The 10 books that everyone should read all depends on your definition of ‘well educated’.
Unread Books
The television show Two and a Half Men was largely trash. But it was clever, hilarious trash, and occasionally its cutting humor cut a little too close to truth. In one episode, ‘That Special Tug’, Alan has a breakdown in a bookstore over all of the books he has not read, and probably will never get around to reading.
Indeed, why doesn’t anyone speak Sumerian any more?
I mention this clip because when I was a kid, a news magazine polled various writers and other thinkers, and asked “What are the 10 books that everyone should read?” It made me feel like Alan. Giving us books we ‘should’ have read, but probably will never have the time to read, is just intellectual abuse. But still, if I ever have the time… I like the Jorge Luis Borges quote, “I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library.” It gives me something to shoot for.
Anyway, over the years I have thought about the question. Books are critical; so what are the 10 books everyone should read?
Various Lists of the 10 Books Everyone Should Read
I looked around the Internet for some ideas. Most of the lists I found are dominated by novels, and even more by recent novels. There is this list from The Independent, from Powells, and from Publishers Weekly. HuffPo has this list, but it only has one book beyond classical antiquity, and nothing more recent than Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I also found this clever word cloud, but overwhelmingly, the books are novels, and mostly from the past few decades (unfortunately, the click-through on the page to the larger image doesn’t work).
Books the Well-Educated Should Read
Previously I invited friends to contribute their suggestions of the books we should read in the comments, below, and on my facebook page. Feel free to weigh in with the books you think are important, below. But I would like to add to all of these my own suggestions of the 10 books everyone should read, particularly the books the well-educated should read.
Which calls into question the words ‘well-educated.’ What does that mean? What is the product? Our educational traditions say becoming ‘a well-rounded person’ is a major goal of education. What is the value of a ‘well-rounded person’?
Elitism vs Democracy
I argue that our traditional approaches to education are partly designed around exclusion. A ‘good education’ is designed to separate the narcissists in the upper classes from the rest of us. If we are ‘well-educated’, we should be able to quote Shakespeare and Homer so that others will recognize us as part of that elite, well-educated upper class.
In this approach knowledge becomes a static thing, a badge that marks your place in a hierarchy: the gentleman should know how to eat a pear with a knife and fork; he should wear bespoke suits; he should know how to ride, to fence, to play the lute, and to dance. And the proof that he is well-educated is that he matriculated from the finest schools, which should teach little of practical value.
In contrast, my thoughts are that education should produce citizens for the democracy, who must be life-long learners. And thinkers. And contributors. Education should not be a static thing, not a repository of books, subjects, and proficiencies, but a set of intellectual tools for analysis, synthesis, and innovation.
The 10 Books Everyone Should Read
14 AWARDS: The history of civilization is not at all what we were taught in school. Click image for more information.
Given that, I submit a very different list of the 10 books everyone should read. Please note that the last one should be the result of the first nine; it is really the one book that every educated reader should read.
- A book of major works of the dominant writer of one’s language (in English, Shakespeare).
- The dominant religious text of one’s culture (in the West, the Bible).
- An overview of world history.
- An introduction to statistics.
- Any intermediate book of musical études.
- Any book in a second language.
- An introduction to physics.
- An introduction to biology.
- An anthology of literature and poetry.
- Any book the reader has written.
For the last one, my latest is to the right. (Or, you could subscribe and get a free copy of my first book: see below.)
But this is the really important one: in a democracy, citizens should not only be consumers of information about social and governmental affairs, and all manner of intellectual work. We should all be analysts, and synthesizers of new ideas as well.
‘Old Books’ courtesy of Gellinger on Pixabay.
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1. The Bible
2. The Tao Te Ching
3. The Brothers Karamazov
4. The Color Purple
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Madame Bovary
7. Meditations
8. Moby Dick
9. The Origins of Totalitarianism
10. Brave New World
An interesting look at what we should read and why. With so much debate now on what constitutes the canon, this list allows each person to add a unique selection of books. I also found an interesting presentation at http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/canon_of_english_literature.htm
These are good ideas. I struggle over the value of a cannon all the time. To be able to converse, there needs to be a background of mutually understood ideas. But innovation cannot occur if there is an authority dictating what knowledge looks like. So each person has to be able to decide for herself what works are most important. At the same time, as the edges of knowledge become more frayed, and as the corpus of knowledge becomes too much for anyone to even grasp in summary, we each retreat into smaller specializations, each which requires its own cannon.
I cannot see an easy way to reconcile all of this.
Canon
1. A book of major works by the dominant writer of one’s language:
Perhaps, the Norton Anthology of American Literature? A collection of Mark Twain’s writings.
2. Dominant religious text of one’s culture: the Bible but perhaps one should include an annotated version. Or one in the modern idiom for clarity. King James is elegant, but at times, a bit round about.
3. An overview of world history:
One example would be the series that includes Bauer_ Susan Wise The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade and also this overview, Fernandez-Armesto,_Felipe-Millennium-A-History-of-the_Last-Thousand-Years.
4. An introduction to statistics: I need to work on this one, but suspect one of those Dummies Guide® might be a good starting place.
5. Any book of musical études: I actually learned more by spending years listening to the Beethoven Satellite Network when WRKF used to carry it and an afternoon classics show hosted by Lisa Richards of KRVS. Neither exists today. I learned quite a bit and researched composers — some not so well known — such as Jacob Van Eyck, composer of the massive Der Fluyten Lust–hof (The Flute’s Pleasure Garden, 1644) for soprano recorder, who was blind.
6. Any book in a second language: My Spanish is not quite up to this beyond children’s books. If it were, I’d read Don Quixote or Lazarillo de Tormes.
7. An intro to physics: Well the NY Times has that book by the Italian Carlo Rovella, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. One might read anything by Stephen Hawking. There is one out now on the NY Times bestseller list by the late Hawking.
8. An introduction to biology: Anything by Yuval Harari or Lance Grande. I took six hours of biology courses at LSU so think I might be okay here.
9. An anthology of literature and poetry: See any Norton anthology. Poetry is a bit complicated. I prefer the rhyming kind; yes, I know that is bizarre today.
10. Any book the reader has written: I am not sure I have understood this correctly. I wrote Across Two Novembers: A Year in the Life of a Blind Bibliophile and will soon have the abridgement out. It is Selections from Across Two Novembers: A Bibliographic Year. http://www.dldbooks.com/davidfaucheux/ It’s not amazing like Educated by T. Westover, but it’s my life lived here in Lafayette in mostly 2014.