What would you say are the books that all smart or educated people seem to have read!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
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Position:Home>Books & Authors> What are some books a well- read person shoulfd read?Question: What are some books a well- read person shoulfd read!? What would you say are the books that all smart or educated people seem to have read!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I guarantee you that if you read—I mean REALLY read—the majority these books, and make them part of your walking-around knowledge, you will know more than 80% of all living college graduates!. Maybe 90%!. "The Republic" by Plato "Politics" and "Poetics" by Aristotle "The Art of War" by Sun Szu "The Odyssey" & "The Iliad" by Homer "The Canterbury Tales" by Chaucer "The Divine Comedy" by Dante "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," & "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare "Don Quixote" by Cervantes "Candide" by Voltaire "On The Wealth Of Nations" by Adam Smith "The Federalist Papers" by Jay, Hamilton, & Madison "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine "The Social Contract" by Rousseau "Walden" and "On Civil Disobedience" by Thoreau "Essays" by Emerson "Democracy In America' by de Tocqueville "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain "On The Origin Of Species" by Charles Darwin "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville "The Golden Bowl" by Henry James "Beyond Good & Evil" by Neitsche "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx & Engels "War & Peace" by Tolstoy "The Castle" & "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka "Democracy & Education" by John Dewey "Ulysses" by James Joyce "Nineteen Eight-Four" & "Animal Farm" by George Orwell "The Waste Land" by T!.S!. Eliot "Being & Nothingness" by Jean-Paul Sartre "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir "The Sound & The Fury" by WIlliam Faulkner "Howl" by Allen Ginsburg "The Lord Of The Rings" by J!.R!.R!. Tolkein "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley "Sophie's Choice" by William Styron "Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Persig "Dune" by Frank Herbert "Sociobiology" by E!.O!. Wilson "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker "Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hoftsadter "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking "The Blank Slate" by Steven PinkerWww@QuestionHome@Com Everything you can get your hands on!. How will you know a book is good unless you have read a bad one!. also some of the "smart" books aren't fun to read, don't flow well and can be difficult just to be difficult!. In example LOTR by Tolkien!. He was a linguist which didn't translate well into story telling because it is not well written in a "reads well" way!. Not that is is a bad book just coulda been simplified!. If ya don't like that one Shakespeare!. enough said on that, his name alone is enough to make me cringe!. Edgar Allen Poe is probably one of the top 5 for the smart read and most of his stories read very well!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations, David Copperfield, etc!. (pick at least a couple -- these are two entertaining stories) Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion King James Bible (old and new testament -- very useful for recognizing literary references, aside from any religious significance) Shakespeare -- Hamlet, King Lear (lots of other fun plays to read -- the tragedies get most talk but the comedies are great too)!. Melville -- Moby Dick Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre Of course there are lots of others, but this would give you a great start to start exploring from!Www@QuestionHome@Com Germs, Guns, and Steal: The Fate of Human Societies -by Jared Diamond 1984 (Big Brother is watching you when you don't realize it D:, takes place in the future) -by George Orwell Fahrenheit 451 (not about 9/11, but burning of all literature and everyone is mesmerized by TV and Music) -by Ray Bradbury These are my favorites about human society!. You will like the last 2 the best because they are page turners :)Www@QuestionHome@Com Well anything really!. It depends on what you like!. if you like fantasy, I would say!. Lord of the rings, The chronicles of narnia, Harry Potter!. You can't be a well read person without reading some of Jane Austen!. You just need to read all kinds of books!.Www@QuestionHome@Com My mom says all smart people read The Secret!. I'd say smart people read period!. I think if you want to read, don't bore yourself with a book that is 'smart' or 'educated,' read something that you'll enjoy! I love anything by Jodi Piccoult, especially Faith!.Www@QuestionHome@Com i would say pride and prejudice and all other books by jane austin(i think i spelt that wrong!.!.!. sorry) but they are great books that everyone should read, but they are in old english and can be a bit dull in the begining, but they are still amazing!Www@QuestionHome@Com Hmmmm !.!. if you are well-read person then u would be the best person to analyze the books u read!.!.!. hmmm not all books of the same author will be of the same caliber!.!.!. so read them , and judge for urself!.!. So really become a WELL-READ person!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Anything Shakepseare Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Ulyses by James Joyce Hope that helps!Www@QuestionHome@Com King James Bible, at least the first part of Genesis (2-3 chapters), some of the Psalms, some of the Proverbs, Gospels of Saints Mark and John!. There are some more challenging, worthwhile books, e!.g!., Shakespeare's "Hamlet," "King Lear," "MacBeth," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which are worthwhile!. Suggestion: "Shakespeare 101," Michael LoMonico, and "Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art," Martin Lings, Ph!.D!., and looking at some British Shakespearean dramas on DVD, especially those filmed during 1930s-1960s, as introductory to the finest writer mankind has produced!. As for poetry, there are some great, and perhaps greatly boring, poems: Chaucer, Dante's "Divine Comedy," etc!. (Set snooze alarm!.) Perhaps the best, and brief, introduction to poetry, to "How Does a Poem Mean!?" (good book by John Ciardi) is "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei," Weinberger and Paz!. You are fortunate, in a way, "starting fresh," as there have been some excellent books written in recent decades which build on centuries of insight, and which offer that great wisdom without one having to endure the fluffy or stuffy!. "The Closing of the American Mind," Allan Bloom, "The Allegory of Love," C!. S!. Lewis, and "The Path of the Higher Self," Mark Prophet are three such examples worth looking at!. However, a caveat: if a book isn't working for you, and you're trying to read it with "Emersonian awareness" (active, Mindful engagement), then put it back on the shelf--and try another!. The beauty of reading for wisdom and joy, without a class' schedule is being without that classroom pressure!. Then, too, many non-fiction authors offer footnotes and references to other books!. Those mentioned that sound interesting can be the next selections!. You begin to feel well-read when the references and authors in book C or D refer you back to book A :) On the other side of the ledger, there are occasional periods of byzantine efflorescence in academic circles!. For some years now, American English lit crit has been suffering through such a phase!. Jargon and eccentric opining abound, much as in a political-posturing campaign!. So, to keep this list interesting and short, "Freakonomics," S!. Levitt, "The Great Divorce," C!. S!. Lewis, "Hidden Camera," Zoran Zivkovic, "A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle, "The Little Prince," Saint-Exupery, "Flatland," E!. A!. Abbott, "Expecting Adam," Martha Beck, "Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians," Brandon Sanderson, "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group," Daniel Estulin, "Psychonavigation," John Perkins, "Hope of the Wicked," Ted Flynn, "Animal Farm," George Orwell, and "Liberal Fascism," Jonah Goldberg, are some of the more interesting recent, best-selling, influential, and/or meritorious books!. Jane Austin has been especially popular in recent decades; if you like what she writes, those are good!. There are iconic books, such as "Catcher in the Rye," Salinger, "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut, "Catch-22," Heller, "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," Kesey, "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Little Women," "Stranger in a Strange Land," "1984," etc!., which have a stirring and important point of view, but which often also are a mixture of fluff and value!. How you enjoy e!.g!. "1984" is important; it's about a tri-partite world of a continuing elite totalitarian scam, etc!., but some people simply find more meaning in it, than do others!. I!.e!., not even the "smart" and "educated" find a universal or single "canon!." There are all kinds of iconic and meaningful books, e!.g!. "War and Peace," "Don Quixote," "Moby Dick," "Dead Souls," "Doctor Faustus," etc!., however, if you aren't enjoying the journey, probably better to put off the book, and simply check a Cliff's Notes or a wikipedia summary for the two or three basic main ideas/themes, and move on!. If you find e!.g!. Francine Rivers' "Redeeming Love" or Andrew Bridge's "Hope's Boy" able to engage you on emotional and mental levels, transforming you, then you are likely gaining what is the basic point of reading and education: a parallelling and comparing of your emotions and thoughts with those of another, inspired human!. The same basic insights and values are communicated in Rivers and Shakespeare, Bridge and Gogol; the significance of allusions and a shared culture of smartness and education is in good measure simply label-based (a rose by any other name would still smell as sweetly, e!.g!., Shakespeare and Rivers)!. What distinguishes the perhaps near-great Rivers book from the genius of Shakespeare is perhaps reducible to two-fold: the higher level of in-telling (intelligence)--which is notable among older, classical authors, simply because proportionately more of the best and brightest comprised the major writing group, up through c!. 1800--and the increase in intelligence as information/knowledge--a product of more widespread education, of the increase of technological skill and specialization, and subsequently of wider authorship, beginning around 1900 in Britain and U!.S!., around 1950 in France, etc!.; and, secondly, what C!. S!. Lewis in "The Allegory of Love" notes as the "Genius" of God and the geniuses of men: truly great writing is inspired of Genius, and the writers' genius reflects that Light of Soul, or, in the case of erring or energy-veiling (eviling) genius, distorts same (notion of Plotinus' One Mind Soul-individuation, and how energy-veiling places veils of error between God and erring creatures)!. What might characterize Francine Rivers' near-genius is her genuine inspiration of Light of Soul, God, whereas Shakespeare is simply even more talented, mercurial, insightful, intelligent, and proportionately able to keep Light of Soul as writer's genius, rather than distorting Genius qua "evil or e-veiling genius!." So, enjoy, and remember to "get wisdom" :)Www@QuestionHome@Com |