If I want to be an intellectual, what fiction should I read?

old guy 69 wrote:

Joe or Something Else wrote:

Brothers Karamazov

Les Miserables

War and Peace

The Odyssey

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Great list.

I'd replace The Odyssey with Narcissus and Golmund (...I've never read the Odyssey)

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are kind of a toss up.

Also: Great Expectations and East of Eden

LOVE Hesse, but, if just one of his books is going to be included, especially on a list for an aspiring intellectual, it should be The Glass Bead Game. And, as someone who has read The Odyssey, I would not exclude it. It's too fundamental. If all of philosophy is just a commentary on Plato, (almost..) all of literature is a riff of The Odyssey.

Pulp Fickshun wrote:

Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore, acclaimed scientist

Just pissed my pants. Well done.

A few that haven't yet been mentioned...

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

Vanity Fair - Thackeray

Also:

J.R - William Gaddis

Collected fictions of Jorge Luis Borges

Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott

Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis

My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Great list. I'd add:

The Sea Wolf by Jack London. Great book. Little lesser known than some of his other works.

A Confession by Tolstoy. Also lesser known, this is a great, really short piece. Well worth the few hours it takes to read. If you're looking to start reading some philosophy, this wouldn't be a bad place to start, as it's not too heavy, yet well-written and rewarding.

There's lots of good advice above. Here's my two cents:

First, I agree with those who says it's good to read serious books, and with those who say you won't get anything from reading them unless you are a serious reader.

Being serious doesn't mean you should be a pretentious douche. It just means you should treat the author the way you'd want to be treated if you were telling a story -- with care and respect. You probably hate it when people don't let you finish your or dismiss what you are saying without really listening. So don't read that way. Assume the author has something to say, and give her a chance to say it. Give her your attention.

Sometimes I find it helps to read slowly, and talk someone about what I'm reading. I make my students do that. They are often surprised by how much more they get out of a book, even ones they've read before.

As for what to read (and how), experiment and find out what works for you. If you want to read all of Shakespeare, then read all of Shakespeare. If you hate Shakespeare and want to read short stories, then read short stories.

I have a friend never reads a book all the way through. If he gets bored, he jumps around. Sometimes he goes back and reads what he skipped, but not always.

He gets more out of books than almost anyone I know.

The bottom line is simple: there's no magic formula that will make you an intellectual. One of the most widely read and thoughtful guys I've ever met always said he never considered himself a real intellectual. That was because unlike his father, who could write Latin poetry, he could only read it.

Athiest's Version wrote:

The Bible is not a good read. Read Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible if you are interested in a athesist-scientist's take. Asimov read several versions of the Bible, and includes commentary about books of the Bible that from some reason do not appear in all versions of the Bible.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30009.Asimov_s_Guide_to_the_Bible

Reading Rainbow wrote:

The Bible is actually a ridiculously good read, even when read for nonreligious reasons.

in other news, your going to love my cat's take on the coran...

Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore's ghost writer

exthrower wrote:

Fiction? Anything by Thomas Friedman.

Morondom? Anything by exthrower.