What books should I be reading?
The owner of the Commercial Complex where my office is gave us a $100 coupon that can be used ONCE and one of the retailers within the campus. The only retailer that is attractive to me is an used book shop. It works out because I have been wanting to read some more books.
Of the books I have read so far, I really liked Shantaram, The Catcher in the Rye, and Ishmael, to name a few. What I like out of my reading experience is not just to be engaged in the book while I read it but growing from the reading experience intellectually, spiritually and emotionally.
So far I have come up with a list by going to Amazon and looking at other books people bought in addition to one of the books listed above. I asked for recommendations through Twitter, which also updates my facebook status and so far have only received recommendations on facebook (C’mon Twitter friends!). The books I have so far are listed below:
- Life of Pi
- Things Fall Apart
- Slaughterhouse 5
- Catch-22
- Lord of the Flies
- The God of Small Things
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Of Mice and Men
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- On the Road
- The Good Earth
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Walden
I am sure that I might be missing a lot of good books. While the $100 is a limiting factor for now, I would love to hear from anyone who stumbled upon this post. I promise to post on my experience on books I read as well. I hope to hear from everyone.
World without End, The Power of One, The World According to Garp.
kodijack
December 23, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Anything/everything by Dostoevsky. Esp. The Brothers Karamazov.
al
December 24, 2008 at 1:00 am
hey, saw this over the facebook.
here are a couple of suggestions:
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell – Blink, Outliers, The Tipping Point
Nick Hornby – High Fidelity, How to be Good
Kurt Vohnegut – Cat’s Cradle
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
enjoy
petya
December 24, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Metamorphosis – Kafka
The Stranger, The Rebel – Camus
The Dispossessed – Ursula LeGuin
The Awakening of Intelligence – J Krishnamurti
The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck
For a few laughs: The Illuminatus Trilogy – Shea and Wilson
Catch-22 was terrific, Life of Pi overrated, imo.
99ppp
December 25, 2008 at 9:01 am
I got the same requests to add some info to Book Blogs. Do you think I should make a group about bookish charities, mention it in the discussion, or leave these kinds of things out of the site altogether? What do you think?
samza
December 29, 2008 at 3:43 am
You are probably right. And in fact I have been doing that. Ive been watching mindless comedy movies that take no mental effort to watch. Hopefully a few more days of watching those will get me back into reading.
sampan
December 29, 2008 at 5:52 am
@samza – I am not sure what you are asking. I would love for people to have a discussion on books that they think one must absolutely read in their lifetime. I am not sure what site you mean when you say “Do you think I should make a group about bookish charities, mention it in the discussion, or leave these kinds of things out of the site altogether?”
tetsuwanatomu
December 29, 2008 at 10:44 am
[...] this book because I had heard so much about it. I purchased it last winter with other books in this list thinking that there is no better time to get some reading done than cold winter days. However, I [...]
Life of Pi « tundal45@wordpress:~$
November 17, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I just finished rereading The Good Earth for the fifth or sixth time. It’s amazing. Read it! Read it! Read it!
Kathleen
January 4, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Thanks for the reminder. I have been shying away from fiction and reading more books related to marketing, entrepreneurship, learning, human brain & all that fun stuff but I was thinking of picking up a fiction book to change things up.
tundal45
January 4, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I just read two books of short stories by Samrat Upadhyay, a Nepali writer…Arresting God in Kathmandu and The Royal Ghosts. I really enjoyed and highly recommend both. Since they’re short stories, they don’t require much time commitment!
Kathleen
January 5, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I think I read Arresting God in Kathmandu. It’s definitely enjoyable, especially as a Nepali because we are not exposed to that part of society in daily life. Sex is something that people rarely talk about back in Nepal. I picked up another book by him when I went back home but I have not had a chance to read that one.
tundal45
January 5, 2010 at 4:39 pm