GMG's 100 Most Important Books Ever Written!

[MN Dave]

We can quibble later.

[karlhenning]

Yes, I know you've had a busy morning on the auction block ; )

[Keemun]

Does the Constitution of the United States constitute a book? A short story perhaps and if we want it, we would have to have Magna Carta.

Mike

The original is not in book form, but then the same can be said of several other "books" on the list.  But it is now available in book form, which qualifies it for the list.  IMO, the Magna Carta is also eligible for this list. 

[Opus106]

The original is not in book form, but then the same can be said of several other "books" on the list.  But it is now available in book form, which qualifies it for the list. 

The list of 100 Most Important Books Ever Published, perhaps?

[karlhenning]

The original is not in book form, but then the same can be said of several other "books" on the list.  But it is now available in book form, which qualifies it for the list.  IMO, the Magna Carta is also eligible for this list. 

Both Magna Carta and the US Constitution are portions of any annual almanac you can buy at your grocery store. (Just saying.)

[Keemun]

If Dave rules that the Constitution of the United States is not a book, I will select another.  Until then, I am sticking with my broad and literal interpretation of the original post. 

[CD]

I'm going to save this list once it's finished for later reference, FWIW.

[Sergeant Rock]

If Dave rules that the Constitution of the United States is not a book, I will select another.  Until then, I am sticking with my broad and literal interpretation of the original post. 

The Constitution is a document, not a book. In my very unhumble opinion, of course 

I haven't participated yet but I was going to choose Gravity's Rainbow...but I notice it's already there. Pale Fire is considered by many to be Nabokov's greatest novel but I think Lolita more closely fits the definition of "important books." Still, I won't choose it. One Nabokov is enough in a list of 100. Modern poetry has gone missing here. So, for my first, and probably last, choice: T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Other Poems.

Sarge

[karlhenning]

A document is what I 'umbly should have called it, likewise.

[Keemun]

The Constitution is a document, not a book. In my very unhumble opinion, of course 

The Bible and Federalist Papers are collections of separate documents, so I don't see how this is any different.  If the problem is that I have selected a single document, rather than a collection of documents, then I will change my selection to this:

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America - Thomas Jefferson, Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention



As you can see, I'm in an uncharacteristically argumentative mood today.  I will try to be on my best behavior now and stop arguing.  If my selection is ineligible, I will chose another. 

[Opus106]

Dave, please don't leave the tea boiling for a long time.

[MN Dave]

Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil
Ulysses
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Charles Darwin-On the Origin of Species
Dhammapada - Buddha
Elements (consider it as one book in thirteen volumes) - Euclid
The Bible
Everyone Poops - Taro Gomi
Prose Edda
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
The C Programming Language, Kerninghan and Ritchie (1978)
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - War and Peace
Dostoevsky 'Crime and Punishment'
Simon Vestdijk, De kellner en de levenden
The Rights of Man:  Thomas Paine
Immanuel Kant "Critique of Pure Reason"
James Buchanan & Gordon Tullock - The Calculus of Consent
Viktor Shklovsky's Energy of Delusion
Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations
Niccolo Machiavelli - Il Principe
The Communist Manifesto; Marx/Engels
David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature
The GULAG Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn
The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis
Dostoevsky The Idiot
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Mary Wollstonecraft)
The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Principia - Isaac Newton
Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo (Galileo Galilei)
De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Andreas Vesalius)
PG Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning
Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective
Zola, Germinal
Shakespeare's Collected works
Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
"The Master and Margarita", Mikhael Bulgakov
John Ruskin: Modern Painters
The Rupert Bear Annual
Aristotle, Opera Omnia
Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Albert Einstein, Collected Works
Boswell Life of Johnson
Euripides The Bacchae
Hegel The Phenomenology of Spirit
Thomas Mann Magic Mountain
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
Edward R. Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
John James Audubon: Birds of America
Divine Comedy - Dante
collected Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Franz Kafka The Trial
Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo
Suetonius: The 12 Caesars
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Nabokov's Pale Fire
To Kill A Mockingbird-Harper Lee
All Creatures Great and Small- James Herriot
Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Clock without Hands.  Carson McCullers.
William Blake Jerusalem (original illuminated version, not just the text)
Samuel Beckett: Collected Works
Sigmund Freud: Collected Works
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Goethe - Faust
Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-Roald Dahl
Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
Koran
Mahābhārata
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes
Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys
THE DICTIONARY
The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
St Exupery's 'The Little Prince'
'Great Expectations' by Dickens
Constitution of the United States
Thomas à Kempis - The Imitation of Christ
A Night to Remember - Walter Lord
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
Elias Canetti - Auto-da-Fé
Marcel Proust - À la recherche de temps perdu
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Other Poems
(91)

[MN Dave]

If Dave rules that the Constitution of the United States is not a book, I will select another.  Until then, I am sticking with my broad and literal interpretation of the original post. 

I left it pretty loose so you can keep it.

[MN Dave]

I'm going to save this list once it's finished for later reference, FWIW.

Me too. 

[Sergeant Rock]

The Bible and Federalist Papers are collections of separate documents, so I don't see how this is any different.  If the problem is that I have selected a single document, rather than a collection of documents, then I will change my selection to this:

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America - Thomas Jefferson, Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention



As you can see, I'm in an uncharacteristically argumentative mood today.  I will try to be on my best behavior now and stop arguing.  If my selection is ineligible, I will chose another. 

The Constitution is a document, not a book.

("Never argue; repeat your assertion." --R. Owen)



Sarge

[MN Dave]

So, for my first, and probably last, choice: T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Other Poems.

Why last? You get three.

[karlhenning]

("Never argue; repeat your assertion." --R. Owen)

Hah!

[Sergeant Rock]

Why last? You get three.

I tend not to read "important" books. Great books (imo), yes, but how important they are...well....  Let me think on it.

Sarge

[Franco]

The Bible
Shakespeare's Collected works
Divine Comedy - Dante

Looking over the list, these three seem to be the best choices - really the only choices, IMO.  I'd guess the majority of our ideas of wisdom, human nature, life, our reality, etc. the "Big Ideas" -  have come from one of these books.

[MN Dave]

Looking over the list, these three seem to be the best choices - really the only choices, IMO.  I'd guess the majority of our ideas of wisdom, human nature, life, our reality, etc. the "Big Ideas" -  have come from one of these books.

At least in the West.