Hah. I’d be happy to hear that everyone read at least one book in their lifetime.

Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence - David Benatar

I found reading this to be quite validating of my own life experiences and observations

Grapes of Wrath is a good one that’s relevant now as when it was made.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Just the intermissions would get everyone’s blood boiling.

The Master and Margarita

Probably won’t get as much out of it as someone who lived in the Soviet union, but it’s an interesting dissection of the absurdity of authority.

Flowers for Algernon

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels. Short, yet clearly elaborates on the shift from earlier utopian views of socialism of figures like Robert Owen to the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. One of the best explanations of Marxism itself, other than the essay Principles of Communism. It was taken from the larger and more comprehensive Anti-Dühring as it was believed to be an excellent work for propaganda purposes (and this judgment proved correct, as the booklet spread like wildfire).

Honorable mentions go to Capital, Volume I by Karl Marx, Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, and Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. This series of books expands on capitalism during its beginning, intermediate, and imperialist phases, and imperialism itself in its beginning, intermediate, and final phases as they relate to colonialism and neocolonialism.

My summer reading list (not that I get to read both every year):

• The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

The first is about what we never prepared for, but could try to thrive through. (Mike Oldfield made a cool concept album about this. One of the songs is called “Only time will tell”)

The second is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. But wait! Is it actually a multilayered examination of our notions about information? Oh hell yeah.

Capital and ideology by Thomas Piketty. An eye opener on wealth distribution throughout history and the arguments that held societies together to allow wealth disparity.

Paris in the Terror by Loomis

Describing public events and the private machinations behind them (through the participant’s journals and letters), revealing how the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.

Reading isn’t about any single book. Each book is a peice in a larger concept of expanding ones mind outside the small part of the world they live in. Some expand more than others. But one alone makes only a small difference.

Illusions by Richard Bach, subtitled The Tale of the Reluctant Messiah. A beautiful book about the universe and spirituality. The author wrote it on the premise of “what if I had my own, personal, Jesus… Or Buddha or Messiah that was hanging out with me and explaining the universe”. So this guy is a Messiah that one day just quits to fly airplanes.

It’s funny, it’s inspiring, it’s a little sad, but hopeful. It’s also very short, you can easily read it in an afternoon.

Brothers Karamazov

Doctor Zhivago

To Kill A Mockingbird

Narnia series

Sundown Towns

Surface Detail by Iain M Banks

Part of The Culture series but can be read standalone, potential for being one of the best hard scifi books out there

Feels pretty cliche to say them, but

1984, the handmaid’s tale and brave new world

Should probably be on anyone’s list that hasn’t managed to get to them yet