Louis L'Amour, especially his Sackett series. Robert Jordon, Wheel of Time series. Sun Tzu, Art of War Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke and of course his Sherlock Holmes stories Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War Author Unknown, Epic of Gilgamesh The Christian Bible, the Muslim Koran, the Hindu Vedas Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox Patrick F. McManus, all his books but I like Bear in the Attic and Never Sniff a Gift Fish Dr Rick Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule Brian C. Muraresku, Immortality Key Graham Hancock, America Before and Fingerprints of the Gods Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom Steven Hunter, Shooter and Backlight Steven King, The Dark Tower series Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow, Kidnapped, and Treasure Island (assuming you haven't read it)
Might check out a dictionary for "recommendations". Seriously, in addition to the books above, I'd recommend Alan Watts, especially The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, and some of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. Mark Twain. The Lord of the Rings. Saki. A disturbing read: Stranger to Myself, the diary of a Nazi soldier. A very good book of powerful poetry: A Book of Luminous Things. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Kerouac's Dharma Bums. Steinbeck, especially Grapes of Wrath. James Thurber. And so many, many others. More spiritual stuff might include Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English's translation of the Tao te Ching and Alan Watts's Tao: The Watercourse Way. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. C.S. Lewis, especially Mere Christianity.
I like Orsinian Tales by Ursula K Le Guin. It's a bit obscure but the stories are very evocative, at least to me.
The Icarus Hunt and Conquerors Trilogy, By Timothy Zahn. Martian Chronicles, By Ray Bradbury (Though most of his novels are good.) The Hellbound Heart and Inhuman Condition, By Clive Barker. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. Star Surgeon, Alan E. Nourse Rendezvous With Rama, Arthur C. Clark Bios of a Space Tyrant (Series), Piers Anthony The Dream Master, Roger Zelazny I know I draw from the older author pool, but I grew up with old school Sci-fi.
I would also add A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole. An author who gave up too soon, published posthumously after his suicide, when his mother finally convinced someone with influence to read it and pass it on to an agent.
Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell Till we have Faces by CS Lewis
Barbara Kingsolver, Poisonwood Bible and Animal Dreams. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden and A Little Princess Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches and Other Stories Katherine Briggs, The Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures Daphne du Maurier, Kiss Me Again, Stranger and Frenchman's Creek Marsha Mehran, Pomegranate Soup Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan
I like this thread, it can be so versatile. What do you recommend reading in general? For a writer? For a subject? Or just in general? Because honestly depending on the aim - I could list hundreds of books I've read and think are good enough to recommend for one reason or another. However, in general, I do think it's really worth having a general sense of the history of western literature at least. So I guess I'd recommend Homer, the Lattimore translations are probably the best but not my personal favourites, the bible, the Norton series of anthologies - their collections of Modernism and Romanticism were really helpful for me in school, and something like a history of philosophy honestly. However, this would only be (I'd stress) a general sense of western literature. Those books do not have much in the way of critical analysis and does not give a fleshed out view of the time periods covered. But there's only so much you can do with books 1,500 pages long. That's about the length of Plato's complete works, which is honestly the basics if you want to start to understand his thought.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter The Monk by Matthew Lewis Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla The Songs of the South by Qu Yuan et al, especially the Li Sao and the Nine Songs Dialogues of Plato, starting maybe with Phaedo, Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith Zhuangzi The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts by Karl Marx Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud Anarchism: From Theory to Practice by Daniel Guerin The War Nerd Iliad by John Dolan
I am currently reading Les Misérables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo. This is one of the largest and one of the most incredibly deep and interesting books I have read. I have read half of the book, but I am already convinced that it will become one of my favorite stories for my whole life. Must read!
