I love looking at people’s personal libraries. Especially the books that people tell me they read over and over throughout their lives.
It’s like seeing the foundational texts of someone’s life, values and interests.
What are your personal foundational texts?
It’s like seeing the foundational texts of someone’s life, values and interests.
What are your personal foundational texts?
Comments
Otherwise:
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider”
Howard French: A Continent for the Taking
And lately: Anaïs Nin’s diaries
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern were also foundational.
And A MidSummer Night’s Dream
That might get added to my list.
A powerful book about colonialism
Every once in a while you read a book that is so good, that when you finish you immediately want to re-read it, just to go over the points again.
Truly brilliant. I have never seen such a meticulous dive into colonialism and industrialism, IN A WORK OF FICTION, before.
I’m scared a’ you!!
Think Tintin & Asterix were fav comics for children growing up in post-colonial countries the most esp ones with access to Western education. It influenced my love for puns. My older self saw the innate racism of that era in the comics, only after coming to America, as a student.
Thinking specifically about Tintin in Congo…
There are more, but I have to think about it a bit.
Asterix thankfully holds up better.
Seize the Time - Bobby Seale
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Wallander Detective Series - Henning Markell
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Rumi Poetry
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Educated, Tara Westover
Mama’s Boy, Dustin Lance Black
Republic of Wine by Mo Yan
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
Horse of Air by Lindsay Campbell
And a thousand other books...
- Babar the Elephant
- Chronicles of Narnia
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy
- On Tyranny
- Siddhartha
- Daniel Goldhagen, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Raul Hillberg, Martin Gilbert, Anne Rice, Arendt, Virgil, Homer, Dante, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Orwell, Dahl, Milne, Carroll
Snow Crash
Cryptonomicon
Someone comes to town someone leaves town
LOTR
REAMDE
Zodiac
I read The Hobbit, LotR, and Pride and Prejudice every year
I think I’m gonna start buying physical copies of my personal favorites.
First new addition: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
It's the most perfect book. *Timshel*
Just exquisite writing.
I had a bracelet engraved with that.
“Though mayest”. We have choice.
Samuel Hamilton was everything good and kind and humble and giving. Every hope a mother has for her son.
So so so powerful.
101 Dalmatians
- Dodie Smith
The Years of the Forest
- Helen Hoover
The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Universe- Douglas Adams
The Chronicles of
Thomas Covenant
- Stephen Donaldson
All appropriate for the world wide disaster we are embarking on after Jan. 20, 2025.
1. Mother...why? Out of a thorny bush a rose shall blossom.
2. The Journey of a Poetizer.
3. 1619 Project.
4. Caste.
5. The Soul of Black Folks.
6. The Isis Papers the keys to the colors.
7. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Invisible Man-
Ellison
The Overstory- Powers
The Shallows - Carr
Caste - Wilkerson
H is for Hawk - MacDonald
Dr Seus
John Steinbeck’s Of mice and men
Asimov Trilogy foundation
Brandon Sanderson Skyward
Either/Or (philosophy book by Kierkegaard)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Tuesdays with Morrie
Mostly read a ton of Crichton as a young lad. Probably why I’m so skeptical of everything as an adult.
First 5 to come to mind. Ones I've given away and then had to replace just to have them on hand
Dune
The Player of Games
HP Lovecraft
Hmmm.. apparently, I'm not built for reality.
Robin Hood,
Robinson Crusoe (at the time I did not notice its racism)
War and Peace
Les Miserables
History of Sexuality
Anne Frank’s Diary
Sophie’s World
The Tradegy of Man by Imre Madách
Roots by Alex Haley
Fateless by Imre Kertesz
Robert Merle books
2. This Bridge Called My Back
3. Jane Eyre
4. Ways of Seeing
5. Beloved
and everything by Ursula K. Le Guin
Autobiography of Malcom X
Souls of Black Folk
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
5 Love Languages
The Blessing of Africa
Everyman Challenge
Liberating Black Theology
The Rap Yearbook
Masterlife
Financial Peace
Our Kind of People
Dirty Little Secrets
Africa in the 19th Century
Monster
Michael Jackson
I disagree, but thank you for sharing.
2.Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien
3. Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
4.The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
I did rediscover Neil Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'. For a book from the '80s it has nailed the problem of information-as-entertainment. It's shocking to see a book from 35 years ago see today so clearly.
And as a native Californian who moved away I can personally attest to the lack of history most Californians feel. It's something you don't notice until you move away.
I'm deeply grateful for you sharing this
A couple of his books were on my syllabus in my undergrad work and he was the first cultural critic...
He's a voice that our current cultural moment needs desperately.
Carl Sagan's stuff has become shockingly true about the current information world too.
The Sword in the Stone
Three Men in a Boat
The Wizard of Earthsea
Little prince
Vampire lestat
Parable of the talents
2. The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
catch-22
good omens
lotr trilogy
all the president's men
the phantom tollbooth
roll of thunder, hear my cry
a tree grows in brooklyn
100 years of solitude
native son
the unbearable lightness of being
The books meaning could not be captured on film because it really dealt with the text as text. Borges and Garcia Marquez were also masters of this in their ways
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound."
And Last Temptation of Christ.
Read both at 17. My question was about good and evil. Both books answered with “you have free will to be whatever you choose”.
Game of Thrones
Shadows of the Empire
Harry Potter
Much broader in my adult years, but you can see the groundwork laid for independent, strong women.
I love visiting old friends.
— C.S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932)
Diary of a Young Girl
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
The Once and Future King
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Dune
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
3. Running in the Family - Ondaatje
4. Midnight’s Children - Rushdie
5. The Fire Next Time - Baldwin
“Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.”
After a lifetime of readership, leadership, research, and experiences, IMO, not the country of yore.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Hailey & Malcolm X
The Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler
Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf - Ntozake Shange
Shannara
Tolkien
These are the series/authors that have an entire bookshelf dedicated to them in my house. There's something about this brand of fantasy that saved my life as a kid from a rough family. They taught me that a good meal, a good friend, and a purpose are all we need in life.
For me it was a life changer that I read every year or two. Main thing I takeaway from it is that we are not born to die. We are born to experience things (both good and bad) and to do that fully, we have to empty ourselves of our self.
of my all time favs!
The idiot by Dostoyevsky
Normance by Celine
Howl by Ginsberg
Divine comedy by Dante
Ask the dust by Fante
Desert solitaire by Abbey
Ham on rye by Bukowski
Siddharth by Hesse
The heart sutra
The Winter's Tale
Riddley Walker
Virtual Light
Incredibly beautiful.
The Famous Five, Blyton
The Three Investigators, Arthur
Narnia, Lewis
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
Dune, Herbert
Birdie, Wharton
Everything by Marilynne Robinson and Ursula K. Le Guin, especially Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.
Comfort read: HP. Always
Lord of the Rings
The Magus
Magister Ludi
Devil In a Blue Dress
The Foundation Trilogy
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
On the Road
The Neon Rain
The Red Tent
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Okay, so who am I?
I wish I could right the unintended wrongs of others and fade away.
The Dice Man
There's something wildly freeing about the idea of letting random chance decide for you.
Daft Wee Stories
Weirdly, this book helped me through my darkest moments.
Garcias marquez - cien años de soledad
Paul Auster - book of illusions
Jared diamond - germs, guns & steel
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
2. City by Clifford D. Simak
3. Any Heinlein book I could get my hands on
4. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
5. The bible, but negatively (it started me on a lifelong journey as an atheist) as it disgusted me
The poetry of Sappho
Paradise by Toni Morrison
Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
Hood by Emma Donoghue
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Crime and Punishment
The Stranger by Camus
As I Lay Dying by Faulkner
Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
Angela’s ashes made me laugh and cry. I’m child #9 out of 12, raised in poverty by our single mother. The book resonated with me on so many levels.
“To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I’ve only found sorrow”.
I think about this all of the time.
-Autobiography of Malcolm X
-In Xanadu, William Dalrymple
-Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
-Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Marilyn McCord Adams
-1491, Charles C Mann
-Four Lost Cities, Annalee Newlitz
-The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye
Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Famished Road, Ben Okri
2. War and Peace, Tolstoy
3. The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan
4. Crashed, Adam Tooze
5. Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy
Winds of War
Cryptonomicon
O Pioneers
Sapiens
Here's mine:
Harper Lee "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Two from Steinbeck--"Grapes of Wrath" and
"Tortilla Flat"
Two from William Kennedy's Albany cycle --"Ironweed" and "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game"
John Irving "A Prayer for Owen Meany"
Frankenstein
Geek Love
Gulliver’s Travels
All Quiet on the Western Front
Dharma Bums
The Blind Assassin
Essays and Letters—Emerson
Passing
Hangsaman
The Brothers Karamazov
Of Mice and Men
Animal Farm
The Prince
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World
My Family and Other Animals
Very Good Jeeves
The Descent of Woman
.
.
.
Both Wodehouse and Buckeridge are on Stephen Fry's list of influential writers!
Just…don’t look too deep into Orson Scott Card. His books are better than he is.
Remarkable, but startlingly true. I loved that series. Lots of quotable passages.
Ender’s Game
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind
For the universe at large I’ll link this as well as thoughts from the author https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(novel_series)
What's very striking is the paucity of books from the major religions. Do you think people are self-censoring?
The Accidental Tourist
Everything by Ann Tyler.
A Stranger in a Strange Land
Plato’s Republic
Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Federalist Papers
All of Clavell, le Carre, Vonnegut
Fields of Fire, Webb
Great Expectations
King Lear
Those are core.
The Grapes of Wrath
The Stand
Heart of Darkness
The Scarlett Letter
Flowers in the Attic
Ivanhoe
To Kill a Mockingbird
Sanctuary
The Light in August
Ender’s Game
Angela’s Ashes
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
By: Ian Serraillier
Read it when I was 8yrs old. I wasn’t normal.
Lord of the Rings
To Kill a Mockingbird
Graveyard Shift
How's that for all over the place.
“In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts” about addiction
“Unmasking Autism” about the different scents of flowers.. nah just kidding, it’s about autism of course 😂
Brave New World & 1984
Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Jay Ogilvy: Many Dimensional Man
Anthony Wilden: System and Structure
A Christmas Carol
Anything and everything by @alfiekohn.bsky.social
The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Handmaids Tale
Rebecca
Pride and Prejudice
1984
Madame Bovary
Jane Eyre
The Year of Magical Thinking
Catcher in the Rye
One flew over the cuckoos nest
Grapes of wrath
East of Eden
Any book by Elizabeth Gaskell
of the author's writing..fiction or non fiction.
It will reflect.
I check 5-6 new books from the library every week because she is always demanding to be read to and every book has to be read 10x.
She loves stories about snuggly critters and Mama and Baby. 🥰
Surprisingly delightful to see her hate a character for the first time. 😂
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
Catch 22.
War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle
The Darwath Trilogy - Barbara Hambly
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Hobbit - J.R.R.Tolkein
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
The MurderBot Diaries - Martha Wells
Slaughterhouse Five
Moby Dick
Middlemarch
The Left Hand of Darkness
Frankenstein
I feel I should warn you that though the book is laugh out loud funny, it’s a tragicomedy. I won’t spoil it for you anymore than that.
People were staring. I have given that book to so many people!
most think it's sci-fi & miss the elements of human existence in it- it's a remarkable work.
Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov
Reunion by Fred Uhlman
Martin Eden by Jack London
A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
Avicenna or the Road to Ispahan by Gilbert Sinoué
The Stranger (or The Outsider) by Albert Camus
...
Things Fall Apart
A Wrinkle in Time
'Salem's Lot (in my freezer 15 years before Joey Tribbiani read The Shining)
Stories by Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Ray Bradbury, & Flannery O'Connor made me an English major
Currently hooked on Roxane Gay's essays & anything by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
the souls of black folk.
the sun also rises.
the great gatsby.
i probably read john christopher’s tripods trilogy 3-4 times when i was younger.
Everything on your list is big for me
But the only book I've read three times is A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. If I'm ever on Desert Island Discs that's the book.