Despite my interest professional and personal in all things digital I get asked now and then to cite the books that have most influenced me. The answer to this question is highly personal. It does not generate a list of the “best” books of all time the pillars of the “Western Canon” or the “Booker of Bookers.” In fact it may not even represent the “best” books I have read but rather the books which changed me the most or made me more “me” – whatever that means in a deterministic universe.
It is in this spirit that I offer an idiosyncratic list of the most important books to me:
Balzac Pere Goriot
Calabresi Tragic Choices
Camus The Plague
Christensen The Innovator’s Dilemma
Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Helpern A Soldier of the Great War
Hofstader Godel Escher Bach
Jenkins Churchill
Kurzweil The Singularity is Near
Kennan Sketches from a Life
Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Lampedusa The Leopard
Lightman Einstein’s Dreams
Mafouz The Cairo Trilogy
Mann Buddenbrooks
Marquez 100 Years of Solitude
Milosz Selected Poems
Plato The Republic
Rawls A Theory of Justice
Roth The Human Stain
Rushdie Midnight’s Children
Sagan Avec Mon Meilleur Souvenir
Saramago Blindness
Whitman Leaves of Grass
I have stopped at 25 but I could easily go on. I would never recommend that anyone actually read all of these books which I have read over many years. They are important to me because of a unique interaction between an accomplished author writing something for all time and the particular place both geographic and personal where I was when I read it. It has always seemed to me that what makes a book or author truly great is not that she tells me something new that I did not know before but rather that she tells me something I already knew deep inside myself but which I could never express as well.
I’ve only read a few of these titles but Garcia Marquez – 100 years of solitude is very high on my list of favourites too followed closely by Love in the Times of Cholera. As far as poetry goes I would highly recommend Kahlil Gibran’s Tear and a Smile – have you read it?
I have read The Prophet by Gibran but not Tear and a Smile. I will now look for it. Thanks for the tip.
Tom To start I just joined the blog. For the record I am an attorney in NYC and not associated with Thomson Reuters. I found the blog to be enjoyable and will likely be reading it regularly (or as long as I can find the time away from billables). This list has a nice variety from history and war to philosophical works. I very much like A Theory of Justice. Personally I like stories placed within an historical context thus Le P̬re Goriot was enjoyable as well. As far as your comment at the end of the blog about what makes an author truly great – I strongly concur with that notion. I have found that the books (or anything inspirational for that matter) that get me the most are those that I can relate to. I am either working towards getting there or I need to be reminded that I can indeed get there. Finally there are those things that need to be reviewed time to time. Thanks for the blog and I look forward to further additions. In the meantime I will make my way backward.
Tom To start I have just joined your blog. I am a scientist and I am not associated with Thomson Reuters altough I regularly use TR products. I enjoyed reading your blog and I noticed you like to read books by Saramago; May I suggest that you also read (if you haven’t already) ‘The Gospel according to Jesus Christ’ (also by Saramago) Bretton
Bravo to your list (for what I’ve read and also what I haven’t). If you liked Saramago I’d suggest Italo Calvino: first Mr. Palomar then If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller. Cheers –Sean
Just joined the blog. I’m a legal editor in Thomson Reuters Malaysia. We all love updates and comments which is 1 reason why facebook is so popular. And I for one like lists too. The prophet of Kahlil Gibran would be in my top ten so will be Steven King’s Shawshank Redemption Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda The Mahabharata…
For more than the usual ideas we can count on this post.
Thanks for sharing the books. I too love Saramago though I found “Blindness” too dark (no pun attended). I enjoyed his playfulness and insight in “All the Names” and “The Cave” even more. An author you might enjoy is Nikos Kazantzakis. He wrote “Zorba the Greek” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” as well as much more. And he in fact was second to Camus in the voting for the Nobel Prize the year Camus won it.
I think you might enjoy reading “God According to God” by Gerald L. Schroeder (an M.I.T. trained physicist presents a new paradigm for understanding the nature of God.) I hope you can again visit our Carrollton office – hopefully in the late fall or early winter instead of the 100 degree Summer heat as you initially did. The renovation since your last trip has given our office a very different look. Judie