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I almost renamed this post “50 books that will make you think.” I know my readers probably aren’t worried about how to be smarter…they’re really smart already! But in this list, you might find books to expand your knowledge, which we’re all interested in doing.
I usually take notes when I’m reading; it helps me retain what I learn. I love going back in my reading journals later and refreshing my memory.
This list isn’t in any particular order, though I’ve put some similar things next to each other. You can click on any of them to read reviews on Amazon. Everyone’s tastes are different, but I hope you find some interesting books that stimulate your mind!
Let’s start with science! Since I didn’t study much science in school, I’m always looking for books to increase knowledge in this area in particular.
1. Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel, Michio Kaku.
This sounds amazing.
2. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley
Fascinating topic, and reviewers say it’s very accessible.
3. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Mad World, Mark Miodownik.
The review in Scientific American said, “Miodownik, a materials scientist, explains the history and science behind things such as paper, glass, chocolate and concrete with an infectious enthusiasm.”
4. The Tale of the Dueling Nuerosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery, Sam Kean.
I honestly can’t get enough books on the brain and how it works. I am particularly interested in reading about Cotard’s Syndrome, which makes people think they are dead. Good heavens.
5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot.
I can’t believe I haven’t read this yet.
Okay, how about some novels?
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner.
It’s also ridiculous that I haven’t read this.
7. Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
I have always loved this title. It’s such a great idiomatic phrase.
8. Catch-22, Joseph Heller.
9. Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart, Joyce Carol Oates.
Joyce Carol Oates has written approximately ten thousand novels. How many have I read? Zero. ZERO. Shameful. I chose this one for the list because of the great title, from the devastating and brilliant poem “In the Desert,” by Stephen Crane.
10. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann.
What is this book, even?
11. Don Quixote, Cervantes.
When I was taking Spanish classes in college, I tried to read it in Spanish. Hahaha, that didn’t work. I bet I can find a fancy leather-bound version of this that’s not too expensive.
12. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell.
The movie doesn’t sound so good, though.
13. Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
I didn’t love Americanah, but I liked it a lot, and it stayed with me. It seems like everyone loved this one.
14. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque.
The National World War I Museum is in my town, Kansas City. It’s a wonderful museum, and got me interested in reading more about this war. If you haven’t read Rebecca West’s novella, Return of the Soldier, I can’t recommend it enough–the writing is brilliant.
Moving on to some history books…
15. The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman.
More about WWI. This book won the Pulitzer, and it’s on Modern Library’s list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time.
16. London, a Biography, by Peter Ackroyd.
This is a big fat book that covers two thousand years.
17. The Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, S.C. Gwynne
This was a Pulitzer runner-up a while back.
18. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Doris Kearns Goodwin
19. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
This was on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a kid.
I also want to know what life is like in other countries right now, so I’ve picked a couple of titles with that in mind…
20. The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos
Osnos was the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker. This book won the National Book Award in nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer.
21. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo.
This bestseller won the National Book Award in 2012 and made everybody’s list of best books.
A couple of biographies…
22. John Brown, W.E.B. DuBois
23. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, W. Bernard Carlson
Moving on to philosophy and such…
24. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, a newish translation by Gregory Hays
This is going to tell me how to be stoic, right?
25. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes
I think I’ll take this one to the beach.
26. Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida.
One time I was at some type of symposium hosted by MIT Media Lab. They had seated me with erudite Europeans, and I had no idea what to say to them, so I asked them something about Derrida and they talked for about an hour. I’ve never read him, though. If reading about deconstruction gets in the way of my being able to write, I will set this book aside.
27.The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli.
I strongly suspect this is overrated, but I’ve always been curious about it, and it sounds like a quick read.
28. The Art of War, Sun Tzu.
I think of this as a companion piece to The Prince, which may be completely inaccurate.
A couple of religious texts…
29. The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran
A classic of Hinduism.
30. The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I have a couple of different copies somewhere in this house.
Some ancient and epic tales…
31. The Arabian Nights, anonymous, translated by Muhsin Mahdi and Husain Haddawy
Sometimes titled 1001 Nights. I bet this is going to be awesome.
32. The Iliad, Homer (a new translation by Peter Green)
This is one of those classics that I sort of feel like I’ve read, but then again, I probably haven’t?
33. Beowulf, translation by Seamus Heaney.
Actually, I have read Beowulf before, but it was a long time ago, and it wasn’t Heaney’s translation. I like Heaney’s poetry.
Part of being educated, especially for a writer, is being genre savvy. I haven’t read that much actual science fiction, so I put a few books on here…
34. Dawn, Octavia E. Butler
Dawn is the first book in Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy, and if I dig it, I’ll read the other two books.
35. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
More vintage scifi: the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner.
36. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood.
The first novel in the MaddAddam trilogy. The only other book I’ve read by Atwood was The Handmaid’s Tale, which was outstanding.
My knowledge of comics consists entirely of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (I didn’t read all of them) and Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World. Last fall, I got the opportunity to have dinner with Scott McCloud and his wife, and I heard him give a fantastic talk the next day. Before this, I read his clear and profound book Understanding Comics, which has a lot to say about storytelling in general. So here are a couple of comics choices…
37. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi.
I’ve heard only great things about this autobiography.
38. Saga, Vol. 1-4, Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples
Two of my good friends adore Saga.
Detective fiction is another genre I don’t know much about…
39. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett.
I saw this movie, but it was so long ago I barely remember it.
40. Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers.
Okay, I definitely need a couple of thrillers on the list, because again, I haven’t read many.
41. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
This is a 1915 spy thriller that Hitchcock made into a movie.
42. In the Woods, Tana French.
Here are a couple about economics.
43. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith.
This often shows up on lists of important nonfiction books, and also on the list of books that Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks everybody ought to read.
44. The Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang
The rest of these are miscellaneous nonfiction.
45. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
46. Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and a Call to Mercy, Matthew Scully
Interestingly, the author is a conservative and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. I’m hoping this book will inspire me to become a vegan for real. I think it’s the most ethical path, given the way our food industry works, and I’ve tried and failed several times.
47. The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison
My friend Kevin gave me a copy of this book, which was on the New York Times list of Notable Books for 2014. Thanks, Kevin!
48. The Bad Guys Won, Jeff Pearlman.
An online friend who lives in Ireland recommended this book about the 1986 Mets. It’s about the last thing I would have thought to read, so I think I should give it a try.
49. Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It In Your Career. Rock Social Media, Aliza Licht
This is a new book by a successful fashion publicist. The title and cover design strike me as a bit obnoxious, but I bet I’ll love it. Because social media changes so quickly, I’ll probably read it soon.
(Update: since this post has gotten a lot of readers lately, I feel that I should not that this book was not useful to me. It still might be good for someone new to social media or just starting out in a professional career.)
50. Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville.
Yeah, I don’t even know what this is.
~
Have you read some of these? Do you love them? Hate them? What’s on your list of books you want to read to become smarter? In the end, I think almost all books do.
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Wow! I’ve heard of, like, maybe three of those books, and I’ve read zero of them. I don’t think I’ve read a Smart People book in a long, long time. The closest I get is when I’m doing research on a topic for a WIP.
Yesterday, I heard a few family members discussing bully pulpits and Teddy Roosevelt, and I was like, “Huh. How in the world did they get on that topic?” Now I know! 🙂
Goodwin’s books are *always* so critically acclaimed. It sounds like a pretty interesting book!
Saga is FANTASTIC. The Immortal Life is incredible, though a very sad read. Need to read most of the rest of these, though.
Another Saga fan! And it’s the coolest people who are recommending it. 🙂
Wow, I need to read more. I only read 1, 11, 32, and 33.
I love the Physics of the Impossible so much, I borrowed it from my college library.
Don Quixote and Beowulf is very entertaining. The Iliad is a favorite.
Ooh, I should bump Physics of the Impossible to the top then!
Thanks so much for reading my blog! It’s nice to connect with you!
You’re welcome! I’m glad to connect with you! 🙂
The sound & the fury is one of my favorite books, and is the only one of the list that I’ve read. I have a couple of these titles in my bookshelf, but they remain unread, and as a latin I’m ashamed to admit that one of them is Don Quijote.
A few of these have been on my bookshelf forever, to be honest 🙂
Octavia Butler. QUEEN Butler. Anything by her is mind expanding and isn’t that the true purpose of reading? I read something and leave the story with a different view (wven if I don’t agree with the author or characters).
When the author is sublimely good at their craft, I stay engaged with the story until I’ve thoroughly digested what I’ve read. I’ve been reading and re-reading Butler for 20 years.
I have only heard good things!!
Wow! Great list! I was surprised to find I had read a few of them! Some I loved (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks), some I did not (Behind the Beautiful Forevers), but all great recommendations. I thought you might like to check out this list I’ve compiled for women! Hope you enjoy, and thanks again for your list!
https://oakandearth.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/great-reads-for-women-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-vampires-recipes-or-the-color-grey/
I am listening to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in the car right now. It’s so good! I’ll check out your list, too 🙂
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Made me intensely curious about many things.
Empires both financial and territorial have been built on the ideas contained in The Prince and The Art of War. Edward Bernays work “Propaganda” would be my addition to this list, a very fine list indeed. Stacked together in my bookcase they take up maybe and inch and a quarter of space, such is the power of the printed word.
I have only read Oryx and Crake, and I would like to read that one again as it was pretty weird.
I have read The Empire of the Summer Moon, Beowulf (in high school, not sure if it’s the version you have listed.) and bits of The Art of War. The Empire of the Summer Moon was a great read. Very informative and a little bit disturbing.
Great list…may I suggest “How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery” by Kevin Ashton. It is a fascinating book about how humans create – inventions, art, scientific discoveries – and how these new ideas were initially regarded.
I’ve read part of “Physics of the Impossible” for a research paper in college that I was writing on a Stephen King book. Also, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” is very good. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells is another good sci-fi read, and really quick too (only about 100 pages if I remember right).
A few of these are on my reading list. I’m actually reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” right now. It’s pretty good so far.
I’ve read a few of these, if memory serves, but Art Of War stuck with me. I’ve read two different translations (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/0440002435 was one, but I preferred the second one I read, which I believe was a copy of this: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Strategy-Translation-Tzus-Classic/dp/0385237847). Both were valuable and informative, but the former was more colloquial with a loss of accuracy in translation, and the latter had more in-depth annotation at the cost of readability. It was eye opening to realize just how much different translations can differ, too!
Hi, Miss Donovan.
I’ve read a few but nowhere near all of these books.
“The Prince” is overrated, especially with dictators, but worth reading once, to understand it and for the bragging rights (just don’t practice what old “Nick” preaches :-D)
I thought (therefore I am :-D) Descartes was a little dense for a beach read, but perhaps you have superior powers of concentration than I do. Good luck with him.
I love Heaney’s “Beowulf.” It’s so easy to read, but it’s not dumbed down at all, and few translators can do that.
You will like the Iliad. My favorite translation is Richmond Lattimore’s, but I bet Green’s is good too. Homer does insist on mentioning the names of all the warriors who kill or are killed and their father (and sometimes their mother), but the poetic imagery is stunning, and the Iliad’s (and Odyssey’s) contributions to Western Literature are incalculable.
“Democracy in America” is about just that, with insights into and contrasts between European and American history and politics.
I haven’t read Ackroyd’s biography of London, but I have read his biography of St. Thomas More. The latter raw and earthy without being vulgar, and respectful without being sentimental or overly pious. Ackroyd engages all 5 senses in his books.
I haven’t read anything else on the list, but I wish you good luck and happy reading.
Hi Europa! Thank you so much for your take! I especially appreciate the recommendation for the Iliad translation… I had no idea. It’s great to hear from another book lover 🙂
You’re welcome, Bryn. Thanks for all your book posts. I’m writing a story now, and your ideas have been helpful and motivating. And any good Iliad translation will definitely make you smarter. 🙂
I’ve read two of them: “Beowulf” (in English class) and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (in a different English class entirely focused on sci-fi). I’ve seen “Blade Runner” as well, and while both the movie and the book are pretty good, the book is better. But then again I’m a writer so I guess I’m biased…Happy reading 🙂
Dorthy L Sayers has a lot of good books. “Strong Poison” was not one of her stronger ones.
Timothy Findley’s “The Wars” is equally as good as “All Quiet OnThe Western Front”, as an anti-war book.
A good list, It left out the Bible. This book will change your life.
Do not bother with Persepolis. A fairly new fan of graphic novels, following my teenage daughter, but this would be a stopper for those just getting into the genre. I’ve heard of some of the others and read a few, but as a seventh grade ELA teacher, my usual list is a little on the easier side.
Hi, Ellen! I did read Persepolis and I thought it was great, but to each her own! I can’t really say I’ve read much else in the genre, though. I’d like to read more graphic novels! Thanks for commenting!
Hi Bryn….Just one suggestion….”How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler & Charles van Doren is a great book for improving one’s read ability beyond the rudimentary level. Adler gives a list of important books to challenge the reader to grow beyond their current capabilities. He says there are only 100 – 200 books in existence that are truly worth reading and rereading. Most books are only of value for entertainment or information/fact acquisition…….Thanks!
This is Amazing! I want to add every single book onto my book list, both personal and on my blog https://greatexpericents.com/ Thank you so much for the amazing content Bryn! I can’t wait to start reading:)
Thanks, Tyler! I’m glad you liked it. And good luck on your blog!