Wednesday, May 13, 2009

15 books to start a Perfect Library


Everyone who knows me, knows I consume books, here's a recommended list for everyone that wants to start a serious library:


A feel good book about a dad and his son motorcycle trip across America.

Written during his exile from the Florentine Republic, this is his bible about realpolitik that offers the ultimate mandate for those politicians that value keeping power above dispensing justice. A must read.

Great dialogue and some very nutty and freaky characters, a suspenseful thriller with a married couple as the unsung heroes.

Talk about ignorance being very, very far from bliss, a future of rampant consumerism, worthless free love, constant drug use and cultural passivity. Just like today friends!

Jim Hawkins discovers a map of Treasure Island among the possessions of a sea captain, and decides to follow it. A coming of age story that introduces us to Long John Silver. A masterpiece.

A lonely and miserable mole ventures outside and embarks on a new life protecting Toad Hall from the weasels. Can't wait for my kids to read this.

A novel whose every sentence can be a struggle to finish may sound forbidding, but it is a masterpiece of modernity, taking us into the life of our narrator and inside his fascinating mind.

A journey into adulthood filled with difficult choices and a huge cast of amazing characters. Watch out for Streetford.

Milton sets out to justify the ways of God in perhaps the best poem ever written.

Blake's  short poems are simple in rhythm and rhyme, but very powerful in meaning. A jewel of a book.

A very masculine meditation on death, ideology and the savagery of war.

Perhaps my favorite book in the world, an invented autobiographical account of Claudius, the fourth emperor of ancient Rome. Please don't die without reading this, I beg of you.

PI Marlowe appears here for the very first time, this is what defined detective fiction and later Film Noir.

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." Need I say more?


Dick's masterpiece questions what it is that distinguishes us as humans. This book spawned Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner.





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