Who Can Recommend a Good Book?

I’m fascinated by lists of “recommended reading” – not only do such lists help us discover great books, but they also reveal quite a bit about the person who created the list. (For example, someone over at LibraryThing.com has cataloged the contents of Marilyn Monroe’s personal library. Reading through the list reveals a lot about the private interests of such a public person.)

Recently, while searching for lists of “favorite books” or “recommended reading,” I stumbled upon a very cool site—OpenCulture.com. Clearly, someone there enjoys reading lists as much as I do, because the site includes a fantastic sidebar titled “Reading Lists by…” Here you can find reading lists compiled by some well-known and fascinating people.

Reading over the lists, I noticed, with regret, a lack of diversity among the recommended books. Other than that common problem, however, I was surprised by how little overlap the lists contained. Below is a sampling of a few lists I found interesting. Others included on OpenCulture.com are by F Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Hitchens, Joseph Brodsky, WH Auden, Donald Barthelme, and Carl Sagan.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In an “ask me anything” feature on Reddit.com, popular astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked, “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” The following list, along with short explanations of each choice, was his response:

1.  The Bible – “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
2. The System of the World by Isaac Newton – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”
3. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin – “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”
4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”
5. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine  – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”
6. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith – “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”
7. The Art of War by Sun Tsu – “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”
8. The Prince by Machiavelli – “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”

Tyson clarified that he chose these books because, “If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.”

David Bowie

In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London created an exhibition called “David Bowie is…” The exhibition, a retrospective of Bowie’s career and influence on the arts, is currently touring internationally, and includes a list of Bowie’s 100 favorite books. Here’s the (long) list (clearly influenced by his love of music):

1. The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007
3. The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007
4. Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
5. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
6. The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
7. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
8. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
9. The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
10. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
11. The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
12. Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
13. Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
14. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
15. David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
16. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
17. The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
18. Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
19. Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
20. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
21. Money, Martin Amis, 1984
22. White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
23. Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
24. The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
25. A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
26. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
27. Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
28. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
29. Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
30. Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91
31. Viz (magazine) 1979 –
32. The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
33. Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
34. In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
35. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
36. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
37. Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975
38. Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
39. Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
40. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
41. In Bluebeard’s Castle : Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
42. Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
43. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
44. The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
45. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
46. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
47. Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
48. Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. , 1966
49. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
50. City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
51. Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
52. Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
53. The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
54. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
55. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
56. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
57. Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
58. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
59. Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
60. On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
61. Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
62. Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
63. The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
64. All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd,1960
65. Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
66. The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
67. On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
68. The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
69. Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
70. A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
71. The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
72. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
73. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949
74. The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
75. Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945

Ernest Hemingway

An aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson traveled to Key West in 1934 and knocked on Ernest Hemingway’s front door, seeking writing advice. During their conversation the following day, Hemingway asked Samuelson if he’d ever read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. When he said he hadn’t, Hemingway offered to write out a list of books he felt the aspiring writer ought to read. The list includes two short stories by Stephen Crane and 14 books:

1. “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane
2. “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane
3. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
4. Dubliners by James Joyce
5. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
6. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
9. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
10. Hail and Farewell by George Moore
11. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12. The Oxford Book of English Verse
13. The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
15. Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson
16. The American by Henry James

And lastly, for those of you who believe that the task of comparing one book to another is too subjective, here’s a brilliant quote from Virginia Woolf, from her 1925 essay, “How Should One Read a Book” :

The only advice … that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at the liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions — there we have none.

So what do you think? Do you enjoy book recommendations and lists of “Best Books”? Do you find any merit in the above lists? Do you agree with Virginia Woolf that we should not “admit authorities” to tell us “what to read”? Please share your thoughts in the comments!