Amazing. I think we could all benefit from moving away from splashing in puddles of water when there are in fact oceans of real knowledge out there. Thanks for sharing!
This is awesome! I literally just picked up The Sun Also Rises today and was on my way to make a Note about it when I saw your post. I've written about the case for classic literature before, but I really don't think I stressed enough how much better the actual writing is compared to some of what becomes popular today. You really hit the nail on the head there for sure. Good luck moving through the list!
Thank you, Nik...for challenging us and empowering our minds to learn more. In no time you will be "that guy", the "Renaissance man" who knows a little bit about everything, and who is the most interesting conversationalist! You will always know just enough to be dangerous and be the most timeless soul around!! Congratulations on your very cool path!!!
Amazing. I think we could all benefit from moving away from splashing in puddles of water when there are in fact oceans of real knowledge out there. Thanks for sharing!
What a great analogy, I agree!
I learned most of what makes me me outside of school.
Fortunately, I love learning!
Do you have a text version of the book list? Or a higher resolution image?
This is the original top 100 list from Reddit:
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ulysses - James Joyce
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Holy Bible - Various Authors
Stoner - John Williams
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Iliad - Homer
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Odyssey - Homer
The Trial - Franz Kafka
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
1984 - George Orwell
Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
2666 - Roberto Bolaño
Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
Dubliners - James Joyce
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Paradise Lost - John Milton
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Dune - Frank Herbert
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Republic - Plato
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
V. - Thomas Pynchon
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
Confessions - Augustine of Hippo
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Waves - Virginia Woolf
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Das Kapital - Karl Marx
White Noise - Don DeLillo
Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo
Kokoro - Natsume Sōseki
Phenomenology of Spirit - G.W.F. Hegel
Storm of Steel - Ernst Jünger
The Tunnel - William H. Gass
JR - William Gaddis
Bhagavad Gita - Various Authors
Industrial Society and Its Future - Theodore Kaczynski
Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Elementary Particles - Michel Houellebecq
Thanks!
I love this. I'm going to order a few myself.
Way to go, thank you!
This is awesome! I literally just picked up The Sun Also Rises today and was on my way to make a Note about it when I saw your post. I've written about the case for classic literature before, but I really don't think I stressed enough how much better the actual writing is compared to some of what becomes popular today. You really hit the nail on the head there for sure. Good luck moving through the list!
Thank you! And great choice, I'm sure you'll enjoy it :)
Thank you, Nik...for challenging us and empowering our minds to learn more. In no time you will be "that guy", the "Renaissance man" who knows a little bit about everything, and who is the most interesting conversationalist! You will always know just enough to be dangerous and be the most timeless soul around!! Congratulations on your very cool path!!!
Haha, thank you! Renaissance man, I like it! 😎
I'm with you! And if you haven't already, you might like Ted and especially this particular post https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia/p/a-12-month-immersive-course-in-humanities?r=5894m&utm_medium=ios
Oh yes, I saw this in passing, will have to take a closer look, thanks!