100 Books to Read in a Lifetime (That Are Older Than 200 Years)

Veilleur_de_nuit: Parce que ce long poème dit les horreurs de la guerre et les douceurs de l'amour, et parce qu'il a façonné l'imaginaire occidental.

Mapguy314: Means I have it in my library, not necessarily that I have read it, although I have read some of them

-pilgrim- : There is another version on page 1 of list

lorax : Thumbing down just to counteract psdavid's proselytizing. I think parts are worth reading for basic cultural literacy, but nobody likes being preached at in a forum like this.

aulsmith : Again, parts of it. But the whole thing? Knowing some of it was done from unreliable manuscripts? Nah.

psdavid: A book in two parts, the old testament which is the new testament hidden and the new testament which is the old testament revealed. Every one of the 66 books (39 Old testament and 27 new testament) interlinks and joins with every other, written in original languages by 40+ authors spanning 2,000 years and many cultures. A book that attracts lively debate as to authenticity and yet every day sees more of its writings and dates confirmed by archaeological finds.

: Why not read one of the better translations, if you're going to read the whole wretched Bible in the first place?

aulsmith : Definitely parts of it, but the whole thing? Nah.

camainc : One only needs to read Augustine's City of God to know that Gibbon was so very wrong about the reasons for Rome's "decline and fall."

Turambar: Whether Gibbon was wrong or not is irrelevant to whether The Decline and Fall ought to be read. We don't read Herodotus because he was right. We read him because he helped shape how a civilization thought, as did Gibbon in his own, later way.

JacobKirckman: Gibbon's not 'on my list', as I have it (just not catalogued on LT yet)! Commenting purely to counter Camainc's claim that Gibbon was wrong. I'd take an historian (even an 18th century one) over a Bible-Basher any day...

: yawwwwwwn

Mapguy314: I read this many years ago.

aulsmith : Awful. Instead of an adventure story, I got a White Man triumphs over nature with a sermon.

Betelgeuse: Wonderful. A gripping adventure and morality tale. More than a shipwreck story, it is also about repentance and humility. Defoe's novel has several Biblical parallels, including Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, the parable of Jonah, and the sufferings of Job. Lessons can be learned from this book, if one overlooks Crusoe's anachronistic imperialism. But Robinson Crusoe is not a dour sermon. It is surprisingly fast-paced, and the first-person narrative gives it even more immediacy. Everyone knows the basics of the plot: the shocking discovery of the footprint, the appearance of Friday, the threat of cannibals, Crusoe's mastery of the island and its elements. There are also lesser known action sequences, such as the exciting wolfpack scene near the end of the book. A great early novel.

karenb: Squeaking by, barely (published 1812)

aulsmith : The whole thing??? Are you folks crazy? Why would anyone who isn't a Catholic even care? (ETA: some good rebuttal points, but still, in my opinion, not worth reading in it's entirety. I found a few samples a good lesson on the limits of formal logic.)

cemanuel: Ridiculing those you disagree with? Nice demonstration of maturity. This is probably the most important book written between about 420 and the end of the Middle Ages about the most influential social institution in Western Civilization. Anyone interested in the development of Christianity would learn a LOT from it. In fact, if you're interested in the topic it's probably more important for non-Catholics to read it. And yes, if you're going to tackle it, you should read it in its entirety. Personally I think everyone should care about how our society developed. But I won't make fun of you for disagreeing.

Betelgeuse: Not the whole thing. I own an abridged version that suffices.

cemanuel : Agreed. The purpose of this list is specifically for alternatives to Amazon's. Great book though.

: We need a little LESS war, please! Even though it's not old enough for this list, THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENCE by Gene Sharp should be on everyone's must-read list.

PietWester: Geschreven in 1759 en nog steeds een van de geestigste werken uit de wereldliteratuur.

: more Christianity?

aulsmith: Silverbooks is correct, but I found it engaging. Of course, I was only 12 and never reread it, so I'm not sure how it would come off now.

: mostly propaganda

Turambar: True, Franklin does a good deal of propagandizing, but the book is a sparkling example of Enlightenment Plain Style as well as being one of our earliest examples of American Exceptionalism and a sort of Pragmatism. It doesn't matter if you agree with his views or not; it's undeniably significant.

karenb : Taking Chretien de Troyes instead.

camainc : A better choice would be Idylls of the King by Tennyson.

: boring and more white dudes

Betelgeuse: Idylls of the King is too recent: published between 1859-1885.

: another white dude book and religion - bah

lorax : I really don't think everyone needs to read a book that's been called "the book nobody read" (see http://www.librarything.com/work/16335 ). I have a PhD in astronomy and even I never read this; it's important to know about it, and why it was important, but actually reading it? Reading the old, old primary sources isn't important in science the way it is in history.

aulsmith : His non-English writings add nothing remarkable to the corpus I already rejected.

karenb : Yeah, going with the actual original (Marlowe's).

: more glorification of war? nah

aulsmith : Dull, but important. Go for the Cliff Notes.

Betelgeuse: "He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself." A masterful defense against censorship, with the added benefit that it can be read in one sitting.

Betelgeuse: In his science book "Parallel Worlds," theoretical physicist Michio Kaku remarked that developments in quantum theory "forces one to reexamine the work of philosophers like Bishop Berkeley, who in the eighteenth century claimed that objects exist only because humans are there to observe them." Famously knocked by Samuel Johnson, there is nevertheless room in my Top 100 for both Berkeley and Boswell.

aulsmith : There are four editions of this work on this list. One is more than enough.

Veilleur_de_nuit: Parce que Burke a une vision lucide sur ce que va devenir la Révolution Française, en particulier dans ses dérives.

malmorrow: This is an English polemic of the Enlightenment. 'Reflections' is unsurpassed in this, and equalled only by pamphlets by Paine and Wollstonecraft. Burke set an extremely high standard for sustained rhetoric, providing a foundation for the classic speeches and political writing of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.