10 Best Books

The ten best books—the impossible list. First of all, the ten best books about what? The ten best books of faith? The ten best books of fiction? Of nonfiction? Politics? History? But what if it’s just the ten best books period. That would include all genres. That would include the best books about dog breeding, or string theory; so there are parameters, and most people who would even care about a list of the ten best books know the parameters.

So here is my list. Except for 1, there is no order.

The top 10 books an American who is uncultured, somewhat uncivilized, and ignorant (not stupid, but just denied a certain degree of discovery and learning so far) that is to say, a high school grad, should read soon:

1. The Bible – Every cultured person should read the Bible. It is the most accessed piece of literature by writers in forming their own literature or literary contributions. Read it as literature, as philosophy, as myth, as the true word of God, or however; but read it because if you don’t you will miss out on all the richness that it has contributed to other literature. You will miss the fact that some writer you hold in high regard has gained his inspiration for an entire book, or only a character, or a situation, or a viewpoint, from the Bible. Unless you are reading the Bible for theological reasons (in which case you would read the best modern translations with study aids), the Bible you should read is the King James Version. In this category I could have added books of faith, or in other words scripture, since there are other books of scripture besides the Bible, unless you are an inerrantist, or in other words a certain brand of Protestant.

2. Don Quixote, Cervantes masterpiece, and only book, really. This is a book that will charm, but teach, and reveal. And it is a foundational novel for all other novelists.

3. Proust. Actually that’s not the book. Proust is the author, and he wrote In Search of Lost Time, also called Remembrance of Things Past. The title in French is A la recherche du temps perdu; and if you can read it in French, you will actually have read it. But if not, and you have to have a translation, you can see the better translation of the title is “in search of lost time.” And so to get the copy with that title would mean you are getting an updated version of the original translation, which was Remembrance of Things Past. The first translator, Moncrieff, took his title from a line of a Shakespeare sonnet, so it’s actually quite clever, though not a direct translation of the title. But the title is what the book is about. The novel is seven volumes long, and takes up ten inches of shelf space, even with 10 point type. So if that’s too much, just read one of the volumes, Du Côté de chez Swann, or Swann’s Way.

4. Shakespeare. All. Or if not, then first of all Hamlet. And if only one of Shakespeare’s, then Hamlet it is. Then if something else, just pick any of his plays, but before you do that, think of reading all The Sonnets. There are 154. With Shakespeare, you have to get an edition that has footnotes, since Elizabethan English is beyond most people’s vocabulary today. But when you read Hamlet you’ll see where so many of our common English expressions came from.

5. Machiavelli, The Prince. This is the quintessential book on politics, but really it’s a book on power, whether in national or international politics, or the politics of personal interactions. You have to read this short treatise to understand what the adjective Machiavellian means. As you read it, look for the phrase, “The end justifies the means.”

6. Dante. That’s not the title—he’s the author. So you could read The Divine Comedy, or just the first book, Inferno. I’m not sure if Dante gave the best expression of the Church’s doctrines on the afterlife, and other subjects as well, or if the Church took Dante’s ideas and made them doctrine. The Inferno goes into the degrees of sin and the degrees of punishment that are agreeable to the sin (maybe agreeable is not the best word here). Everybody who was anybody in literature for a millennium had read Inferno, so it’s another foundational piece. And you will be amused with some of the punishments, but you will want to write down all kinds of quotes to use daily in conversations, beginning with the words at the beginning, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

7. Faust. By Goethe. It’s the German book, and for some, the German soul. What Shakespeare is to English, Faust is to German and Germans. It has shaped their culture, or perhaps it has exposed, or defined, or explained, their mind and heart. And it is a study of life, and humans, and hearts, and mistakes, and so full of quotable quotes that you want to write down and memorize, and pull out in conversation sometime, and say, “Well, Goethe said, ….” It’s almost overwhelming by length and breadth and height and depth.

8. Anna Karenina, by Count Leo Tolstoy. This is another evidence of Denis de Rougemont’s contention in his Love in the Western World that the two major, and nearly only, themes in literature are adultery and Liebestod. This novel is a dissection of the case against the first. It will take you into a world of people that you will know because they are people like people you already know, only more interesting because they are a distillation of people.

9. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. This is one that if at all possible, you should read in French. Flaubert would spend a week on one page, written with pen and ink, then go out into the apple orchard and read the page at the top of his voice, almost shouting, to get le mot juste—just the right word, the exact word, and then the exact words, that conveyed by their length, and shape, and sound, as well as by their meaning, what he was expressing on that page. This is the book that says what real life is, but in such a way that is so opposite the mundane and quotidian reality of real life. Like a Vermeer, it is the poetic exposé of the everyday.

10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Not “The” but just “Adventures.” The American story that used to be America, and should be remembered, and should be a part of our heritage. We’ve come a long way from that era, that culture, that mentality; but it should always be remembered as our past, our culture as in a yoghurt culture. There is an edge to this book that can cut.

You must get out of the mindset of TV with its 24-minute time frame for sitcoms and 51 minute time frame for hour-long shows, where everything is presented, examined, and wrapped up quick and tidy. Books are meant to take the reader away for as long as possible; and sometimes TV readers can get impatient, wanting the action, to get to the point, to get things moving along, when the author, especially of days gone by, wants to show you everything around, about, before and after, the people and the actions of the book. So don’t be impatient. Slow down and read. And slow down in reading. Read at the pace of someone—preferably yourself, but with good diction and interpretation—reading it to you.

Translation. It’s the only way we’re going to read a book that was written in a language we don’t know; but it’s never going to be the same as reading the original. Just hope for a good translator, and a good translation.