Books You Should Read
There have been many articles written on the essential books you should read during your lifetime. They are generally compiled of more than ten extraordinary books. But I think if you read these mind blowing examples, your mind would instantly become hungry for more. Because a great book gets under your skin and it somehow itches you to read it, a great book represents a challenge for your whole being. It is something different to open your mind, entice your spirit and some of these books you will find that can even help bring about an emotional education. So let us see which are the first ten books you should start your independent education with.
1. Lord Of The Flies: From this list, William Golding’s classic is one of the books you should read more than once. You should read it once when you’re a kid or a teenager and then again when you become an adult. I imagine a child reading this story would get first excited and then really scared. The adult would see the symbolic value of the microscopic universe collapsing in what is one of the greatest simulations of civilized society.
2. The Picture Of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde’s only novel is an example in style, irony and which abounds in juicy ill-morality. The storyline is partially sci fi and partially gothic, the characters are wonderfully perverted and brilliant and the ending is one of the most memorable in the entire history of literature. Beat that.
3. The Naked Ape: In the list with books you should read there is this anthropological study which is as interesting and stimulating as a novel, only it is genuinely informative as well. The freshest aspect of it is the approach: it actual treats the human being as just another animal, an ape with no hair. It dissects our mating habits and our switch to intellectual preoccupations as curiosities our species brings to the table of the tropic food chain.
4. Camera Lucida, Reflections On Photography: Not everyone is interested in photography, but this book is not exactly a manual on the subject. It is the means by which its’ writer, Roland Barthes, manages to overcome the death of his dear mother. He tries to find her identity in the pictures he has of her, he tries to find the sentiments in her eyes. He does this to other people, strangers in artistic photos, but he keeps coming back to the same picture of his mother. And even though he puts many of the pictures discussed in the book to illustrate his point, he never shows the picture of his mother with all the emotion encapsulated on her face.
5. One Hundred Years Of Solitude: Garcia Marquez’s tremendous Columbian family saga has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and definitely qualifies as one of the books you should read. It subscribes to the genre of magical realism and just like all his other major works (Love in the Time of Cholera, Of Love and Other Demons, The General in His Labyrinth) it is breathtakingly beautiful. His writings have something very sensorial, as a reader you can touch, taste and smell everything he is describing and most of all you can feel the drama passed on from generation to generation until there is no one left.
6. The Gospel According To Jesus Christ: At number six on the list with the books you should read maybe it should have been the actual Bible instead of this. But nobody gets around to reading the Bible anymore as the language is pretentious and encoded and it horribly boring. This little blasphemy here is a jewel and also an exciting read. It presents Christ as a human who also made some mistakes and takes intertextual pleasures to a different level.
7. Pride And Prejudice: What Jane Austen teaches in one of the most popular romantic novels of all time is a lesson of propriety and restraint. She teaches it most eloquently and using much finesse, but what I find most fascinating is that, without her knowing it and without having this intention, Mr. Darcy and Mrs. Elizabeth Bennet have become romantic ideals for so many generations of readers around the world. Also, if you feel rather inclined to improve your manners, this is a perfect place to start.
8. The Trial: Kafka’s book is legendary for its’ use of the absurd. By the end of it, you will get so frustrated about not knowing what’s going on that you will be as caught by the bureaucratic authority as the main character is.
9. Atonement: You have probably seen the film which is esthetically pleasing, but never quite does the book complete justice. It is a demanding read, but it does offer you a great example of what a heartbreak literature can create when it is awfully confident of its talent and power of seduction.
10. Mrs. Dalloway: The last ingredient on this list is an exercise in stream of consciousness which obviously tries to recreate the actual functioning of a human mind. It is not logical, it does not offer a clear message or morale, but a stereogram of the mind seems to be much more powerful than either of those things.
This was a list of the most interesting books you should read. Obviously there are hundreds and thousands more. The main thing is to get started and keep reading and that is how you keep your mind open to new ideas.
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