippi (Twain); Travels With Charley (Steinbeck); Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac); Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac (Gerald Nicosia); Anais Nin, a Biography (Deirdre Bair); The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test & The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe); Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell); Bias (Bernard Goldberg); America Alone (Mark Steyn); Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand); Marley and Me (John Grogan); The Immortalist (Alan Harrington); Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond (Michio Kaku); The Singularity is Near & Fantastic Voyage (Ray Kurzweil)

Answer 2

Bartletts and Oxford Quotation books. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, The Oxford Guide to Classical Literature, Roget's Thesaurus, Some sort of dictionary with derivations, The Penguin Guide to Literature (everything you need to know about literature and more), A simple guide to Science, something by Leibniz, lots of works of fiction, thrillers and classics, Halliwell or some such film guide, a local street atlas, the Collins Pocket Encyclopedia if it's still about, etc. If you can afford it The Book Review Digest, the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Who's Who, Who was who. Sorry would just suggest looking at the Library Association site and see what their suggestions are. Instead of relying on my ragged memory

Answer 3

Every book you can squeeze in!! Im running out of space!

Answer 4

Books from your favorite classes in college That's what mine has

Answer 5

why your atheist?
I hate to break it to you but almost every dictionary, encyclopedia will have a reference in it to the BIBLE

Since the Bible has been kicked out of public education, students today have difficulty recognizing biblical expressions from great novels written before 1950. Students do not recognize literary references to “Jonah” or “the prodigal son.” Professors are forced to decode these images so students dumbed-down in the Bible can understand the context of our masterpieces of literature.

Educator Allen Bloom suggests, “Imagine such a young person [devoid of history, especially Bible history and the stories of the Bible] walking through the Louvre or the Uffizi, and you can immediately grasp the condition of his soul. In his innocence of the stories of Biblical and Greek or Roman antiquity, Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and all the others can say nothing to him. All he sees are colors and forms—modern art. In short, like almost everything else in his spiritual life, the paintings and statues are abstract.”

You don’t have to go to Paris or Venice to see the dazed looks on students’ faces. Without a proper foundation in the Bible, American students betray those same faces in our own galleries and libraries.

American Literature
The world has been touched by the Bible in every discipline, and we in the United States have not escaped. Literature and art in this country are as much or more influenced by the Bible than in any other country.
Again, here are some of literary classics by American authors that use biblical themes, references or allusions, some even in their titles.
American Poetry

Poetry, by its very nature, is often brief. Even still, detecting the influence of the Bible on American poets is not impossible. Many American poets reference God or their longing for God in their poetry. As is the case in American film, American literature, and in other cultural genres, sometimes God doesn’t fare well in American poetry; other times He does. Regardless, God and His Bible have left their imprint on the poetry of America.
American Film



Believe it or not, even Hollywood has been impacted by the Bible. You only have to remember some Tinsel Town greats (and not-so-greats) to remember that the Bible or biblical themes were seminal to many of them. For example:





The Ten Commandments

The Passion of the Christ

King of Kings

Bruce Almighty

Pulp Fiction

Armageddon

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lord of the Rings

The Prince of Egypt

The Matrix

Chariots of Fire

The Exorcist







Of course, the Bible is not always treated fairly by Hollywood, but in an essay in the Journal of Religion and Film, Adele Reinhartz discusses some of the movies popular with college students and concludes, “The many uses of the Bible in film is a powerful argument for biblical literacy. Should our students, university administrators or provincial ministers of education question the on-going relevance of biblical studies programs, let us simply point them to the nearest Cineplex and ask them, as Jules [of Pulp Fiction] asks his erstwhile victims, 'Do you read the Bible?'"[9]



The Bible’s influence on our culture is everywhere. Old American society would not be the great society it is today without the impact of the Bible. Ironic, isn’t it, that the Bible is everywhere in our culture but itself is neglected by our culture. It seems we’d rather see a bad movie based on biblical themes than read the Good Book. What will be the impact of that? Stay tuned.

Here are some representative titles:
The Battle Hymn of the Republic -- Julia Ward Howe

The Crowing of the Red Cock -- Emma Lazarus

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl -- John Greenleaf Whittier

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek -- Annie Dillard

The Only News I Know -- Emily Dickinson

The Living Temple -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Journey of the Magi -- T. S. Eliot

The Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck

The Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

Moby Dick -- Herman Melville

Lord of the Flies -- William Golding

The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Uncle Tom’s Cabin -- Harriet Beecher Stowe

DID YOU KNOW?
As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world's law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view . it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!"

the link below shows photo proof

Answer 6

Definitly, "To Kill a Mocking Bird" A real classic.

Answer 7

A Dictionary and a Thesaurus.

Answer 8

The Three Musketeers. I just finished reading it. It's awesome!!

Answer 9

The Bible.