Most important books?

Elohim

Biko.

Fishooks12

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, invention of Gonzo journalism (do yourself a favour and read the book before watching the terribly flawed film)

In Cold Blood also very important IMO

livinsane

Probably not the most important books, but the best books I have read are:

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubard Selby Jr (same guy who wrote Requiem For A Dream - his life story is fairly miserable)

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - didnt read it for years because I was sh!t sick of my friends quoting it to me and always going on about it, but when I finally read it, I was grateful that I did.

The Human Stain - Philip Roth. Its is an encapsulating social commentary on the USA. He is an incredibly intelligent man.

The Stand - Stephen King. Shows off everything that is good about King and none of the negative traits.

Star of the Sea - Joseph O Connor. About famine times in Ireland/emmigration. Unbelievable book.

Honourable mentions are A Confederacy of Dunces and 1984.

Irish Guitarist

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties by Ian McDonald. It's one of the few books I've read about a band or artist that actually focuses more on music than on their personal lives (it does talk a little about their personal lives, but only to the extent that it impacted on their music). It goes into detail about who played what instrument on all their songs. I've never seen any other book list all the Indian musicians on The Inner Light for instance.

I think it's far more interesting than those books about Led Zeppelin where all the 'author' talks about is how many drugs John Bonham took and how many groupies he had sex with on their Swedish tour in 1973 or something.

J K

Five Go To Mystery Moor. Enid Blyton

MisterEpicurus

Chuck Stone wrote: »

The Greatest Show On Earth: Richard Dawkins

Danny The Champion of The World. Roald Dahl.

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Robert Fisk.

Mr Tickle. Roger Hargreaves.

The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Tim Pat Coogan.

Essential Chomsky. Chomsky & Arnove.

I second that.
Couple of others;
- Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
- Tale of Two Cities
- The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
- History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russel
- New History of Western Philosophy - Anthony Kenny
- The Greek Myths - Robert Graves

foxyboxer

The Richest Man in Babylon - George Clason.

Fundamental financial principles told in the manner of biblical fables.
It should be on the primary school cirriculum.

A part of all you earn is yours to keep.

--Kaiser--

Th Illiad and The Odyssey
The beginning of literature

I Heart Internet

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith has had more impact than most books

Adyx

witty username wrote: »

Definitely. Animal Farm too. And if you want a little more, try "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. You will sit and shake your head at the madness of it all.

Another one in a slightly similar vein is A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

livinsane wrote: »

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - didnt read it for years because I was sh!t sick of my friends quoting it to me and always going on about it, but when I finally read it, I was grateful that I did.

I have this somewhere and I tried to read it ages ago but I didn't get far. I hated the main character and writing style so much I had to stop. Same with Catcher in the Rye (although I finished that).

talkinyite

The Body Hunters: Testings New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients - Sonia Shah

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig'

Understanding Media - Marshall McLuhan

Fbjm

Harry potter.

I read the first one when I was seven, and it introduced me to a world of imagination through text on a page, and kindled my love of books.

Sidenote: while typing this post I suddenly realised why a kindle is called a kindle :pac:

Shhh

Oh yeah and what about Umberto Eco? He should get a mention.. Foucault's Pendulum and The island of the Day before..

Eramen

Republic - Plato

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures - Assorted

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima

"Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles." - Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow)

Raminahobbin

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

No Logo, by Naomi Klien. Along with others, it should be compulsory reading in schools to help avoid the sort of traps we the sheeple keep falling into.

Definitely second this one. It's a truly shocking book, and so easy to read that even people who don't normally enjoy reading can engage with it.

GAAman

To Kill a Mockingbird. A truly fantastic book, we were given it for the junior cert and I honestly had read it 14 times by the time the class as a whole were on chapter 6.

Flattery

Tonyandthewhale wrote: »

Are there any books out there that had a major impact on you or the way you see the world?

For me reading 'Consider the Lobster' by David Foster Wallace as incredibly important because Wallace has such a unique and focused approach to writing which is incredibly detailled but never verbose. He says exactly what he feels necessary, no more, no less. Consider the Lobster is probably the best example of this style of writing and although it's as much about Pornography, the Maine Lobster Festival and tennis as it is about the english language I learnt a lot about writing and communicating in general from reading it, probably more than I ever learnt through formal education.

Feel absolutely the same way about Wallace, though probably even more so about 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again', his other non-fiction collection. A stunning writer, with a really open-hearted and generous approach to writing, and a formidable intelligence, too, that I think in turn made me a more generous and understanding person for having read his books; a real sense of privilege to have had access to his thought and opinions and doubts et cetera. I just finished the transcripts of the interviews he did with Dave Lipsky, collated in 'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself' which I would highly recommend to you, OP. His death in 2008 was probably the only time I felt deeply personally affected at the death of someone I've never met.

MagicMarker

One of my favourite books is 'Homicide - A Year on the Killing Streets' by David Simon.

Simon was a journalist who spent a year shadowing the Homicide department of the Baltimore PD in 1988. This book went on to inspire tv shows 'Homicide - Life on the Street' and 'The Wire' (Simon was the creator of The Wire). I've never gotten so into a book tbh, I would read it all day and then dream about it at night. If you ever want to find out what it's really like being a homicide detective in a city with a stupidly high murder rate then read this book.

CuriousOne

Most important books?

Not my favourite, but, being male, the most important book I've read is the one I found, in my parents' room, by Nancy Friday, entitled, 'My Secret Garden' - changed my life.

So girls actually liked sex too!

later12

History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell.

It would be an exaggeration to say it changed my life, but it has frequently occupied my mind since I first read it eight years ago, and it is a reference that I love to return to again and again.

The book that changed my life was Stand Before Your God by Paul Watkins.

Jesus Wept

Chuck Stone wrote: »

The Greatest Show On Earth: Richard Dawkins

Danny The Champion of The World. Roald Dahl.

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Robert Fisk.

Mr Tickle. Roger Hargreaves.

The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Tim Pat Coogan.

Essential Chomsky. Chomsky & Arnove.

+1

J K wrote: »

Five Go To Mystery Moor. Enid Blyton

Had them on VHS yo.

Mackman

Another vote for 1984, fantastic book.

Ill have to put in Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Great book for anyone interested in science and how pretty much everything works, and how it was all discovered.

44leto

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica,,Newton

On the Origin of Species,, Darwin

Personally I tend to regard any Stephen Pinker book as important, he seems to tell all of human nature in a literary scientific way. So to select one of his I would pick "the blank state"

castletownman

The Tale of Scrotey McBuggerballs by Leopold Scotch

Led to the killing of the entire Kardashian family, so must be pretty influential.

Pherekydes

44leto wrote: »

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica,,Newton

On the Origin of Species,, Darwin

I have both of these books at home and I haven't gotten round to reading them yet.

Tami Hoag rocks, though.

Giselle

Mackman wrote: »

Another vote for 1984, fantastic book.

Ill have to put in Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Great book for anyone interested in science and how pretty much everything works, and how it was all discovered.

Another vote for both 1984 Bill Bryson here.

Adolus Huxley's Brave New World is one for me. Its very hard to believe it was written in 1931, exploring as it does many social and cultural themes that emerged many decades later. Visionary is an inadequate word to describe it.

phoenix0250

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

GAAman

MagicMarker wrote: »

One of my favourite books is 'Homicide - A Year on the Killing Streets' by David Simon.

Simon was a journalist who spent a year shadowing the Homicide department of the Baltimore PD in 1988. This book went on to inspire tv shows 'Homicide - Life on the Street' and 'The Wire' (Simon was the creator of The Wire). I've never gotten so into a book tbh, I would read it all day and then dream about it at night. If you ever want to find out what it's really like being a homicide detective in a city with a stupidly high murder rate then read this book.

I picked this book up because I loved the wire. I got on the bus (Derry to Dublin bus) and a woman sat beside me, nudges me in the side and says "Snap!" she was reading the same book

Great read too