Read those?

[Liar]

Stumbled across a list. Not sure who the guy is, and it's still only one man's opinion, but it's an interresting bunch of titles anyway.

Have you read 'em? Are they what they're jazzed up to be?



-----------------

'100 Most Influential Books Ever Written'
by Martin Seymour-Smith

1. The I Ching
2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
4. The Upanishads
5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu
6. The Avesta
7. Analects, Confucius
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
11. History, Herodotus
12. The Republic, Plato
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria
18. The New Testament
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
26. The Koran
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

Seymour-Smith, Martin. 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1998. © 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith

 

[scheherazade_79]

I've read Orwell's 1984 - definitely all it's jazzed up to be. Gave up on the Old Testament, the Iliad and the Odyssey, The Divine Comedy and The Prince. Cheated at university by reading a children's version of Don Quixote, so that I knew the storyline - and still hated it.

None of the others really appeal. I read for pleasure, rather than moral enlightenment.

I'm surprised The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy isn't on the list. It's supposed to mark the transition into the age of the novel, and is an epic of around 600 pages. Somehow, though, the central character isn't born until about page 400. It was the one thing that was guaranteed to make me fall asleep, and it turned into such a habit that I never got beyond the fifth page.

 

[S-Des]

I've read a handful off of the list. It's a guaranteed fight-starter, but seems to be farily well thought out. I'm glad Dante's Inferno is on there (sort of). I absolutely loved that book.

 

[Goldie Munro]

These are mostly 'classic' philosophy books. I read some in philosophy class at college - they are great if you like that sort of thing! (I like Kafka and Camus!)

 

[Jubal_Harshaw]

All that religion and philosophy and he leaves out Musashi's Book of Five Rings? What about Sun Tzu's The Art of War?

Looks more like an attempt to impress someone than books he's actually read.

 

[pop_54]

Stumbled across a list. Not sure who the guy is, and it's still only one man's opinion, but it's an interresting bunch of titles anyway.

Have you read 'em? Are they what they're jazzed up to be?



-----------------

'100 Most Influential Books Ever Written'
by Martin Seymour-Smith

1. The I Ching
2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
4. The Upanishads
5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu
6. The Avesta
7. Analects, Confucius
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
11. History, Herodotus
12. The Republic, Plato
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria
18. The New Testament
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
26. The Koran
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

Seymour-Smith, Martin. 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1998. © 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith

Apart from bits of the Old and New testament's I never got much further than Famous Five

 

[oggbashan]

I've read about half of them.

As with almost every list of the "100 best/most" of anything I would disagree with the selection, delete some and add others.

When I was young I had a small book listing the 1000 books every educated English Gentleman should read. It assumed that Ladies would not be offended because they would read the same list...

After 50+ years of serious adult reading I think I have managed most of the 1000 (and about 50,000 more).

Og

 

[Liar]

The..

9. Works, Hippocrates

and

10. Works, Aristotle

...kind of feels like a cop-out. Or are they actual titles called "Works" that I don't know about. About half of what I've read of Aristotele seems to be deserving the priaise, while some is merely half thought through opinionated rebellion against the generation before him.



As always w a list like this there will be the "What about XXXXXXX?" reaction. (And ofcourse there will be good stuff left out. The Art of War, linr Jubal said. I mean, hey.) As well as the "This is just namedropping posing" reaction. Could be.

And influental to whom? Literary influence? Then add the Grimm folklore collection. As well as the Edda.

At least The Fountainhead is curiously missing.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Wow I read more than I realized I had... all or parts of the following...

This is a philosopher's list for the most part... I bet Joe's read most of these.


2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
12. The Republic, Plato
15. Aeneid, Virgil
18. The New Testament
28. The Kabbalah
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[drksideofthemoon]

I'm surprised the "The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank" by Erma Bombeck didn't make the cut...

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I've read some of them, by no means all. I'm rereading Meditations now, as it happens.

Maybe I missed it, but what is the list actually highlighting? The best books? The most influential? I suspect it is the latter.

Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (#55) for instance, would be today regarded as a terrible dictionary. Yet is was enormously influential as perhaps the first really modern dictionary. I can see it being included.

Chairman Mao's little red book (#99) was read (and sometimes memorized) by hundred of millions, maybe over a billion people. Influential as all get out, but short-lived. I doubt anybody still reads it.

As for those missing ones, I can see a few but there's little point in debate.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

As a list of influences on popular thought, it's probably a pretty good list. I'm not really into philosophy but I've read at least bits of a third or so.

1984 is a short novel and worth reading, and I'd recommend The Trial too, though there's no agreed order for some of the chapters, which only adds to the feeling of being trapped in an endless cycle. On Liberty is another good read. Candide is an annoying twit and the book simply disproves the notion that "everything happens for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds".

Many of the others you could just take away a few key concepts - Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Darwin, Freud.

Shakespeare is much better performed than merely read.

Decline & Fall is beautifully sarcastic, but at 63 volumes I doubt anyone this century has read an unredacted edition. It's pretty dense if you don't already know most of the characters.

Second Sex and Feminine Mystique are worthy for being groundbreaking feminism (ditto Wollstonecraft), but mainly historical interest now - along with most of the rest.

The Bible and Koran are obviously hugely influential but much doesn't qualify as literature. I find the bits that don't get read in church fascinating - what was Habbakuk on, for example? And how bonkers were the books that the Council of Nicea chucked out, if that made the cut?

 

[Paul_Chance]

I've read almost all of them - this is just a slight variation on the classic "Great Books of the Western World" series, with the addition of a few of the "Great Books of the Eastern World" to make a mash-up.

 

[Voboy]

No. I've read very few. And the ones I've read, I haven't liked.

Machiavelli excepted.

 

[Handley_Page]

You need to select the right translator for Homer, I think.
I'm surprised that the Mabinogion isn't listed.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

I'm genuinely shocked that  The Pillow Book and Journey to the East aren't on this list. While Most English speakers haven't read them they did set the standards for prose and plot structure respectively for Eastern literature

 

[XerXesXu]

Seriously grappled with 27 of them, and sampled a dozen more.

 

[TheRedChamber]

The real questions are:

1. Has anything else worth adding to the list been written since this thread was started 15 years ago.
2. Has Ogg gotten round to reading any of the other works.

Maybe I missed it, but what is the list actually highlighting? The best books? The most influential? I suspect it is the latter.

It says most influential books. The problem is this kind of list is pretty meaningless without any kind of explanation. He puts Kepler and Gallileo ahead of Newton - potentially interesting if their a justification for it. Similarly, he has the New Testament in eighteenth place whereas most people would have put it in the top five easily - there may be an intelligent point that Christianity could and was flurishing even before the gospels were written (and aren't they four different books anyway)

Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (#55) for instance, would be today regarded as a terrible dictionary.

Indeed. It doesn't even define the word 'sausage', or 'aardvark'.

The list does seem to assume that philosophy and religion are more influential than science and that literature is largely irrelevant. If you're allowed to lump everything Aristotle wrote together as 'Works', you could make a similar case for the amount of influence Dicken's had on British society and policy put him somewhere in at least the second half of the list (and maybe the same for some others - Hardy? Austin?)

I'm genuinely shocked that  The Pillow Book and Journey to the East aren't on this list. While Most English speakers haven't read them they did set the standards for prose and plot structure respectively for Eastern literature

Do you mean Journey to the West? (There's a Journey to the East by Herman Hesse, but that doesn't match what you're saying). That was the one I thought of as being obviously missing.
'

 

[Voboy]

It says most influential books. The problem is this kind of list is pretty meaningless without any kind of explanation. He puts Kepler and Gallileo ahead of Newton - potentially interesting if their a justification for it. Similarly, he has the New Testament in eighteenth place whereas most people would have put it in the top five easily - there may be an intelligent point that Christianity could and was flurishing even before the gospels were written (and aren't they four different books anyway)

I believe the list is chronological.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I believe the list is chronological.

Mind blown.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

The real questions are:

1. Has anything else worth adding to the list been written since this thread was started 15 years ago.
2. Has Ogg gotten round to reading any of the other works.


It says most influential books. The problem is this kind of list is pretty meaningless without any kind of explanation. He puts Kepler and Gallileo ahead of Newton - potentially interesting if their a justification for it. Similarly, he has the New Testament in eighteenth place whereas most people would have put it in the top five easily - there may be an intelligent point that Christianity could and was flurishing even before the gospels were written (and aren't they four different books anyway)


Indeed. It doesn't even define the word 'sausage', or 'aardvark'.

The list does seem to assume that philosophy and religion are more influential than science and that literature is largely irrelevant. If you're allowed to lump everything Aristotle wrote together as 'Works', you could make a similar case for the amount of influence Dicken's had on British society and policy put him somewhere in at least the second half of the list (and maybe the same for some others - Hardy? Austin?)


Do you mean Journey to the West? (There's a Journey to the East by Herman Hesse, but that doesn't match what you're saying). That was the one I thought of as being obviously missing.
'

I did mean Journey to the West. Whoopsies!