Books to Read in a Lifetime
amazon.com
amazon.com
[The Amazon tagline, "From the Modern Japanese Master" is certainly pretty cringe-inducing. >< ]
In general the entire list seems very uninspired, like it was generated by someone tallying up blog posts and fan-favorite lists, rather than being an informed opinion by someone that's actually read and thought about a lot of books...
Yeah, I felt the same way. If that's what you got to read before you die, well you might as well die of boredom before you finish reading the books in that list :P
Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, really?
There are some really good books classed as "young adult" that I think are done a big disservice just by being labeled as such. Many of them are very accessible and cover things that sometimes even "grownup" literature does a terrible job of.
Personally I wouldn't go for Hunger Games, but Harry Potter was in large part responsible for a huge resurgence in reading among children and not for no reason. It's an easy read into a possibly new genre for many readers, and I'd be surprised if there was anyone out there that couldn't relate on some level to something going on in the series. It's not the best example ever, but it's far from shabby.
(And no, just because a non-English book is great and worth reading does not automatically confer that same status onto an English translation based upon that book.)
I've spotted few translated books in this list, so I don't see why this is a problem.
>And no, just because a non-English book is great and worth reading does not automatically confer that same status onto an English translation based upon that book.
I disagree, I think good translations are pretty much transparent. Substance matters more.
Great insight!
A well-read life would start at the Iliad and the Meditations and other classics (all available for free) and work up from there, not Lemony Snicket!
The Handmaid's Tale is far better, but is listed as "Feminist Speculative Fiction"; if I'd read the category first, I would have skipped the book, but the book is great, along with her other writing.
In a list of 100, I'd probably include 3. The Handmaid's Tale is fine; Snow Crash or maybe a Heinlein or a "golden age of sci-fi" choice.
(Edited to fix incorrect title, thanks)
And you're right, it's a great book and does not deserve to be pigeonholed into some niche category.
Actually, Vinge's True Names would be top on my list (and only 90 pages or so).
The Hyperion cantos (Simmons) is sadly not taken seriously by very many authors of top-100 lists. It's usually Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land or Ender's Game or Forever War. And heaven forbid they include Neuromancer or Snow Crash or Altered Carbon, or an eco-scifi book like Stand on Zanzibar or Zodiac.
Dune could be a nod to the classic science fiction aficionados who don't care for any of the newer stuff, who love Asimov, Niven, Clarke, PKD, Bester. Is Heinlein too politically charged, perhaps?
It sounds like you heard the Endymion pair are rubbish and avoided reading them. Wherever you heard that, they're not. Look at the ratings on goodreads[1], for instance. You're talking about them as if the Endymion volumes fell off a cliff like Vinge did with Children of the Sky[2]. Not so. The amazon ratings distribution for Endymion is a bit lackluster compared to the other volumes, but still nothing that could be called "rubbish".
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=hyperi...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=zones+...
The problem with the list is it's not a true list of classic, worthwhile books, it's instead populated by books that (a) sell well and (b) are available at the moment from publishers. Those who don't read much, or who are beginning as adult readers, shouldn't be misled by its contents.
Here is a slightly better list, one unfortunately also biased by what's available in the current mass publishing market:
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/books-everyone-should-re...
But while searching online for quality "classic" or "essential" book lists, I am surprised to say that there's no such readily available list, at least that I can find. Obviously there's also the issue of taste -- one person's list of classics isn't likely to be another's.
It's basically a way to add an extremely thin layer of misdirection over what's fundamentally Amazon reminding you that you want to buy books on their site. (i.e. advertising). They're trying to catch as many different people in a carefully crafted "Hmmm, I always meant to read that, maybe I should buy it now to remind me" moment.
How is this is relevant to HN? It's probably not...
This is a list of good books you might want to look at. People who love to read also love to recommend books.
I would not be shocked if the editors at Amazon love to read.
Seriously, people.
It's probably a bit too pithy to say that reading them all will give you something to talk about at cocktail parties, but I think that's kinda where they're going with it. Any list that has both David Sedaris and Charles Dickens on it is not meant to be taken literally as THE LIST.
I've only read 33* of them, so I've still got a ways to go.
*humblebrag
I half expect Justin Bieber's biography to make the list.
Goodreads and Amazon have become as useless as IMDB when it comes to ratings. Both are prime examples of why the "wisdom of the crowds" is bull. Guess Nicholas Carr was right after all.
I know there are people who basically never read a book, but I have a feeling the kind of person who reaches 100 won't stop there.
I think it's intended as a list of suggestions, and anyone else is free to create their own list of suggestions.
> Much better for people to read different books.
There's so many books out there that it's useful to have some guidance as to which are more likely to be worth your time.
Didn't expect quite that much young adult literature - Harry Potter, Limony Snickett, Golden Compass, The Giver (plus Lord of the Rings). All major film franchises (well, The Giver under production).
Was amazed to see The Phantom Tollbooth. One of my favourite books of all time, though I haven't read it since I was a child and honestly have never met another person who'd heard of it!
Second, of the books that i have read, I have to say that Cutting for Stone isn't very good; Verghese's nonfiction The Tennis Partner is much better. The Connections has its moments, but maybe not enough for its length.
For science fiction I'd change Dune... Even though it's a great book and I like it (I even read Herbert Jr.'s sequels... spoiler: don't) I'd pick something "shinier." Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, or 2001: An Space Odissey... or go with the weird and pick Rendezvous with Rama. Or just Foundation. Sci-Fi-wise you can't go wrong with Foundation.
Ninja-edit: How could I forget The Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon? Written in the late 40s, I didn't give much for it as Sci-fi goes. I read it in one sitting. Ended with a headache, dizzy and hungry. It was well worth it.
For Murakami, I'd pick instead a relatively unknown book by him: Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World. An inception-esque plot-inside-plot book, set in an almost Neuromancer-like setting. I love it.
For Dystopian... Even though I have not read The Giver, just classification-wise I'd have to pick Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde's book, not to be confused with another, numbered, similarly named book.) It was a thrilling read (I think it's the best novel I've read in the past 3 or 4 years, but well, I don't read that much fiction lately), sadly part of a trilogy waiting to be finished. Beware: once you are done with the book you'd want to go to Britain and tie Fforde to his desk until he is done with the next book.
The books that surprised me though are incredibly well-spotted. I like that Guns, Germs and Steel is there. It's been on my reading list for... 3 years already (I have it, but it's a heavy book so I'm always eager to pick an ebook or thinner material for a commute,) because the theme is so compelling. The Right Stuff is not the usual book you see in a best-of list, but for me, it should be in all these lists. Heck, writing from it is used as example of good writing in On Writing Well (which is surprisingly a very good read).
The Long Goodbye, by Chandler. Chandler is great, period. Having one of his books in this lists validates other books I'd never consider... Even though you can't have a Chandler and don't have a Hammett. You can't go wrong with a book by Hammett, I'd probably pick The Maltese Falcon. A classic.
Of course, there are some books that I'd personally treat to a Bradbury process... Catcher in the Rye and On the Road are two books I was looking forward to reading (not being English-based meant I didn't get to read them on high school) and found dull. I guess read in a different context would have made it different, but I couldn't see all the praise. Personal opinion, though.
Thas is one of my favorite books of all times. Thank you for recommending it, and I will echo your sentiment to others here on HN to read it. It's one of the few books I've actually reread after saying to myself "I should reread that.."
Totally agree with this.
I think Murakami's writing has become repetitive and bloated in the last couple of decades (and even sort of creepy, in a bad way); he basically seems to have been writing on autopilot for many years. It's always a little annoying to see him trotted out as a great author by mentioning his recent stuff.
His early stuff, however, is much better: tighter, more subtle, more interesting, less overwrought. "Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World" is my favorite. It's weird, thoughtful, and sad in way that doesn't feel manipulative or artificial.
I feel the same way about Catcher in the Rye. I didn't grow up with it and when I picked it up as an adult I found it dull dull dull. I'm pretty sure that with enough digging one might find something interesting here, but it's buried too deep for me. Much like anything by James Joyce, this seems to be a book for Lit majors.
I think this still is a profound and powerful book for anyone reading it at the appropriate point in their life, usually the last year or two of high school. If you are familiar with post-war American culture of the 1950's, then you can also appreciate on a literary and historical level its counter-cultural message.
But otherwise, if you're encountering Catcher in the Rye for the first time having already become a grown-up adult, I wouldn't expect much of it.
First time I tried to read Catcher in the Rye I found it dull and didn't get far, but the second time I got into it and really enjoyed it. I ended up feeling a lot of sympathy for the main character.