Comments on: Books Every Educated Person Should Read

By: Kuutio » Arkistojen aartehia

Kuutio » Arkistojen aartehia — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 17:20:12 +0000

[...] Books every educated person should read. [...]

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 05:18:17 +0000

1) Lucifer Principle – Howard Bloom 2) The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan

By: Tom McMahon

Tom McMahon — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:57:20 +0000

“The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker. Might as well have the most influential business consultant of the past century on the list too.

By: PrestoPundit

PrestoPundit — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:35:49 +0000

TWO BOOKS post-1970 Every Educated Reader Should have Read: 1. Law, Legislation and Liberty by Friedrich Hayek 2. From Marx to Mises by David Ramsay Steele.

By: Anne Myers

Anne Myers — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 22:52:29 +0000

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal The Examined Life: Robert Nozick

By: Yehudit

Yehudit — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 07:44:35 +0000

"Ted Chiang’s short story collection Stories Of Your Life has philsophy, fiction, science, and excellent writing. What more could you ask for, except more works?" I will second that. For Delany I would pick Triton rather than Dahlgren. For Le Guin I would pick Always Coming Home over The Dispossessed, which is a preachy deeply-flawed book. No one has mentioned Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean. Amazing book. One of its kind. Also sui generis works are Little Big by John Crowley and The Unconquered Country by Geoff Ryman. Sort of magic realism but more so. Until the Sun Falls by Cecelia Holland. Excellent historical fiction.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 03:22:23 +0000

I’d second many of the suggestions (Gaddis, Kundera, Marquez) but I’d like to suggest two writers whose work has been deeply influential: the poet Elizabeth Bishop, and the short story writer Alice Munro. They may not have the overtly intellectual pizzazz of some of the books mentioned here, but I think the depth of their humanity and the mastery of their craft make them two of the greatest, most defining authors of our time.

By: Michael Ravitch

Michael Ravitch — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 03:21:05 +0000

I’d second many of the suggestions (Gaddis, Kundera, Marquez) but I’d like to suggest two writers whose work has been deeply influential on literary writers: the poet Elizabeth Bishop, and the short story writer Alice Munro. They may not have the overtly intellectual pizzazz of some of the books mentioned here, but I think the depth of their humanity and the mastery of their craft make them two of the greatest, most defining authors,of our time.

By: kadia

kadia — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 21:42:23 +0000

The Corner—by David Simon & Edward Burns: Shattering portrait of drug addiction and desperation in the U.S. inner city in the 1990s. Random Family—Adrian Nicole Leblanc: Follows a small group of young people grappling with poverty, un(der)employment, addiction, and other challenges.

By: rams

rams — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 19:05:08 +0000

Assuming the original rules meant ONLY TWO books which one should be able to assume an educated person has read (as opposed to those you believe crucial to completing their education), SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Vonnegut (calm down, he only missed by a year) and BELOVED (whence the Morrison backlash?)

By: todd m

todd m — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 16:12:09 +0000

William Gaddis, Agape Agape [the first ‘e’ wears a macron but i don’t know how to make it don it] Rupert Everett, Hello Darling, Are You Working?

By: tm

tm — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:58:17 +0000

Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe Richard Wright, Black Boy (first published in its entirety in 1991)

By: Chris O

Chris O — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:44:03 +0000

1. “Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan – You’re educated, but can you think? 2. Any Harry Potter book. – So you can talk to normal people.

By: tm

tm — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:40:30 +0000

William Gass, On Being Blue Gaston Bachelard, La psychanalyse du feu

By: Arne

Arne — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 07:42:19 +0000

Lots of books I’d recommend have already been recommended. Recipe-type books: I can’t recommend anything specifically for this (but still, I’d say go for Marcella Hazan, Julie Sahni, Paula Wolfertt (her book on the cooking of SW France is canonical, as far as I’m concerned), or, especially, my favorite cookbooks: Floyd on Spain by Keith Floyd, British Penguin, 1992, or anything at all by Evan Kleiman and/or Vianna La Place. But yes, Richard Olney’s “Simple French Food” really is great, but then so is the cookbook I picked up in Madrid in 1995: Recetas de 200 Cocineros de Sociedades Vascas” by Jose Castillo. It includes a recipe for stewed cat (two of them!). Food books that everyone should know about: History of Food_ by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell. OK, it’s opinionated, but her chapter on caviar is the most informative, and funny, that I’ve ever read. Food: A Culinary History by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (good but just not as catchy) The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe And my new favorite book—even though it’s a two volume compilation—is The Legacy of Muslim Spain edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi. It’s truly amazingly complete about one of the world’s most fantastic civilizations. I take that back—Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote. Arne