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As a well-educated adult...


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I would have to agree with a well-educated adult reading Shakespeare. He is well deserving of his reputation.

 

In addition to The Bard:

 

2. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

3. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4. The Republic - Plato

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (even though I, myself, prefer The Kingdom of God is Within You)

7. Utopia - Sir Thomas Moore

8. Beowulf - Author unknown

9. Paradise Lost by John Milton

10. Damien - Hermann Hesse

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Oh gosh... Well, obviously this is subjective, but here's my list, in no particular order. And I won't cheat and say "The Complete Works..." of anyone. ;) Also, they aren't all technically literature, but they are all books. :D

 

1. The Iliad

2. Shakespeare's Hamlet

3. Shakespeare's King Lear

4. Paradise Lost

5. Plato's Republic

6. A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking

7. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

8. Les Miserables

9. At least one work by Dickens, though I'm open-minded about which

10. The Lord of the Rings (Okay, technically three, so sue me.)

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what are the top 10 works of literature / books one should have read?

 

Can't pick only 10!

 

Shakespeare

Dickens

Hugo

Sartre

Camus

Steinbeck

Orwell

Vonnegut

Faulkner

Hemingway

Garcia Marquez

Kipling

Lewis, both Sinclair and C.S.

Hesse

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

 

These are some must read authors I can think of off the top of my head.

 

ETA: Can't forget Zola. Au Bonheur des dames was one of the best books I ever read.

Edited by thescrappyhomeschooler
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Can't pick only 10!

 

Shakespeare

Dickens

Hugo

Sartre

Camus

Steinbeck

Orwell

Vonnegut

Faulkner

Hemingway

Garcia Marquez

Kipling

Lewis, both Sinclair and C.S.

Hesse

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

 

These are some must read authors I can think of off the top of my head.

 

ETA: Can't forget Zola. Au Bonheur des dames was one of the best books I ever read.

 

I read about half of those. Some back in college some on my own. Now I have to take a look at "Au Bonheur des dames."

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I keep seeing Les Miserables on peoples lists. Back in high school we were assigned the abridged version, but I went and bought an unabridged anyways. I started it, but gave up and read the abridged. My mom read 1/4 or so of the unabridged and said it was the worst book she'd ever read, so I never tried it again.

 

Of course, I absolutely adore the musical and I still have my copy of the unabridged version...maybe I need to try it again.

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I keep seeing Les Miserables on peoples lists. Back in high school we were assigned the abridged version, but I went and bought an unabridged anyways. I started it, but gave up and read the abridged. My mom read 1/4 or so of the unabridged and said it was the worst book she'd ever read, so I never tried it again.

 

Of course, I absolutely adore the musical and I still have my copy of the unabridged version...maybe I need to try it again.

 

I have a Master's Degree in French Lit.

 

Two of my least favorite reads were Les Misérables and Madame Bovary. Gag.

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I have a degree in English, but I don't know that I am much more well-read than anyone else. That said, one of my college courses was all about Jane Austen. So, I'd have to include Pride and Prejudiced, Emma, or Persuasion on the list. I also think there should be some plays in there (aside from the fabulous Shakespeare, which is a given; :D). Another of my courses was "The Plays of Tennessee Williams". I highly recommend The Glass Menagerie. I also suggest some Hawthorne (I like Scarlet Letter myself).

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The list gets too long if you add World literature, so I stuck with English literature. I don't think I would consider anyone 'well read" unless they had read most of these authors and/or these books.

 

Shakespeare (I include Shakespeare because he is so important, but leave out all other important plays and playwrights as well as the poets like Milton so I could add another 10 to 20).

James Joyce's Ulysses

Faulkner's Sound and the Fury

Henry James A Portrait of a Lady

Fielding's Tom Jones

Austen (all would be my preference)

Bronte Wuthering Heights

Ford Maddox Ford The Good Soldier

George Eliot Middlemarch

Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse

D H Lawrence Sons and Lovers

J Conrad Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim

Some Dickens

Thomas Hardy probably Tess of the D'ubervilles

Thackerary's Vanity Fair

Some Trollope

EM Foster Passage to India

Edited by OrganicAnn
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I think there are two reasons to read classics: cultural literacy, and appreciation for the works themselves.

 

Some books are cannon because they are referenced so many places, and so to be considered an educated person who can really appreciate literary works, you need to have a working knowledge of the Bible, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen Cervantes, etc. The conventions and tropes that these authors created are all around you, though you may not realize it unless you're already familiar with them. I mean, you don't have to believe a word of it is true, but without a basic knowledge of the Bible, the past 1500 years of art, architecture, literature, and music won't make much sense. I'd say the Bible and Shakespeare are the two most important for this category.

 

Other books are more important to read for stylistic, moral, or issue-related reasons. Madame Bovary, Lolita, all those Russian writers, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, etc.

 

Of course, most authors in column A are also a little bit column B and vice versa. Many probably evenly split. I've just been thinking about this thread and about exactly what "well educated" means, and what the purpose of being well educated is.

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I keep seeing Les Miserables on peoples lists. Back in high school we were assigned the abridged version, but I went and bought an unabridged anyways. I started it, but gave up and read the abridged. My mom read 1/4 or so of the unabridged and said it was the worst book she'd ever read, so I never tried it again.

 

Of course, I absolutely adore the musical and I still have my copy of the unabridged version...maybe I need to try it again.

 

OK, I made a decision when I got my Kindle, that I would read "the classics". I started Les Mis about 2 weeks ago, and I really have to force myself to read it. So far, I don't like it. Enough about the Bishop already. I want to see the characters that I have heard about -- I really don't know much about the book, only some of the characters names. And I have never seen the musical.

 

I hope this gets better...

 

I am reading "Les Miserables" for the second time in ten years. I can't believe how much more I am enjoying it this time. My daughter plans to read it when I am done.

 

I hope to start enjoying this book! I am told it does get better, but boy am I slogging through the beginning.

 

And for the OP: most of the books that are showing up here on others' recommend list are ones that I've downloaded to my Kindle! So I suppose I am well on my way to becoming that "well educated adult"...

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I'd go with authors, rather than books:

 

Shakespeare

Dickens

Keats

Mark Twain

Milton

Conrad

Austen

George Orwell

 

I'd do three Shakespeares (a comedy, a tragedy and a history) and then at least one from each of the others (a selection of Keats). That's this morning's list - another morning would bring adjustments.

 

ETA: I would add in a knowledge of The Bible, Western myths (Greek/Roman/Norse) and some knowledge of world myth as it affects literature.

 

Laura

Edited by Laura Corin
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ETA: Can't forget Zola. Au Bonheur des dames was one of the best books I ever read.

 

In my first semester in college, I was introduced to Zola via Germinal. I was blown away. For a long time he was my favorite author and I read as many books of his as I could find.

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I am going to head into a different direction with my thoughts. I believe that being well educated means knowing you must continue to educate yourself, challenge your beliefs and broaden your world. I live to read books which end up on the Booker Prize list. The classics are a given, but we have to continue to read the new ones, too. Off the top of my head:

Dickens ~I loved Hard Times. I saw personalities which were timeless.

Hamid. ~ The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke

Chaucer ~Canterbury Tales is a must read.

Gladwell ~ I know it is trendy to be smug about his books, they're simplistic, but I feel that even if you don't like his work it is a cultural literacy issue to at least have read something he wrote. I like him and have learned a lot, personally.

Karen Armstrong ~same as above.

To Kill A Mockingbird is another in the cultural literacy category.

Orwell

Lord of the Flies.

CS Lewis

Hawthorne

Hemingway ~ at least one of his.

Tolkien

Any Rand ~ again, I don't thnk it matters how one feels about her ideas, it is important to at least have a working knowledge of her work.

 

Okay, that is more than 10. I will have to think about it.

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Can't pick only 10!

 

Shakespeare

Dickens

Hugo

Sartre

Camus

Steinbeck

Orwell

Vonnegut

Faulkner

Hemingway

Garcia Marquez

Kipling

Lewis, both Sinclair and C.S.

Hesse

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

 

These are some must read authors I can think of off the top of my head.

 

ETA: Can't forget Zola. Au Bonheur des dames was one of the best books I ever read.

 

I knew I liked you! Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo is one of my must reads. (Though I can understand people not liking it.) I've heard Garcia Marquez can recite the whole book from memory.

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These lists always get me because many of the things people list were some of the worst things I've ever read.

 

I'm always amazed at how many say you have to read Austen to be considered well read. I guess I'll never be well read then because I've tried more than a dozen times to read her works, any of them, and every time I'm bored out of my mind and can't make it past 50 pages. :ack2:

 

In high school I took AP english lit and had to read shakespeare, which was ok, part of the Canterbury tales which was good. We also read The Great Gastby which I liked, Jude the Obscure which I didn't (although I also had to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles because Hardy was my assigned author for our 20pg research paper and I found the stories to be to similar, so similar the I got an A on the paper/project and never made it past the first 50 pages of Tess) I remember really liking The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Glass Menagerie.

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You are not alone in that thinking.

 

What I find a lot of times with very old literature is that while I can read it and understand the vocabulary, the wordiness and way of speaking in it is so freaking labored that I have a hard time getting past it. It's very irritating to me. I know, some will tell me I'm bad/lame/common/lacking in something, but I'm just being honest. :tongue_smilie::D

 

Some I've read I really did enjoy though. The Great Gatsby is my all time least favorite one though.

 

The Last of the Mohicans. Can't read it because it is similar to taking Ambien. (without all that peeing in the closet and talking out of my mind, of course.):lol:

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I keep seeing Les Miserables on peoples lists. Back in high school we were assigned the abridged version, but I went and bought an unabridged anyways. I started it, but gave up and read the abridged. My mom read 1/4 or so of the unabridged and said it was the worst book she'd ever read, so I never tried it again.

 

Of course, I absolutely adore the musical and I still have my copy of the unabridged version...maybe I need to try it again.

 

Le Miserables was a chore for me too. I finished it (3 years ago) because I had heard so much about it. I found the story interesting, but the history stuff so laborious. Not being a French person, the history was tedious to get through. I did finish it, but I think you'll be okay if you never read the unabridged version. ;)

As someone once told me, there are so many good books out there, so if you're not enjoying a book, move on.

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Interesting. I'm guessing this thread would look a lot different if a lot of well-read men were posting on it.

 

I loved Pride and Prejudice and the Bronte sisters, but to me, those are just fun reads. I don't see them shaping a character. I wouldn't list them in the top 10.

 

Not sure how to list exactly the top 10, but I would include all the major religions' main holy books for starters. That would take up about half of the list, depending on how you view the religions. I would include Shakespeare (I'll cheat and say Shakespeare's greatest works). And Dickens. That hardly leaves any room for all the kajillion other ones, so I'm not even going to try to narrow it down.

 

I have read quite a few from the lists above, but I've never really considered myself "well-read." To be honest, I don't remember some of the stories/main points of the ones I did read. I hope that whatever was worthwhile in there stuck with me somehow.

 

ETA: bonus points if you read all the books in their original languages. :)

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Can't pick only 10!

 

Shakespeare

Dickens

Hugo

Sartre

Camus

Steinbeck

Orwell

Vonnegut

Faulkner

Hemingway

Garcia Marquez

Kipling

Lewis, both Sinclair and C.S.

Hesse

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

 

These are some must read authors I can think of off the top of my head.

 

ETA: Can't forget Zola. Au Bonheur des dames was one of the best books I ever read.

 

:iagree: That would be about my list.

 

I might add Sigrid Unset, and Manzoni's The Betrothed.

 

And, if Esther were here, she would add in Melville's Moby Dick. :D

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This is not an easy question to answer. I agree with many who said some of the selections are just blech to me, even though I have read them. Really 10 books is too few to be well educated. :-)

 

What I would choose:

 

To be a well educated America you must have read something by

Twain

Steinbeck

Hemingway

Poe

 

To be a well educated speaker of English you must have read

Shakespeare

Dickens

Austen

Orwell

The Bible

 

 

To have a well rounded western education you need to include

Hugo

Tolstoy

Dumas

Dante

Plato

Homer

Herodotus

 

 

There are more but these are the ones I wouldn't do without. I can't stick with ten.

Edited by Onceuponatime
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Interesting. I'm guessing this thread would look a lot different if a lot of well-read men were posting on it.

 

I loved Pride and Prejudice and the Bronte sisters, but to me, those are just fun reads. I don't see them shaping a character. I wouldn't list them in the top 10.

 

Not sure how to list exactly the top 10, but I would include all the major religions' main holy books for starters. That would take up about half of the list, depending on how you view the religions. I would include Shakespeare (I'll cheat and say Shakespeare's greatest works). And Dickens. That hardly leaves any room for all the kajillion other ones, so I'm not even going to try to narrow it down.

 

I have read quite a few from the lists above, but I've never really considered myself "well-read." To be honest, I don't remember some of the stories/main points of the ones I did read. I hope that whatever was worthwhile in there stuck with me somehow.

 

ETA: bonus points if you read all the books in their original languages. :)

 

Love, love, love the thought of putting all the different holy books on there. I took a comparative religion course in college and it helped but didn't exactly give me what I probably need to know to understand the people around me. Awesome idea.

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These lists always get me because many of the things people list were some of the worst things I've ever read.

 

I'm always amazed at how many say you have to read Austen to be considered well read. I guess I'll never be well read then because I've tried more than a dozen times to read her works, any of them, and every time I'm bored out of my mind and can't make it past 50 pages. :ack2:

 

 

I think the same thing whenever I see Wuthering Heights come up on any must read list. I thought that was the stupidest book ever. I Do Not get the appeal.

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These lists always get me because many of the things people list were some of the worst things I've ever read.

 

I'm always amazed at how many say you have to read Austen to be considered well read.

 

The opening line in P&P is one of the best first lines ever. Romance writers are forever trying to best it. ;)

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

 

Cheeky, ironic, smart. Can't get any better than that. You can almost see the wink in her eye as you read it.

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Love, love, love the thought of putting all the different holy books on there. I took a comparative religion course in college and it helped but didn't exactly give me what I probably need to know to understand the people around me. Awesome idea.

 

The problem with a comparative religion class or book is that it's taught/written by one person with one world view. At some point I got tired of hearing what everyone wanted me to think about, for example, whether Islam teaches people to kill all "infidels," or whether or not Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. So I read the Holy Books - over and over - and tried to learn the languages in which they are written - though having kids temporarily put a stop to that. It is so helpful to have a more objective context for viewing world history, current events, and a lot of what is found in the other "great books."

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I think, sometimes, our feelings on these books is because we ourselves have not become accustomed to the harder language and more difficult ideas.

 

It is one of the things that I see overcome in homeschooling my children.

 

:iagree: When I was in college, in my 5000-level Shakespeare course we were required to do all of our reading from first folio facsimiles. No footnotes, no modernization, all those wacky interchanged letters. The first few weeks, I really did think my brain was going to explode. Once I acclimated, however, it became easy. If someone is used to reading, say, Nicholas Sparks and decides one day to pick up Moby Dick, there will be a fairly longish period of acclimation.

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Interesting. I'm guessing this thread would look a lot different if a lot of well-read men were posting on it.

 

I loved Pride and Prejudice and the Bronte sisters, but to me, those are just fun reads. I don't see them shaping a character. I wouldn't list them in the top 10.

 

Not sure how to list exactly the top 10, but I would include all the major religions' main holy books for starters. That would take up about half of the list, depending on how you view the religions. I would include Shakespeare (I'll cheat and say Shakespeare's greatest works). And Dickens. That hardly leaves any room for all the kajillion other ones, so I'm not even going to try to narrow it down.

 

I have read quite a few from the lists above, but I've never really considered myself "well-read." To be honest, I don't remember some of the stories/main points of the ones I did read. I hope that whatever was worthwhile in there stuck with me somehow.

 

ETA: bonus points if you read all the books in their original languages. :)

 

It all depends on what you're looking for in a list. If you want to read the books that have had a hand in shaping our literary culture, something like P&P is quite important. If you want to learn about the history of religion, different religious texts would be vital. If you want to figure out how great ideas are born, study ancient philosophy. Having studied literature in college, I tend to skew toward literature. :001_smile:

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These lists always get me because many of the things people list were some of the worst things I've ever read.

 

I'm always amazed at how many say you have to read Austen to be considered well read. I guess I'll never be well read then because I've tried more than a dozen times to read her works, any of them, and every time I'm bored out of my mind and can't make it past 50 pages. :ack2:

 

In high school I took AP english lit and had to read shakespeare, which was ok, part of the Canterbury tales which was good. We also read The Great Gastby which I liked, Jude the Obscure which I didn't (although I also had to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles because Hardy was my assigned author for our 20pg research paper and I found the stories to be to similar, so similar the I got an A on the paper/project and never made it past the first 50 pages of Tess) I remember really liking The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Glass Menagerie.

 

Agreeing. I recently forced myself to read Jane Eyre. To me it was basically chick-lit. Chick-lit can be fine once in a while for fun, but I'd hardly say it is necessary to be well-read. And Shakespeare is okay. I make sure my kids read at least one or two so they know what he's about, but it's a nuisance to read him.

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I remember really liking The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Glass Menagerie.

 

I loved pretty much all of Tennessee Williams!

 

But I continue to be amazed that The Awakening is required or even recommended reading anywhere. I hope not to burden my children with it, particularly my son. Chick-lit at its worst. Obviously just my opinion. ;)

 

The Last of the Mohicans. Can't read it because it is similar to taking Ambien. (without all that peeing in the closet and talking out of my mind, of course.):lol:

 

My husband told me that he read somewhere that no one knows anymore why it is considered a classic. We had two copies of it and I always meant to get to it. I'd read parts in school and what a snoozer! We'll just watch the movie. If I recall correctly, The Deerslayer is considered a much better book (by whom? Dunno). But I could be wrong.

 

I think the same thing whenever I see Wuthering Heights come up on any must read list. I thought that was the stupidest book ever. I Do Not get the appeal.

 

Romantic potboiler. Ugh.

 

I do like Jane Austen though. She is a step above chick-lit to me and I look forward to reading her books with my daughter. We have watched several of the film adaptations to give her a taste. I don't expect to have my son read them, not sure about that yet. This is terrible of me but when I hear of a man saying he loves Jane Austen's books... I wonder if he is just trying to show what a sensitive guy he is to get a date.

Edited by marbel
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It all depends on what you're looking for in a list. If you want to read the books that have had a hand in shaping our literary culture, something like P&P is quite important. If you want to learn about the history of religion, different religious texts would be vital. If you want to figure out how great ideas are born, study ancient philosophy. Having studied literature in college, I tend to skew toward literature. :001_smile:

 

I was focusing on "well-educated adult," which to me means an adult who has a mature, authentic context for everything he might encounter in life. Definitely an unachieveable ideal, but to me, it includes being able to process things related to / springing from religion, since religion is such an integral part of modern life and history, including language and literature. Though I put a high priority on this, I don't think it's the "only thing." Had the OP asked for a list of 50 essential books, I still would have started with the holy books, but they wouldn't have skewed my list so much. :001_smile: I don't think you can be a "well educated adult" if you stop at 10 books (not that that's what the OP was saying).

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LOL!

 

Right now we are reading Swiss Family Robinson. My 10 year old is really enjoying it. I'm doing it as a read a loud. But geesh sometimes the way they talk I feel like "just get to what you want to say already!" It's so corny.

 

I used to put Swiss Family Robinson as one of my all time favorites, remembering it from reading it over and OVER as a kid.

 

I read it again recently? And ugh. I don't really like it anymore...

 

Last of the Mohicans is another book I loved as a kid that does not hold up to rereading.

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