100 books everybody should read before they die
 

I was watching Equalizer and the character mentioned a list of 100 book everyone should read.

I found some lists (maybe these 2 are the same, I did not inspect them thoroughly yet) :
Amazon's 100 Books Everyone Must Read - Business Insider
100 Must Read Books: The Man's Essential Library | The Art of Manliness

What is your take on those? I am missing some old classics for example (olders book is from the 19th century). And Harry potter in the list? Lol.

I would rather die before I read 100 books.

it took a movie for you to want to read good books by important people?

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader - FTW. :thumbsup

Wrong. It took a movie to wonder about specific number of "best" books, in this instance a 100.

Didn't view the list yet.

In mine, there's "Sometimes a Great Notion" by Ken Kesey and "Lord of the Rings" by Tolkien...

:D

Reading is fun too.

The only books I read anymore are computer manuals

I prefer dating..

Some really good books in that list, brings back memories.

I hate books

Wow I've read 20 of the books on the list.

On that note,
Looking at some of hostility towards books posted in this thread I'm left a little perplexed. We live in an era where reading a "computer manual" is considered an intellectual pursuit but reading a book is somehow torture.

There's a social commentary in that.... What it is I'm not sure and I'm equally not sure I want to find out.

It doesn't matter what path you take to get there as long as you get there ...

You should add at least this one to your list:

the God delusion by Richard Dawkins.

100 years of solitude....... Amazing book

The Prince

The Communist Manifesto

Wealth of Nations

You should make your own 100-book list before you die :)

only 100?
i'd like to read few libraries before i die :1orglaugh

That list should be called: 100 books to read before you hit puberty because after that you'll laugh at most of them.

Edit: The first list that is, didn't look at the second after that one lol

A list containing "Harry Potter" with a link to an Amazon store .... thanks for the spam.

Read it. It's not very impressive and it's basically the rant of a very angry man.

Here take a gander at a someone that's a little more level headed and a lot less troll than Dawkins:
Rupert Sheldrake : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

Yeah, like I said (even from the first glance) it did not look too serious.

It is just a random link to generate the discussion. I am wondering if somebody has a better list made.

I will watch movie instead reading book

:2 cents: :thumbsup

the bhagavad gita, the tao te ching, all dostoevsky and on and on ....

:1orglaugh funny twist.

i would normally agree in most instances but not with reading. adults shouldn't require a list for reading... Part of the magic of reading is discovery, if you go off someone elses list you are just cheating yourself of that.

From those 200 books I have read 3, all from the second list. Some reading to be done if I like to read the rest too.

disappointing lists, the amazon one has too many "in vogue" books (diary of a wimpy kid and the hunger games! FFS) and the other is too American-centric.

I don't like being told what to read. If you give me a book as a gift I will probably toss into the garbage bin.

there is not one single fucking life benefit resulting from reading those 100 books you SHOULD read.

my life is supposed to what, have more meaning, be better, what exactly is the reason I SHOULD read those 100 books before I die?


there's one reason for lists like that- to sell more shit.

:-)

All quiet on the western front is not America sentric. It is one of the 3 books I have read from that list.

I remember when I read that, I got about ~10 pages from the end and knew what was coming and couldn't bear to read that so I tucked that book away in the back of the freezer and it stayed there for a couple months before I could drag it out and read the ending.

:Oh crap

I *love* reading, and respectfully disagree - a book isn't better or worse depending on if I discovered it or not. I'd have missed out on some fucking good books if I had to discover each book I read by myself. If someone prefers to pick some from someone else's list, good luck to them, who am I to tell someone which route they should take :)

First one I thought of as well; should be required reading for the human race.

Another very good book that somehow never garnered much attention is Antarctic Navigation.

Those lists are actually pretty decent. I've read 28 books on the first list and 40 on the second.

I was talking about that list as a whole, there are quite a lot (but obviously not all) of books there that would be unknown or of no interest outside the US. that was my point.

Not necessarily. Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Camus, Kafka, Nietzche, Bulgakov, Joyce, Machiavelli, Huxley, Wilde, all the Greeks and a few others on the list were all from various European countries

I'm can understand American classics like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye being on the list but books like How To Win Friends And Influence People, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt? Walden would mean nothing to anyone outside the US I'd guess. and there are quite a few more examples too, The Federalist Papers and The Boys of Summer, ect .... I could go on but you get the idea by now.
Out of that list of 100 there are about 20 (not including the true American classics) that would never appear on anyone from outside the USA's top 100.

I'm at 12 on the second list.

I've read many of those classic books and while not a waste of time they are far from being essential - I get as much or more out of reading other types of writing as I do from novels/books. There's some intellectual snobbery involved. You can be brilliant and filled with insight without reading any of them.

People are becoming obsessed, it's the social Internet doing it, the bucket list mentality measuring a fulfilling life, keeping a scorecard of what you'd done, what you've eaten, where you've visited, what you own, how many followers on Instagram - all just a competition.

exfuckingactly.

not to mention, most people's bucket lists are nothing more than a travel/destination wish list.

great book actually :thumbsup

who cares if that's what someone else wants to do? I mean really, do you give the slightest fuck if some other person wants to get x followers on instagram, or makes a list of places they've visited, or does anything they want to do that doesn't directly impact your life?

My post was an observation and opinion of the times we live in, which is exactly what literature does. Nothing more.

Are you really this simple?

I must be :thumbsup

It's been ages since I did a lot of reading.

If memory serves, the last book I read cover to cover was Broca's Brain, Carl Sagan.

Seems level headed but has much faith in things that cannot be proven and are without evidence. Dawkins is a scientist through and through.
I can't do it, I can't buy into a bunch of esoteric non-sense without much evidence.
Scientific principles are not in question, Rupert only questions the scientific dogmas that abound.

I've read twenty some odd off the first list and thirty some odd off the second. I read freaky fast and often, but I don't really see the selling ponts on most of those.

Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist. He has a PhD in biochemistry and the body of his work was in cell biology. IN 2012 he was called "one of the brightest Darwinians of his generation."

There's nothing esoteric at all in his research. What he's researching is both consciousness and also how differentiation is established in order to solve the problem of why things take the shapes that they do.

He uses science to analyze science and is very unemotional about it. Where as Dawkins tends to be a long drawn emotion based rant for his ideas and against anyone that questions them.

If you read Sheldrake, he's never denied or disputed the Theory of Evolution. ** BUT ** He's also has never supported it. Instead he quickly points out that Theory of Evolution remains just a theory. And even if it were proven to be factual it in of it self would neither prove nor disprove the existance of a force refered to as God. Evolution would simply disprove claims made in the religious texts of certain religions.

Sheldrake is definately outside the orthodox of current scientific dogma. But so was Copernicus and many many others.

100 books is fine with me :)