So many book, so little time. What to read? What to read? If you know of a good book list, please add it. Will Durant ,a modern day philosopher lists down THE 100 books he thinks that one should read to be a well-read person.
The Hundred Best Books for an Education
You can find a lot of this for free online
1 John Arthur Thomson, The Outline of Science: A Plain Story Simply Told (4 vol.)
2 Logan Clendening, The Human Body
3 John Harvey Kellogg, The New Dietetics*, pp 1-531, 975-1011
4 William James, Principles of Psychology (2 vol.)
5 Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History*, ch. 1-14
6 William Graham Sumner, Folkways
7 James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1 vol. abridged)
8 James Henry Breasted and James Harvey Robinson, The Human Adventure
- (2 vol.), vol. 2 ch. 2-7
9 Brian Brown, The Wisdom of China
10 The Bible* (Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles of St. Paul)
11 Elie Faure, History of Art* (4 vol), vol. 1 ch. 1-3, vol. 2 ch. 1-3
12 Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science (5 vol.), vol. 1 ch. 1-4
13 J. B. Bury, History of Greece (2 vol.)
14 Herodotus, Histories (Everyman Library)
15 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Everyman Library)
16 Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men*, esp. Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Alexander
17 Gilbert Murray, Ancient Greek Literature
18 Homer, Iliad (trans. William Cullen Bryant), selections
19 Homer, Odyssey (trans. William Cullen Bryant), selections
20 Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (trans. Elizabeth Browning)
21 Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone (trans. Young, Everyman Library)
22 Euripides, all plays (trans. Gilbert Murray)
23 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers
24 Plato, Dialogues* (trans. Jowett), esp. “The Apology of Socrates”, Phaedo, and The Republic; sections 327-32, 336-77, 384-85, 392-426, 433-35, 481-83, 512-20, 572-95
25 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
26 Aristotle, Politics
27 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (trans. Munro, certain passages are admirably paraphrased in William Mallock, Lucretius on Life and Death)
28 Virgil, Aeneid (trans. William Morris), selections
29 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations* (Everyman Library)
30 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* (6 vol., Everyman Library), esp. ch. 1-4, 9-10, 14, 15-24, 26-28, 30-31, 35-36, 44, 71
31 Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat* (Fitzgerald paraphrase)
32 George Moore, Heloise and Abelard (2 vol.)
33 Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy (trans. Longfellow or Charles E. Norton)
34 Hippolyte Taine, History of English Literature*, book 1
35 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (Everyman Library), selections
36 Henry Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres
37 Cecil Gray, The History of Music, ch. 1-3, 5
38 John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (7 vol.) (Durant also suggests Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy)
39 Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (trans. Symonds)
40 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters and Sculptors (4 vol.), esp. Giotto, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michaelangelo
41 Harald Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy (2 vol.), sections on Bruno and Machiavelli
42 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
43 Preserved Smith, The Age of the Reformation
44 Emile Faguet, The Literature of France, sections on the sixteenth century
45 Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
46 Michel de Montaigne, Essays* (3 vol., Everyman Library), esp. “Of Coaches”, “Of the Incommodity of Greatness”, “Of Vanity”, and “Of Experience”
47 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
48 William Shakespeare, Plays*, esp. Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Henry IV, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon of Athens and The Tempest
49 Francois La Rochefoucauld, Reflections
50 Moliere, Plays, esp. Tartuffe, The Miser, The Misanthrope, The Bourgeois Gentleman, and The Feast of the Statue (Don Juan)
51 Francis Bacon, Essays* (Everyman Library)
52 John Milton, “Lycidias”, “L’Allegro”, “Il Penseroso”, Sonnets, “Areopagitica” and selections from Paradise Lost
53 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Everyman Library)
54 Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics and On the Improvement of the Understanding (Everyman Library)
55 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Portraits of the 18th Century
56 Francois Marie de Voltaire, Works (1 vol. ed.), esp. Candide, Zadig, and essays on “Toleration” and “History”
57 John-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
58 Taine, Origins of Contemporary France (6 vol.), vol. 1-4
59 Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution* (2 vol., Everyman Library)
60 James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson* (2 vol., Everyman Library)
61 Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (2 vol., Everyman Library)
62 Laurence Sterne, Tristam Shandy (Everyman Library)
63 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels* (Everyman Library)
64 David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (2 vol., Everyman Library) esp bks 2-3
65 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
66 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (2 vol., Everyman Library), selections
67 Emil Ludwig, Napoleon
68 George Brandes, Main Currents of 19th Century Literature (6 vol.)
69 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust*
70 Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe
71 Heinrich. Heine, Poems (trans. Loius Untermeyer)
72 John Keats, Poems*
73 Percy Bysse Shelley, Poems*
74 George Gordon Byron, Poems*
75 Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot
76 Gustave Flaubert, Works* (1 vol. ed.), esp. Madame Bovary and Salambo
77 Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
78 Anatole France, Penguin Isle
79 Alfred Tennyson, Poems
80 Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers
81 William Thackeray, Vanity Fair
82 Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children
83 Fyodor Dostoievski, The Brothers Karamozov
84 Leo Tolstoi, War and Peace
85 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
86 Charles Darwin, Descent of Man
87 William Buckle, Introduction to the History of Civilization in England, esp. pt 1 ch. 1-5, 15
88 Arthur Schopenhauer, Works (1 vol. ed.)
89 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
90 Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization* (2 vol.)
91 Edgar Allen Poe, Poems and Tales
92 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
93 Henry David Thoreau, Walden
94 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass*
95 Abraham Lincoln, Letters and Speeches
96 Romain Rolland, Jean Cristophe (2 vol.)
97 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex*, vol. 1-3, 6
98 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams*
99 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
100 Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West* (2 vol.)
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
— Gandalf, J.R.R. Tolkien
I’m Alright
Life Less Ordinary
