Books You Should Read Before You Die

Electric Cool Aid Acid Test - Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Indian Vegetarian Cookery - Rafi Fernadez
Towards A Citizens' Militia - IRSM/1st of May Group (I know the main author but can't name him for legal reasons)
Zenarchy by Kerry W. Thornley

 

Hey flashlock,

You must definitely check it out. Its very short but its a book that I go back to time and time again, especially when I'm looking for direction, some answers, maybe even a little comfort.

 

Will do!

I'll let you know what I think...

 

"I AM THAT" - Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, in my humble opinion.

 

As I said, that list I posted is 2 years old.

Right now I would definately add my favorite novel of all time:

"The Sea, The Sea" by Iris Murdoch.

 

ken kesey - one flew over the cuckoo's nest
george orwell - 1984 (scarily relevant to today in a few ways)


there'll be more when i can think of them

 

One of the best books ever. The movie was good and you can see why... it's based on a brilliant book!

 

And also showed up my misspelling of Kesey as Kessy - Ah well

 

If we're talking fiction (as people seem to be) then I'd have to add

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
&
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver. (both brilliant books, but somewhat galling and hard work.)

The Latin American trilogy ('The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts' , 'Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord' and 'The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman'.) - Louis de Bernières

Life of Pi - Jann Martel

 

Hmm tricky (my choices anyway):

Picture of Dorian Grey- Oscar Wilde
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Norwegian Wood/Kafka on the Shore- Haruki Murakami
That's all I can think of right now on a Monday morning!

 

Leviathan - Thomas Hobbs

Marx's Theory of of Man's Full Development - Xueliang Ding

 

I'm sure we've done this lots of times before, but what the hell - I always enjoy making these lists! :love:

Patrick Susskind - 'Perfume'
Martin Amis - 'Money'
Flann O'Brien - 'The Third Policeman'
Richard Brautigan - 'Dreaming of Babylon'
George MacDonald Fraser - 'Flashman' (which comes with the bonus that it'll get you hooked on the whole series!)
Seamus Deane - 'Reading in the Dark'
Christy Brown - 'Down all the Days'
Stephen Marlow - 'The Lighthouse at the End of the World'
Salman Rushdie - 'Midnight's Children'

 

Which ones have you read then?

 

The pop-up ones.

 

Ooh I forgot The Twits by Roald Dahl!

 

That'd be none of them then, unless there're pop-up Sopheclese, Plato and Kant out there... which come to think of it is an awesome idea.

I'll bet money that that list was compiled by someone who had never even heard of Marcus Aurelius until "Gladiator" came out, yet he's included in the list...

Pathetic.

 

You mean you never read the pop-up version of Plato's 'Republic'?

 

You could do an entire list just containing books by Roald Dahl.

Everyone should read at least some of his adult short stories, which are really dark and seedy (and "Henry Sugar" which is just brilliant)

 

I really want to...

 

Mikhail Bulgokov: Master and Margarita; Heart of a Dog

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina; War and Peace

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude; The Autumn of the Patriarch

Jane Austin: Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice (of course)

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

Christopher Moore: The Stupidest Angel; Fluke, or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings; Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal; The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and Practical Demonkeeping (Can you tell I like this guy?)

Tom Robbins: Skinny Legs and All; Jitterbig Perfume

Stephen J. Gould: Wonderful Life; Mismeasure of Man; Rock of Ages; The Hedgehog; the Fox and the Magister's Pox and any and all of his collections of essays that he wrote for Natural History- my probable favorite collection would be either The Panda's Thumb or Bully For Brontosaurus

C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia; Til We All Have Faces; Mere Christianity

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel; Collapse

Mark Kurlansky: Cod; Salt: A World History

Henry David Thoreau: Waldon (haven't been able to convince myself to read the others yet)

Alfred Russel Wallace: On the Tendencies of Varieties to Depart Indefinately From the Original Type (very similar to Origin of Species, but much easier to read- Darwin was not a writer, I am afraid).

And that is all I can think of off hand-

Grrr- forgot Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal