Brain Pickings

Posts Tagged ‘notable reading lists’

30 SEPTEMBER, 2014

Tolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of Life

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Even if one could never “finish” great literature, one has to begin somewhere.

Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Leo Tolstoy succumbed to a deep spiritual crisis and decided to pull himself out by finding the meaning of life. He did so largely by reading voraciously across the world’s major philosophical and religious traditions, discovering great similarities in how they dealt with the truth of the human spirit. He was also, as any great writer, an insatiable reader of literature, which he wove together into A Calendar of Wisdom — the proto-Tumblr he spent the final decades of his life assembling.

But despite his wide and prolific reading, Tolstoy did consider specific books especially important and influential in his development. At the age of sixty-three, in a letter to a friend, he compiled such a list of the books that had most impressed him over the course of his life. Dated October 25, 1891, and found in Tolstoy’s Letters (public library), the missive is prefaced by the author’s disclaimer: “I am sending the list I began, but didn’t finish, for your consideration, but not for publication, since it is still far from complete.” (Reading, of course, is inherently incompletable — one can never hope to “finish” the body of literature, nor should one wish to.)

Under the heading “WORKS WHICH MADE AN IMPRESSION,” Tolstoy divides his reading list into five distinct life-stages — beginning with childhood and ending with his age at the time — and ranks each title by excellence, from “great” to “v. great” to “enormous.” Curiously, Tolstoy seems to consider the teenage years one’s most formative, prescribing for them books greater in both quality and quantity, whereas the twenties and early thirties are most meager in both and mostly occupied by poetry — perhaps because few people at the time had the luxury of leisure for reading during their most vital wage-earning years, or maybe because Tolstoy simply believed that one should be busier living than reading during that life-stage.

That only two known women figure in Tolstoy’s list is, one would imagine, less a function of his bias than of his era’s and his culture’s — though the latter certainly shape the former.

CHILDHOOD TO AGE 14 OR SO

“Great”:

“V. great”:

“Enormous”:

AGE 14 TO 20

“Great”:

“V. great”:

“Enormous”:

AGE 20 TO 35

“Great”:

“V. great”:

AGE 35 TO 50

“Great”:

“V. great”:

“Enormous”:

AGE 50 TO 63

“Great”:

“V. great”:

“Enormous”:

Complement with Tolstoy’s timeless meditation on art, his chronicle of spiritual awakening, and his compendium of humanity’s greatest wisdom.

For more notable reading lists, see those of Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, Nick Cave, David Bowie, and Brian Eno.

* Tolstoy’s original letter recommended reading Homer and the gospels in translation during one’s teens and in the Greek after age 35, reflecting a true classical education

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14 MARCH, 2014

33 Books on How to Live: My Reading List for the Long Now Foundation’s Manual for Civilization

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Books that help us make sense of ourselves, our world, and our place in it.

In a recent piece about the Manual for Civilization — the Long Now Foundation’s effort to assemble 3,500 books most essential for sustaining or rebuilding humanity, as part of their collaboratively curated library of 3,500 books for long-term thinking — I lamented the fact that Stewart Brand’s 76-book contribution to the Manual contained only one and a half books authored by a woman. To their credit, the folks at the Long Now reached out immediately, inviting me to contribute my own list to the collaborative library they’re building.

In grappling with the challenge, I faced a disquieting and inevitable realization: The predicament of diversity is like a Russian nesting doll — once we crack one layer, there’s always another, a fractal-like subdivision that begins at the infinite and approaches the infinitesimal, getting exponentially granular with each layer, but can never be fully finished. If we take, for instance, the “women problem” — to paraphrase Margaret Atwood — then what about Black women? Black queer women? Non-Western Black queer women? Non-English-speaking non-Western Black queer women? Non-English-speaking non-Western Black queer women of Jewish descent? And on and on. Due to that infinite fractal progression, no attempt to “solve” diversity — especially no thirty-item list — could ever hope to be complete. The same goes for other variables like genre or subject: For every aficionado of fiction, there’s one of drama, then 17th-century drama, then 17th-century Italian drama, and so on.

But I had to start somewhere. So, with the discomfort of that inescapable disclaimer, I approached my private, subjective, wholly non-exhaustive selection of thirty-three books to sustain modern civilization and the human spirit — books at the intersection of introspection and outrospection, art and science, self and society.Above all, books that help us (or, at least, have helped me) learn how to live — how to make sense of ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Please enjoy. (A parenthetical “more” link appears after books I’ve previously contemplated in greater detail on Brain Pickings.)

  1. The Principles of Uncertainty (public library) by Maira Kalman (more here)
  2. On Photography (public library) by Susan Sontag (more here and here)
  3. The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (public library) by Alan Watts (more here and here)
  4. Varieties of Scientific Experience (public library) by Carl Sagan (more here)
  5. Ways of Seeing (public library) by John Berger (more here)
  6. Optimism (public library) by Helen Keller (more here)
  7. Man’s Search for Meaning (public library) by Viktor Frankl (more here)
  8. The Diaries of Maria Mitchell (public library) by Maria Mitchell (more here and here)
  9. I’ll Be You and You Be Me (public library) by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Maurice Sendak (more here)
  10. On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes (public library) by Alexandra Horowitz (more here and here)
  11. Letter to My Daughter (public library) by Maya Angelou (more here)
  12. The Accidental Universe (public library) by Alan Lightman (more here and here)
  13. Collected Poems (public library) by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  14. The Year of Magical Thinking (public library) by Joan Didion (more here)
  15. The Color Purple (public library) by Alice Walker
  16. Here Is New York (public library) by E.B. White (more here)
  17. The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen (public library) by Hans Christian Andersen (more here)
  18. Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists (public library) by Kay Larson (more here)
  19. Orlando: A Biography (public library) by Virginia Woolf (more here)
  20. A Short History of Nearly Everything (public library) by Bill Bryson
  21. The Collected Poems (public library) by Sylvia Plath
  22. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (public library) by Sarah Bakewell (more here)
  23. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World (public library) by Lisa Randall
  24. The Politics (public library) by Aristotle
  25. Freedom from Fear (public library) by Aung San Suu Kyi (more here)
  26. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (public library) by James Gleick (more here)
  27. Does My Goldfish Know Who I Am? edited by Gemma Elwyn Harris (more here)
  28. The Feminine Mystique (public library) by Betty Friedan (more here)
  29. The Collected Poems (public library) by Denise Levertov
  30. The Pillow Book (public library) by Sei Shonagon (more here)
  31. Bird by Bird (public library) by Anne Lamott (more here)
  32. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (public library) by Cheryl Strayed (more here)
  33. The Little Prince (public library) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (more here)

Keep an eye on the Manual for Civilization for more reading lists to complete the 3,500-book library, and consider joining me in supporting the project here.

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07 MARCH, 2014

Stewart Brand’s Reading List: 76 Books to Sustain and Rebuild Humanity

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From Homer to home health, by way of Shakespeare, conceptual physics, and a gender-imbalance lament.

UPDATE: The folks at the Long Now kindly invited me to contribute my own reading list — see it here.

On the heels of Brian Eno’s reading list comes another installment in the Long Now Foundation’s effort to assemble 3,500 books most essential for sustaining or rebuilding humanity, as part of their collaboratively curated library for long-term thinking, the Manual for Civilization. Here, futurist, environmentalist, and Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand — best-known for authoring the era-defining Whole Earth Catalog and originating the commonly (mis-)quoted aphorism that “information wants to be free” — offers his 76-book contribution to the cumulative library of 3,500, including Brain Pickings favorites like Nobel-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Bill Bryson’s magnificent illustrated edition of A Short History of Nearly Everything, and Lewis Hyde’s modern manifesto for the creative life, The Gift.

  1. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R. Montgomery
  2. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  3. The Odyssey by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
  4. The Iliad by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
  5. The Memory of the World: The Treasures That Record Our History from 1700 BC to the Present Day by UNESCO
  6. The History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
  7. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories edited by Robert B. Strassler
  8. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War edited by Robert B. Strassler
  9. The Complete Greek Tragedies, Volumes 1-4 edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore
  10. The Prince by Machiavelli, translated by George Bull, published by Folio Society
  11. The Nature of Things by Lucretius
  12. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz
  13. The Way Life Works: The Science Lover’s Illustrated Guide to How Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces, and Gets Along by Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson
  14. Venice, A Maritime Republic by Frederic Chapin Lane
  15. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
  16. The Map Book by Peter Barber
  17. Conceptual Physics by Paul G. Hewitt
  18. The Encyclopedia of Earth: A Complete Visual Guide by Michael Allaby and Dr. Robert Coenraads
  19. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
  20. Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
  21. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde
  22. Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison
  23. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray
  24. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 Volumes) by Edward Gibbon
  25. The Complete Guide to Trail Building and Maintenance by Carl Demrow and David Salisbury
  26. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
  27. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein
  28. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  29. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
  30. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser
  31. The Causes of War by Geoffrey Blainey
  32. Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch
  33. A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition by Bill Bryson
  34. The Past From Above: Aerial Photographs of Archaeological Sites edited by Charlotte Trümpler
  35. Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson
  36. Why the West Rules–for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future by Ian Morris
  37. The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community by William H. Mcneill
  38. A History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel
  39. The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work by Daniel Hillis
  40. Imagined Worlds by Freeman Dyson
  41. The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms by Andrew Robinson
  42. Brave New World (The Folio Society) by Aldous Huxley and illustrated by Leonard Rosoman
  43. Dune by Frank Herbert
  44. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
  45. Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures Given at Aberdeen, Scotland April–November 1985 by Freeman J. Dyson
  46. What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
  47. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
  48. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
  49. Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
  50. State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
  51. Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
  52. Excession by Iain M. Banks
  53. Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge
  54. The Discoverers: Volumes I and II Deluxe Illustrated Set by Daniel J. Boorstin
  55. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom
  56. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington
  57. The Idea of Decline in Western History by Arthur Herman
  58. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May
  59. Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse
  60. One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism by Rodney Stark
  61. The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
  62. The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future by Fred Pearce
  63. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock
  64. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization by Brian Fagan
  65. Medieval Civilization by Jacques Le Goff
  66. The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History by Norman F. Cantor
  67. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
  68. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery
  69. The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Andrew George
  70. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
  71. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built by Stewart Brand
  72. Grand Design: The Earth from Above by Georg Gerster
  73. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Histories, Comedies, Tragedies (Three volume set)
  74. The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook by Robert Porter
  75. Lao Tzu’s Te-Tao Ching — A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts by Lao Tzu and translated by Robert G. Henricks
  76. The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul’s Conquest of Evil by Heinrich Zimmer edited by Joseph Campbell

Only one lament: One would’ve hoped that a lens on rebuilding human civilization would transcend the hegemony of the white male slant and would, at minimum, include a more equal gender balance of perspectives — of Brand’s 76 books, only one is written by a woman, one features a female co-author, and one is edited by a woman. It’s rather heartbreaking to see that someone as visionary as Brand doesn’t consider literature by women worthy of representing humanity in the long run. Let’s hope the Long Now balances the equation a bit more fairly as they move forward with the remaining entries in their 3,500-book collaborative library.

Complement with the reading lists of Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, Nick Cave, and David Bowie,* then join me in supporting the Manual for Civilization.

* I realize these are all male reading lists. I have been unable to find a published reading list by a prominent female public figure — if you know of one, please do get in touch.

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03 MARCH, 2014

Brian Eno’s Reading List: 20 Essential Books for Sustaining Civilization

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Deconstructing a magnificent mind through his reading diet for intellectual survival.

UPDATE: The folks from the Long Now have kindly asked me to contribute to the Manual for Civilization library — here is my own reading list.

There is something inescapably alluring about the reading lists of cultural icons, perhaps because in recognizing that creativity is combinatorial and fueled by networked knowledge, we intuitively long to emulate the greatness of an admired mind by replicating the bits and pieces, in this case the ideas found in beloved books, that went into constructing it.

After the reading lists of Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, Nick Cave, and David Bowie, now comes one from Brian Eno — pioneering musician, wise diarist, oblique strategist of creativity — compiled for the Long Now Foundation’s Manual for Civilization, a collaboratively curated library for long-term thinking. Eno, one of the Long Now’s founding board members, contributes twenty titles to the project’s intended collection of 3,500 books most essential for sustaining or rebuilding civilization:

  1. Seeing Like a State (public library) by James C. Scott (1998)
  2. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (public library) by David Lewis-Williams (2002)
  3. Crowds and Power (public library) by Elias Canetti (1962)
  4. The Wheels of Commerce (public library) by Fernand Braudel (1982)
  5. Keeping Together in Time (public library) by William McNeill (1995)
  6. Dancing in the Streets (public library) by Barbara Ehrenreich (2007)
  7. Roll Jordan Roll (public library) by Eugene Genovese (1974)
  8. A Pattern Language (public library) by Christopher Alexander et al (1977)
  9. The Face of Battle (public library) by John Keegan (1976)
  10. A History of the World in 100 Objects (public library) by Neil MacGregor (2010)
  11. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (public library) by Richard Rorty (1989)
  12. The Notebooks (public library) by Leonardo da Vinci (1952 ed.)
  13. The Confidence Trap (public library) by David Runciman (2013)
  14. The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin (1983)
  15. Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (public library) by Sarah Hrdy (1999)
  16. War and Peace (public library) by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
  17. The Cambridge World History of Food (2-Volume Set) (public library) by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas (2000)
  18. The Illustrated Flora of Britain and Northern Europe (public library) by Marjorie Blamey and Christopher Grey Wilson (1989)
  19. Printing and the Mind of Man (public library) by John Carter and Percy Muir (1983)
  20. Peter the Great: His Life and World (public library) by Richard Massie (1980)

One interesting observation: The majority of Eno’s favorite books were published in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was in his mid-twenties to late thirties — indication, perhaps, that this is the golden age within a lifetime, when we have transcended the know-it-all arrogance of youth, haven’t yet entered the know-it-old complacency of old age, and live with that wondrous combination of receptivity to new ideas and just enough not-yet-calcified intellectual foundation with which to integrate and contextualize them.

Join me in supporting the Manual for Civilization, then revisit Eno’s insights on art.

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