"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is amazing, and a better use of time than history class.
I loved "The Giver", it poses some profound questions on the nature of suffering in a cohesive, entertaining story without any obtrusive contemplations of greater purpose. Conversely, I hated the books in the Ender's Game series (actually, I liked "Ender's Game" itself, but the sequels focus on characters that may as well be different people in what may as well be a different universe so the magical premise is abandoned) bear Orson Scott Card's empty, heavy-handed philosophical overtures presented through shallow and uninteresting stories. I did like Harry Potter, though not enough to call the books "must reads".
"The Outsiders"...yes! Ok.
Catch-22 deserves more than "yes! Ok.", though. This is one of the best books I've ever read. It bludgeons you upside the head with a powerful message on the incompetence of greed and a cogent examination of bureaucracy. The writing style itself mimics the paradoxical, duplicitous communications and endeavors of government. And it's amusing, too. I read its sequel ("Closing Time) and was disappointed, instead of relying on his own devices Joseph Heller basically wrote Dr. Strangelove with a wheezing take on the weakness of age.
I loved "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books (I assume that "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" was a collection of all the books, maybe with the radio scripts and interviews thrown in), and refuse to further qualify this statement.
Regardless of what Aitamen says, "The Old Man and the Sea" was a beautiful book.
On the note of books: I might try to find "House of Leaves", has anyone here read it?
Anyways:
genus says you must read these books now
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
"Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut
"Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk
"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
"American Psycho" by Brett Easton Ellis
"1984" by George Orwell
"Animal Farm" by George Orwell
"Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
"Ubik" by Philip K. Dick
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
"The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville (*shot*)
You should read many more books, but you should read these books *right now*.
