Every academic department has a recommended reading list, I suppose. This list of books is not one of those. These books are those which I have read and
enjoyed most at some point during the last thirty-four years. They aren't all "Great Books"; some were read purely for fun. This list doesn't include a
large number of other books that might be considered "Great" because I didn't enjoy them as much as these, and this is my list. One other cautionary note: while I've read a number of these several
times, some I haven't looked at since I was young and foolish. It is doubtful that I would find them as entertaining now that I am old and foolish. But I'm
sure that a few of these would appeal to all who have a spark of curiosity somewhere inside. If by chance you read any of these, please take a moment to
email greybeardloon@netscape.netyour thoughts.
The Bhagavad Gita
I Ching
Richard Adams,
Watership Down
Jean M. Auel,
The Clan of the Cave Bear
Jean M. Auel,
The Valley of Horses
Jean M. Auel,
The Mammoth Hunters
Samuel Beckett,
Waiting for Godot
Marion Zimmer Bradley,
The Mists of Avalon
Kenneth Brower,
The Starship and the Canoe
Jerome Bruner,
On Knowing
Samuel Butler,
The Way of All Flesh
Fritjof Capra,
The Tao of Physics
Carlos Castaneda,
The Power of Silence
Carlos Castaneda,
A Separate Reality
Carlos Castaneda,
Journey to Ixtlan
Carlos Castaneda,
The Second Ring of Power
Carlos Castaneda,
The Eagle's Gift
Carlos Castaneda,
The Fire from Within
Carlos Castaneda,
Tales of Power
Carlos Castaneda,
The Teachings of Don Juan
Cervantes,
Don Quixote
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Biographia Literaria
Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness
Stephen Crane,
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets
Edward de Bono,
Lateral Thinking
Isaac Deutscher,
The Prophet Armed
Isaac Deutscher,
The Prophet Unarmed
Isaac Deutscher,
The Prophet Outcast
Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
Crime and Punishment
Conan Doyle,
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
T. S. Eliot,
Murder in the Cathedral
Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
Richard Ellman,
James Joyce
William Faulkner,
Go Down Moses
Gustav Flaubert,
Madame Bovary
James George Frazer,
The Golden Bough
Masanobu Fukuoka,
The One-Straw Revolution
Thomas Hardy,
Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy,
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy,
Jude the Obscure
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
The Scarlet Letter
Hermann Hesse,
Siddhartha
Eugene Ionesco,
The Bald Soprano
James Joyce,
Dubliners
James Joyce,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce,
Ulysses
Frank Kermode,
Romantic Image
Sheldon Kopp,
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him
Par Lagerkvist,
The Sibyl
Lao-tzu,
Tao Te Ching
D. H. Lawrence,
Women in Love
William Least Heat-Moon,
Blue Highways
Michail Lermontov,
A Hero of Our Time
Lawrence LeShan,
How to Meditate
Lawrence LeShan,
The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist
C.S. Lewis,
The Chronicles of Narnia
Sinclair Lewis,
Arrowsmith
Richard Llewellyn,
How Green Was My Valley
Abraham Maslow,
Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
Peter Mathiessen,
The Snow Leopard
Somerset Maugham,
Of Human Bondage
Rollo May,
The Courage to Create
Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty
John Milton,
Paradise Lost
George Moore,
A Mummer's Wife
John G. Neihardt,
Black Elk Speaks
Boris Pasternak,
Doctor Zhivago
David Payne,
Confessions of a Taoist on Wall St.
Joseph Pearce,
A Crack in the Cosmic Egg
Robert Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert Pirsig,
Lila
Bob Samples,
The Metaphoric Mind
Mikhail Sholokov,
Quiet Flows the Don
Mikhail Sholokov,
The Don Flows Home to the Sea
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
August 1914
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
The First Circle
D.T. Suzuki,
Zen Buddhism
John M. Synge,
The Playboy of the Western World
John M. Synge,
Riders to the Sea
John M. Synge,
Deirdre of the Sorrows
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden
J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Lord of the Rings
Leo Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina
Ivan Turgenev,
Fathers and Sons
Janwillem Van De Wetering,
A Glimpse of Nothingness
Alan Watts,
The Wisdom of Insecurity
Alan Watts,
The Way of Zen
Jessie L. Weston,
From Ritual to Romance
Edmund Wilson,
Axel's Castle
Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse
Gary Zukav,
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
Undoubtedly, I have left some deserving books off the list above, so I may add to it at some point. And someone asked for just the top ten, so here are my absolute favorites from among those above: Ulysses, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Heart of Darkness, Tao Te Ching, Women in Love, To the Lighthouse, The Snow Leopard, The Mists of Avalon, The Prophet Armed, and The Sibyl. Hey, here's a last-minute addition: Lila Quotations