what do i read in order to become more intelligent?

Question

book names and authors in particular please.....

Answer 1

Read 1984 by George Orwell- its where the term 'big brother' came from!

I guess you could read classical books. Like Frankenstein by Mary Shelly.

Some personal favourites (and these might be easier if youre younger) are these books by Garth Nix: Shades Children, Sabriel, Lireal and Abhorsen.

Definitely 'Lord of the Flies'

Maybe 'Catcher in the Rye'

Answer 2

The Bible
Betrand Russell - History of Western Philosophy
R. Harre, The Philosophies of Science
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind
John Humphrys, Lost for words
Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbevilles
Lao Tzu, Dao Te Qing
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Hobbes, Leviathan
Marx, Das Capital
Plato, The Republic
Augustine, Confessions
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Orwell, Animal Farm

Answer 3

I am almost tempted to say 'anything' as the brain is just as much a muscle as your biceps and needs regular exercise to grow and strengthen. However, some of the literary manure out there would have you brain seeping out of your ears in order to escape the onslaught if you tried reading them. One such would be anything by Dan Brown, who despite being almost illiterate has still managed to sell millions of copies of his hackneyed and tiresome novels.

Make your brain work a little on a steady diet of anything from James Joyce (Dubiners; Portrait of an artist; Ulysees), washed down with a very palatable Plato (start with the Symposium, go on to the Republic and make your own way from there)

Answer 4

A Purpose Driven Life or Encyclopedia Britannica

Answer 5

Widely and frequently. Go to your library every week. Take out four books that you like the look of and one that you don't. Read a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. A mix of subjects of non-fiction and a mixture of genres of fiction. Read them all and return them. Repeat, repeat, repeat. You will become more intelligent. Unfortunately it's not a quick fix!

Answer 6

You will not become more intelligent by reading books, you will just be more educated. They are not the same things.

Answer 7

May be you should consider your general approach to things first of all. When you, for instance, read someone, you enter into their mind, and temporarily desire to see things from their point of view. You invest your time, your interest and willingness to do so in the privacy of a life that is entirely your own. And this perhaps is a greatest tribute you can ever pay to any one saying something about life in written words. But do you always agree with what is being said? Or do you have a space, or an opinion of your own to put forward, and to compare the wisdom you are being offered with the wisdom of your own person. You are after all an intelligent person yourself and have your opinions that count. Your own life however similar to many a people, is never exactly like the life of any other person.

The first sign of intelligence is that a person is able to realise his or her own existence in all areas of life, like emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. You can be as intelligent as your already are, but you can become wiser by comparing your life, your point of view with those of the others. But if you listen to everyone, and have none of your own opinion at every step of the way - however immature they might be at time – you are likely to land yourself into controversy, because all people are only able to see things from their perspective that they like to share with all other people.

The best approach to intelligence, or wisdom, is to learn to read from the book of life, for things you write yourself, and in the private moments of your person the things you say to yourself. The things you read from the coming of the seasons form the rising of the sun and from the falling of a night; the things of hope shining through the hours of despair.

The people around you are volumes of inspirational and intelligent literature composed. Their conditions and their words that we oft times hear so fleetingly, and even irreverently should matter to us all. We learn to listen, learn to talk and learn to see before ever venturing into things that we read. This is the fact.

The most important things in the book of life are being written in your own life, in the heart and mind of your own being. And then once you are genuinely interested in life, your life, then you can open any book you like, and read the same things being said in a variety of different ways over and over again. They are all about you and the life you have.

Answer 8

Anything that you can get your hands on...

Intelligence doesn't come from reading books on quantum physics or world politics alone.

It's about being in the know if the things going on around you...

It's called caring for your world... =)

Answer 9

Anything and Everything, read as much as you can and if you don't understand it then look up the words or concepts. Read about subjects that you are interested in and build up a knowledge base but also challenge yourself with things that you don't understand, you'll learn a greater respect for them that way.

Answer 10

I would suggest The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Here is the link to the online searchable version.

http://www.bartleby.com/59/