Read the Books You Already Own
Aug 25th, 2008 by Carlos
I love to read. So naturally, I have tons of books and am constantly buying new ones. I’ve been good about staying frugal in my book buying recently — the last book I bought was a while ago and I paid $0.50 for it at a sidewalk sale. And I’ve also been using the library to check books out instead of buying them, but that has caused its own set of problems. Whenever I hear of a new/interesting book, I go to my library’s website and request it be sent to my local branch (a sweet new feature).
You do that a few times and now you have 4–5 books sitting at home and not enough time to read them. This happens a lot even though my bookshelves are papered with tons of books I’ve bought that I still have not read. When I saw this post the other day, I knew I should probably do the same thing. The idea is to not buy or check out any new books until I’ve read all the ones I already own and are sitting in the most convenient place of all: home. So what I wanted to do was get some feedback from people on which one they recommend I start my little adventure with. I know it’s a lot of books but this will get me motivated to actually pick a book and get started since, as you’ll see, there are a lot of books on the list.
- Blood Meridian
- Basque History of the World
- The Iliad
- The Odyssey
- Gravity’s Rainbow
- Moby Dick
- Atlas Shrugged
- The Idiot
- Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
- Everything and More
- Living with Our Genes
- Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
- Born That Way
- Genome
- Paris to the Moon
- Omnivore’s Dilemma
- Reading Lolita in Tehran
- Confessions of an Advertising Man
- A Writer’s Notebook
- Fabric of the Cosmos
- No Logo
- Nineteen Minutes
- The Complete Stories (Kafka)
- Hegemony or Survival
- Shadow Divers
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Dreams From My Father
As you can see, I have a fair bit of fiction, but there is also some other stuff mixed in. I went through a genetic/nature vs. nurture phase for a while and still haven’t gotten through all the books. A little bit of non-fiction too, though right now I’d like to read a great novel in the vein of Middlesex or Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. If any of the books listed struck that kind of a chord with you, please please please let me know so I can get started on crossing these books off my list and I can check new ones out again!
To check out what other kinds of books I like/have read, check out what I’ve read this year, my all-time favorites, and my recommendations.
Oh, the decisions! You have a great list, but if you’ve never read The Odyssey, I’d begin with that. It is the origin of all stories (my opinion) and it is so referenced – blatantly and subtley – in so many other books that it’s a must-read.
I envy your list. I need to do that with my own library and pick out books that I already have. The great thing about books is that they don’t go bad waiting for you to devour them.
I recently committed to this – one thing that helped me was literally dividing my bookshelves… everything that I hadn’t read had to be isolated on one so I can see the stack winnowing down.
If you’re looking for a big fiction piece where you can dive into a different world, I would read Atlas Shrugged. Not the most poetic book, but it’s just an entire universe.
Good luck!
I found Genome to be amazing.
My 2 cents.
I’d put Atlas Shrugged at the top of the list and Reading Lolita in Tehran at the bottom (I ditched it halfway through and can’t bear the idea of picking it up again. I’ve never not finished a book before.)
You might join the website Goodreads (reading social networking site)–my reading buddy just recommended it and we now know which books to borrow from each other. Although you can’t do that ’till you get through your list!
I absolutely loved Paris To The Moon. I haven’t gotten around to Omnivore’s Dilemma or Dreams From My Father yet but you might want to read those first simply because they are so topical — a lot of people I know have read one or both in the past 6 months.
Confessions of an Advertising Man sounds good. It’s on my wish list as well.
OK so I’m going to go with Atlas Shrugged. It’s going to take a really long time but I’m looking forward to it!