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:
- 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.”
- The System of the World by Isaac Newton – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin – “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”
- The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith – “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”
- The Art of War by Sun Tsu – “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”
- 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):
- The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007
- The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007
- Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
- Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
- The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
- Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
- A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
- The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
- Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
- The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
- Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
- Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
- Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
- David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
- Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
- The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
- Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
- Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
- Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
- Money, Martin Amis, 1984
- White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
- Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
- The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
- A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
- Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
- Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
- Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
- Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91
- Viz (magazine) 1979 –
- The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
- Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
- In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
- Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
- Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975
- Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
- Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
- Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
- In Bluebeard’s Castle : Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
- Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
- The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
- The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
- The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
- Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
- Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. , 1966
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
- City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
- Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
- Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
- The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
- A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
- Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
- Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
- On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
- Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
- Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
- The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
- All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd,1960
- Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
- The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
- On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
- The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
- Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
- A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
- The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949
- The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
- 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:
- “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane
- “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- The Red and the Black by Stendhal
- Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
- Hail and Farewell by George Moore
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Oxford Book of English Verse
- The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson
- 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!
I couldn’t agree more that these lists offer a great insight into the readers personality. I often find that recommendations from my favorite authors end up being exactly to my tastes. Something I also find a lot with music too. I have found some of my all time favorite books in this way. Most recently I was turned onto the Medicine Man series by S. R. Howen and it has been such an exciting discovery. I had never read Native American fiction before but I was totally blown away. I read a lot of historical fiction but sometimes like to dabble in a bit of horror and romance so these books were just perfect. I expect to see Howen’s work show up in a lot of lists over the next few years. Some of the best fiction I have ever read for sure and I can’t wait for the next in the series. http://www.srhowen.com/