50 or so of my favorites 


50 books that Id read again 

Roughly grouped by category, here's a list of stuff that would go in my permanent library, books I would happily read again.
A couple of notes -
I read the Spanish titles in Spanish, which was sometimes a struggle, and I don't know if I could do it again without considerable pain. I'd love to revisit the Valle-Inclan just to see if it could blow me away in translation.
Some technical books - I think that a well written technical book is such a rarity that they deserve special mention. The fact that Schneier sparked such an interest in me on the "difficult problems" of cryptography is a testament to his mad skills, as is the first chapter of Hartman's Fuel Injection book.
Yes, Winnie the Pooh is on there. It's a good book, contributed to my personal mythology,
Burke and Smith, but no Marx? I've read Marx, I've read Engels, but as far a writing style, Burke and Smith score higher, especially Burke.



Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann
Mad Love - Andre Breton
Don Quixote - M. Cervantes
Lazarillo de Tormes - Anonymous
Las Sonatas (Otono/Invierno/Primavera/Estio) - Ramon del Valle-Inclan
Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Independence Day - Richard Ford
JR - WIlliam Gaddis
Snow White - Donald Barthelme
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Underworld - Don DeLillo
The Knockout Artist - Harry Crews
Cartesian Sonata - William H. Gass
Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver
Legends of the Fall - Jim Harrison


The Holy Bible - the unfashionable Revised Standard Version
Collected Writings - Saint John of the Cross
Mere Christianity - C. S. Lewis
The Small Catechism with Explanation - Martin Luther

The History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucycidides
The Spanish Labyrinth - Gerald Bernan
A Bright Shining Lie - Neil Sheehan
Boyd - Robert Coram
Body of Secrets - James Bamford
The Good War - Studs Terkel

Fuel Injection: Installation, Performance Tuning, Modification - Jeff Hartman
A Twist of the Wrist - Keith Code
Applied Cryptography - Bruce Schneier

Paris Peasant - Louis Aragon
The Poet Assassinated - Guillaume Apollinaire
Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake


Bodas de Sangre - Frederico Garcia Lorca
Four Plays (The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs, Lysistrata) - Aristophanes
The Infernal Machine - Jean Cocteau

Thus Spake Zarathustra - F. Nietzsche
Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
Lipstick Traces - Greil Marcus
England's Dreaming - Jon Simon
Air Guitar - Dave Hickey
Country Music USA - Bill C. Malone
Portraits - Michael Kimmelman
The Most of S. J. Perleman

(Some second thoughts - Dispatches - Michael Herr; The Tosches Reader; Vietnam - Stanley Karnow)
 

Posted: Sat - August 6, 2005 at 02:11 PM           |

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