In another post, I talked about (long) reading projects and why they are so important. I mentioned some of my own, such as The Stephen King Project and a couple of others. But now I wanted to share with you my all-time (huge and unending) to-be-read list. Usually, I keep this list in my currently used reading journal, but with every new journal the list gets updated and some information is lost in the old ones. Thus, I thought it would be nice to keep an always up-to-date list on my blog. Obviously, the Stephen King books will be added to The Stephen King project and not mentioned there.
My Great Library is inspired by multiple other lists on literature, ”books to read before you die” lists, 75 best Japanese authors list, and The Rory Gilmore Challenge. The inspiration also comes from many recommendations from my father, an avid reader himself, and his library. Reading a book adds a new book recommendation to my mental library. Reading inspires me to read even more. Sometimes these are just books that I would like to read someday (written down on a random TBR list), but once in a while, I find a book that I really need to read. These books will be added to The Great Library.
If you find an important book missing from my list, please suggest it in the comments!
I track my reading through a reading journal, StoryGraph, and Notion.
Classics & Literary Fiction
Afghanistan
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner (2003)
Albania
Ismail Kadare – The Palace of Dreams (1981)
Algeria
Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942) 4/5
Albert Camus – The Plague (1947) 2/5
Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (2001)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
America
Louisa May Alcott – Little Women (1868)
James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room (1956)
James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time (1963) 5/5
James Baldwin – Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
James Baldwin – Another Country (1962)
James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 5/5
Ray Bradbury – Dandelion Wine (1957)
Charles Bukowski – Factotum (1975)
Kate Chopin – The Awakening (1899)
Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking
William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying (1930)
Scott F. Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (1925)
Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) 4/5
Mo Hayder – The Devil of Nanking (2004)
Joseph Heller – Catch-22
Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms (1929) 4/5
Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) 4/5
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy – The Road
Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men
Herman Melville – Moby Dick (1851)
Arthur Miller – The Crucible (1953) 5/5
Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman (1949)
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Henry Miller – Sexus
Tony Morrison – Beloved (1987)
Tony Morrison – Song of Solomon (1977)
Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood (1952)
Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club (1996)
Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (1963) 4/5
Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 3/5
John Steinbeck – East of Eden (1952)
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men (1937)
John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) 5/5
Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut – Armageddon in Retrospect
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest (1996)
John Williams – Stoner (1965) 3/5
Argentina
Jorge Luis Borges – Collected Fictions
Armenia
Peter Balakian – Black Dog of Fate
Australia
Markus Zusak – The Book Thief
Austria
Hermann Broch – The Death of Virgil
Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet (1929) 5/5
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
Joseph Roth – The Radetzky March
Belgium
Amélie Nothomb – Fear and Trembling (1999) 5/5
Brazil
Machado de Assis – The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil 4/5
Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist (1988)
Canada
Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Yann Martel – Life of Pi
Alice Munro – Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
Caribbean
Junot Díaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea
Chile
Isabel Allende – Eva Luna (1987) 5/5
Isabel Allende – The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende – Daughter of Fortune
Pablo Neruda – Selected Poetry
China
Can Xue – The Last Lover (2014)
Lu Xun – Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Lu Xun – The True Story of Ah Q
Jung Chang – Wild Swans (1991)
Mo Yan – Red Sorghum (1987)
Colombia
Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) 5/5
Cuba
Alejo Carpentier – The Lost Steps (1953)
Czechia
Franz Kafka – The Trial (1925)
Franz Kafka – The Metamorphosis (1915) 4/5
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)
Egypt
Omar El Akkad – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Naguib Mahfouz – The Cairo Trilogy
England
Jane Austen – Northanger Abbey (1817) 4/5
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Jane Austen – Persuasion (1817)
Jane Austen – Emma (1815)
Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Jane Austen – Mansfield Park (1814)
Charlotte Bronte – The Professor (1857)
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre (1847) 5/5
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights (1847)
Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange (1962) 3/5
Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland (1865) 5/5
Lewis Carroll – Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871)
Lewis Carroll – The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
Charles Dickens – Great Expectations (1861)
George Eliot – Middlemarch (1871)
E.M. Forster – A Passage to India (1924)
E.M. Forster – A Room With a View (1908)
John Fowles – The Collector (1963)
Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South (1855)
Elizabeth Gaskell – Gothic Tales
Elizabeth Gaskell – Wives and Daughters (1863)
William Golding – Lord of the Flies (1954)
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World (1932)
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Namesake (2003)
C.S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia 1-7
C.S. Lewis – The Screwtape Letters (1942)
C.S. Lewis – The Great Divorce (1945)
John Milton – Paradise Lost (1667)
Iris Murdoch – The Sea, the Sea (1978)
George Orwell – Why I Write (1946) 5/5
George Orwell – 1984 (1949) 5/5
George Orwell – Animal Farm (1945) 4/5
George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia (1938)
George Orwell – Essays (2002)
Shakespeare – Macbeth (1606)
Shakespeare – Hamlet
Shakespeare – Julius Caesar
Shakespeare – Antony and Cleopatra
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
Virginia Woolf- To the Lighthouse (1927)
Virginia Woolf – Orlando: A Biography (1928) 5/5
Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway (1925) 4/5
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own (1929)
France
Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
Michel Houellebecq – Submission (2015) 2/5
Karl Joris Huysmans – Against Nature: A Rebours (1884)
Gaston Leroux – The Phantom of the Opera (1909)
Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way (1913)
Jules Verne – Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne – Journey to the Center of the Earth
Voltaire – Candide (1759)
Voltaire – Micromegas (1752)
Voltaire – Philosophical Dictionary (1764)
Germany
Goethe – Faust (1808)
Herman Hesse – Siddhartha (1922) 5/5
Herman Hesse – Steppenwolf (1927)
Herman Hesse – Singapore Dream (2018)
Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain (1924)
Thomas Mann – Joseph and His Brothers
Thomas Mann – The Tables of the Law 5/5
Greece
Homer- Iliad (750 BC)
Homer- Odyssey (800 BC)
Nikos Kazantzakis – Zorba the Greek
India
Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (1997)
Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children (1981)
Salman Rushdie – The Satanic Verses (1988)
Iran
Azar Nafisi – Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Iraq
Ahmed Saadawi – Frankenstein in Bagdad (2013)
Ireland
James Joyce – Dubliners (1914)
James Joyce – Ulysses (1922)
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) 5/5
Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost (1887)
Oscar Wilde – Salome (1891)
Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Italy
Italo Calvino – The Complete Cosmicomics
Dante- The Divine Comedy (1320)
Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose (1980)
Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum
Ovid – Metamorphoses
Virgil – The Aeneid
Japan
Kobo Abe – The Woman in the Dunes (1962)
Ryunosuke Akutagawa – Rashomon (1915)
Matsuo Basho – The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1702)
Osamu Dazai – Self Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan’s Great Decadent Romantic (1991) 3/5
Osamu Dazai – No Longer Human (1948) 4/5
Shusaku Endo – Silence (1966)
Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo)- Kwaidan (1904)
Masuji Ibuse- Black Rain (1965)
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go (2005)
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day (1989)
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klare and the Sun (2021)
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Giant (2015)
Junji Ito – No Longer Human (2019)
Yasunari Kawabata – Snowcountry (1948) 3/5
Yasunari Kawabata – Thousand Cranes (1952)
Yasunari Kawabata – The Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Toshikazu Kawaguchi – Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2015) 3/5
Hiromi Kawakami – Strange Weather in Tokyo (2001) 3/5
Genki Kawamura – If Cats Disappeared From The World (2012) 3/5
Yu Miri – Tokyo Ueno Station (2014) 3/5
Yukio Mishima – The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963) 3/5
Yukio Mishima – Spring Snow (1968)
Yukio Mishima – Confessions of a Mask (1949)
Yukio Mishima – The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)
Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore (2002)
Haruki Murakami- 1Q84 (2009) 4/5
Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood (1987) 3/5
Haruki Murakami – After Dark (2004) 3/5
Haruki Murakami – After the Quake (2000) 3/5
Haruki Murakami – The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2023)
Haruki Murakami – Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami – Men Without Women
Haruki Murakami – First Person Singular
Haruki Murakami – The Strange Library
Haruki Murakami – Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami – Dance Dance Dance
Haruki Murakami – Killing Commendatore
Haruki Murakami – Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)
Haruki Murakami – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (1994)
Ryu Murakami – In the Miso Soup (1997) 4/5
Ryu Murakami – Audition (2010) 4/5
Ryu Murakami – Piercing (1994) 4/5
Ryu Murakami – Tokyo Decadence (1988) 3/5
Ryu Murakami – From the Fatherland, with Love (2005)
Ryu Murakami – Almost Transparent Blue (1976)
Ryu Murakami – Coin Locker Babies (1980)
Sayaka Murata – Convenience Store Woman (2016) 3/5
Sayaka Murata – Earthlings (2018) 3/5
Sayaka Murata – Life Ceremony
Sayaka Murata – Vanishing World
Miyamoto Musashi – The Book of Five Rings (1645)
Yōko Ogawa – The Memory Police (1994) 3/5
Hiroko Oyamada – The Factory (2013) 3/5
Natsume Soseki – I Am a Cat (1905)
Natsume Soseki – Kokoro (1914) 4/5
Yoshikazu Takeuchi – Perfect Blue (1991)
Junichiro Tanizaki – The Makioka Sisters (1948)
Yuko Tsushima – Territory of Light (1979)
Yasutaka Tsutsui – Paprika (1993)
Banana Yoshimoto – Moshi Moshi (2010) 4/5
Banana Yoshimoto – Kitchen (1988) 3/5
Banana Yoshimoto – Asleep
Banana Yoshimoto – Dead-End Memories: Stories
Kenia
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Wizard of the Crow (2004)
Korea
Oh Jung-hee – The Bird (1996) 3/5
Cho Nam-joo – Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (2016) 3/5
Han Kang – Human Acts (2014) 5/5 Original title: 소년이 온다
Lebanon
Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet (1923) 5/5
Kahlil Gibran – The Broken Wings (1912) 5/5
Mexico
Cristina Rivera Garza – The Iliac Crest (2002) 4/5
Yuri Herera – Signs Preceding the End of the World (2009) 4/5
Netherlands
Bernlef, J.- Out of Mind (1984) Original title: Hersenschimmen
Hanna Bervoets – Wat wij zagen (2021) 3/5
Mulisch, Harry- The Discovery of Heaven (1992) Original title: De Ontdekking van de Hemel
New Zealand
Katherine Mansfield – The Garden Party and Other Stories
Nigeria
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
Norway
Palestina
Ghassan Kanafani – Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories
Papua New Guinea
Vincent Eri – The Crocodile
Peru
Mario Vargas Llosa – The Feast of the Goat (2000)
Mario Vargas Llosa – The War of the End of the World (1981)
Philippines
José Rizal – Noli Me Tángere
Poland
Conrad, Joseph- Heart of Darkness (1899)
Tokarczuk, Olga- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009)
Portugal
Jose Saramago – Blindness (1995)
Jose Saramago – All the Names (1997)
Russia
Mikhail Bulgakov – The Heart of a Dog (1925) 3/5
Michael Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita (1966)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Demons (1872)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Brothers Karamazov (1879) 5/5
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment (1866) 4/5
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Memoirs from the House of the Dead (1861) 3/5
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
Nikolai Gogol- Dead Souls (1842)
Nikolai Gogol – Dagboek van een gek / De mantel / De neus 4/5
Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita (1955)
Andrey Platonov – The Foundation Pit
Alexander Pushkin – Eugene Onegin (1833) 4/5
Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead (1943)
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Lev Tolstoy- War and Peace (1869)
Lev Tolstoy- Anna Karenina (1877)
Lev Tolstoy – The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) 5/5
Yevgeny Zamyatin – We (1924) 3/5
Scotland
Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory (1984) 4/5
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Robert Louis Stevenson – Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) 4/5
Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting
South-Africa
J.M. Coetzee – Disgrace (1999)
Spain
Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote (1615)
Turkey
Orhan Pamuk – Snow (2002)
Horror & Thrillers
Dathan Auerbach – Penpal (2012) 5/5
Mona Awad – Bunny (2019) 3/5
Clive Barker- The Hellbound Heart (1986) 4/5
Clive Barker – Books of Blood 1-6 4/5
Clive Barker – The Great and Secret Show (1989)
Gertrude Barrows Bennett – Claimed! (1920) 3.5/5
Algernon Blackwood – The Willows (1907)
Algernon Blackwood – Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories
William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist (1971)
Ray Bradbury – Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) 4/5
Ray Bradbury – The Halloween Tree (1972) 4/5
Ray Bradbury – The October Country (1955) 5/5
Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)
Stephen Chbosky – Imaginary Friend (2019) 5/5
Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None (1939)
Bora Chung – Cursed Bunny (2017)
Mark Z. Danielewsky – House of Leaves (2000) 4/5
Mark Z. Danielewsky – The Familiar Volumes 1- 5
Mark Z. Danielewsky – Only Revolutions
Mark Z. Danielewsky – The Fifty Year Sword
Mark Z. Danielewsky – The Whalestoe Letters
Mark Z. Danielewsky – Tom’s Crossing
Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho (1991)
Bret Easton Ellis – Less Than Zero (1985)
Bret Easton Ellis – The Shards (2023) 3/5
Charlene Elsby – Violent Faculties (2024)
Mariana Enríquez – The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (2009) 4/5
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla (1872) 3/5
Neil Gaiman – Coraline (2002) 3/5
Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Grady Hendrix – My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) 4/5
Grady Hendrix – Horrorstör (2014)
Thomas Olde Heuvelt – Hex (2013) 3/5
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House (1959) 5/5
Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Livid in the Castle (1962) 5/5
Shirley Jackson – Hangsaman (1951)
Shirley Jackson – The Lottery and Other Stories (Penguin edition) 4/5
Shirley Jackson – Dark Tales
Shirley Jackson – Let Me Tell You
Henry James – The Turn of the Screw (1898) 4/5
M.R. James – Collected Ghost Stories
Caroline Kepnes – You (2014) 3/5
Jack Ketchum – The Girl Next Door (1989)
Dean Koontz – The Eyes of Darkness (1981) 2/5
John Langan – The Fisherman (2016) 5/5
Ira Levin – Rosemary’s Baby (1967) 4.5/5
Ira Levin – Son of Rosemary (1997)
Ira Levin – This Perfect Day (1970)
Ira Levin – The Boys from Brazil (1976)
Ira Levin – A Kiss Before Dying (1953)
Ira Levin – The Stepford Wives (1972)
Thomas Ligotti – Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (1986)
Thomas Ligotti – Teatro Grottesco (2006)
Matthew Lewis – The Monk (1796)
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan (1890)
Arthur Machen – The White People and Other Weird Stories
Josh Malerman – Bird Box (2014) 3/5
Robert Marasco – Burnt Offerings (1973)
Richard Matheson – I Am Legend (1954) 5/5
Richard Matheson – Hell House (1971) 3/5
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca (1938)
Joyce Carol Oates – Zombie (1995)
Chuck Palahniuk – Invisible Monsters (1999)
Chuck Palahniuk – Haunted (2005)
Edgar Allan Poe- Complete Works
John William Polidori – The Vampyre (1819)
Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Anne Rice- The Interview with the Vampire (1976)
Ray Russell – The Case Against Satan (1962) 4/5
Bram Stoker – Dracula (1897)
Peter Straub – Ghost Story (1979)
Kōji Suzuki – Ring (1991) 5/5
Kōji Suzuki – Spiral (1995) 4/5
Kōji Suzuki – Loop
Kōji Suzuki – Dark Water
Koushun Takami – Battle Royale (1999)
Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan – The Strain (2009) 3/5
Paul Tremblay- A Head Full of Ghosts (2015)
Paul Tremblay – The Cabin at the End of the World (2018) 4/5
Paul Tremblay – Horror Movie (2024)
Paul Tremblay – The Beast You Are
Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto (1765)
Fantasy
George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones (1996) 5/5
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (1937) 5/5
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Silmarillion (1977)
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) 5/5
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Two Towers (1954) 5/5
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Return of the King (1955)
Sci-Fi
Isaac Asimov – Foundation
Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1949)
Octavia E. Butler – Kindred (1979)
John W. Campbell Jr. – Who Goes There? (1938) 3/5
Ted Chiang – Stories of Your Life and Others
Michael Crichton – The Andromeda Strain (1969)
Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
William Gibson – Neuromancer (1984)
Dmitry Glukhovsky – Metro 2033
Dmitry Glukhovsky – Metro 2034
Dmitry Glukhovsky – Metro 2035
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed (1974) 5/5
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Word for World is Forest (1972)
Ursula K. Le Guin – Earthsea: The First Four Books
Frank Herbert – Dune (1965)
Lovecraft, H.P.- Necronomicon (2008)
Strugatsky Brothers – Roadside Picnic (1972) 4/5
Strugatsky Brothers – The Doomed City
Strugatsky Brothers- Monday Starts on Saturday (1965)
H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds (1898)
H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man (1897)
H.G. Wells – The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
H.G. Wells – The Time Machine (1895)
Poetry
Alli Esiri (editor) – A Poem for Every Autumn Day (2020) 4/5
Allen Ginsberg – Howl and Other Poems (1956)
Sylvia Plath – Ariel (1965)
Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass
Non-Fiction
Philosophy
Ancient (7th BC – 6th CE)
Aristotle- The Nicomachean Ethics (340 BC)
Aristotle – Politics
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations (180 AD)
Anicius Boethius – The Consolation of Philosophy
Confucius – The Analects
Epictetus – Discourses & Selected Writings
Plato- Republic (380 BC)
Plato- Five Dialogues (385 BC)
Seneca- Letters on Ethics (64 AD)
Medieval (6th-15th CE)
St. Thomas Aquinas – Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford University Press)
Modern (17th – 19th century)
Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
David Hume – A Treatise of Human Nature
Kant- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) 5/5
Soren Kierkegaard- Fear and Trembling (1843)
John Locke – An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
John Stuart Mill – On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays (1859)
Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1886)
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science (1882)
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist (1895)
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
Friedrich Nietzsche – On the Genealogy of Morals
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Contemporary (20th-21st centuries)
Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition (1958)
Gaston Bachelard – The Psychoanalysis of Fire
Gaston Bachelard – The Poetics of Space
Noam Chomsky – Understanding Power (2002)
Noam Chomsky – On Anarchism (2013) 4/5
Noam Chomsky- On Palestine (2015) 5/5
Noam Chomsky – Who Rules the World? (2016)
Noam Chomsky – Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance
Noam Chomsky – Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
Noam Chomsky – Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Noam Chomsky – Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Noam Chomsky – The Precipice (2021)
Noam Chomsky – Occupy (2012)
Noam Chomsky – The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Noam Chomsky – On Language
The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove)
Umberto Eco – Travels in HyperReality
Byung- Chul Han – The Scent of Time (2009)
Byung- Chul Han – The Burnout Society (2010)
Martin Heidegger – Being and Time
Aldous Huxley – The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Aldous Huxley – The Perennial Philosophy
Lewis Hyde – The Gift (1983)
John Kaag – Hiking with Nietzsche (2018)
C.S. Lewis – The Abolition of Man (1943)
Thomas Ligotti – The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2010)
Annemarie Mol – Eating in Theory (2021) 3.5/5
Onora O’Neill – Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics 4/5
Ayn Rand – Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)
Russell – History of Western Philosophy
Russell – The Problems of Philosophy
Michael J. Sandel – What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Michael J. Sandel – The Case Against Perfection (2012) 4/5
Antonin Sertillanges – The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Margaret Urban Walker – Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations After Wrongdoing (2006) 3/5
Simone Weil – The Power of Words
Simone Weil – War and the Iliad
Simone Weil – Simone Weil: An Anthology
Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace
History
Naoko Abe – The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan’s Cherry Blossoms (2019) 4/5
Svetlana Alexievich – Chernobyl Prayer: Voice from Chernobyl (1997)
Svetlana Alexievich – Secondhand Time (2013)
Svetlana Alexievich – The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War 2
Edward Brooke-Hitching – The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts, and Other Literary Curiosities from History (2020)
Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)
Jared Diamond – Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)
Jared Diamond – Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (2019)
Donnie Eichar – Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013) 5/5
E.H. Gombrich – A Little History of the World
E.H. Gombrich – The Story of Art
E.H. Gombrich – Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens (2011)
Yuval Noah Harari – Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024)
David Grann – The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (2023) 4/5
(Biomedical) Sciences
Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species (1859)
Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (1976)
Stephen Hawking – Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018) 4/5
Henry Marsh – Do No Harm (2014) 5/5
Henry Marsh – Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon (2017)
Siddhartha Mukherjee – The Emperor of All Maladies (2010)
David Quammen – Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012) 4/5
Rebecca Skloot – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2011) 5/5
Linguistics & Language Learning
Gabriel Wyner – Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It (2014) 3/5
Psychology
Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams (1920)
Sigmund Freud – The Uncanny (1919)
C.G. Jung – The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
C.G. Jung – The Red Book
Iain McGilchrist – The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Literature Criticism & Writing
Harold Bloom – How to Read and Why (2000)
Harold Bloom – The Anxiety of Influence
Ray Bradbury – Zen in the Art of Writing (1973)
Umberto Eco – On Literature
Umberto Eco – How to Write a Thesis
Northrop Frye- Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
Lisa Kröger & Melanie R. Anderson – Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (2019) 4/5
Haruki Murakami – Novelist as a Vocation (2015)
Larry W. Phillips (editor) – Ernest Hemingway on Writing 5/5
Kurt Vonnegut – Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style (2019)
Virginia Woolf- The Common Reader (1925)
(Auto)Biographies/ Memoirs
Kelly Bishop – The Third Gilmore Girl (2024)
Chris Broad – Abroad in Japan (2023) 5/5
Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Colin Duriez – J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Story of Their Friendship (2003)
Joseph Frank – Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (2002)
Ruth Franklin – Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016)
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Life of Charlotte Bronte
Lauren Graham – Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (2016) 3/5
Ernest Hemingway – A Moveable Feast
Mineko Iwasaki – Geisha: A Life (2002) 4/5
Gary Lachman – Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World (2014)
Ursula K. Le Guin – No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters (2017)
Religion/Theology/Spiritual
The Bible Authorized King James Version (Oxford World’s Classics)
Bhikkhu Bodhi – In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon
Northrop Frye – The Great Code: The Bible and Literature
C.S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain (1940)
M. David Litwa – The Evil Creator
C. Scott Littleton – Understanding Shinto: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Festivals, Spirits, Sacred Places
Ken Liu – Laozi’s Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time (2024)
Joseph Lumpkin – The Book of Giants: The Watchers, Nephilim, and the Book of Enoch
Jonathan Sacks – Essays on Ethics
Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching (Ursula K. Le Guin edition) 5/5
D.T. Suzuki – An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934)
Occult / Esoteric
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa – Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Ambrose Bierce – The Devils Dictionary (1906)
Aleister Crowley – Book of Thoth
Antony Cummins – The Dark Side of Japan: Ancient Black Magic, Folklore, Ritual (2017) 4/5
Manly P. Hall – The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Esther J. Hamori – God’s Monsters
Bernard McGinn – The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism
K. van der Toorn – Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
Donald Tyson – The Demonology of King James
Merrill F. Unger – Biblical Demonology
The Kybalion Hermetic Philosophy
The Corpus Hermeticum
The Three Magical Books of Solomon
True Crime
Vincent Bugliosi – Helter Skelter (1974)
John Douglas – Mindhunter (1995)
Haruki Murakami – Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (1997)
John Keel – The Mothman Prophecies (1975)
Art
Rudolf Arnheim – Visual Thinking
Umberto Eco – The Book of Legendary Lands
Umberto Eco – On Ugliness
Umberto Eco – History of Beauty
Betty Edwards – Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979)
The Penguin Book of…
Dohra Ahmad & Edwidge Danticat – The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns
Scott G. Bruce – The Penguin Book of Hell (2019) 4/5
Scott G. Bruce – The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters
Scott G. Bruce – The Penguin Book of Dragons
Scott G. Bruce – The Penguin Book of Demons
Katherine Howe – The Penguin Book of Witches
Joseph P. Laycock – The Penguin Book of Exorcisms
Michael Newton – The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce
Jay Rubin – The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
Joyce Tyldesley – The Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt
The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories: From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter
The Penguin Book of Haiku
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