The 75 Books Every Man Should Read (Esquire Magazine)

Esquire ^ | Unknown

[InvisibleChurch]

The 75 Books Every Man Should Read

An unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published. How many have you read?

The 75 Books Every Man Should Read

[RandallFlagg]

Unintended Consequences by John Ross.

That’s all you need.

[StAnDeliver]

Unabashedly sophomoric with the obligatory moronic whitebread guilt "O, ye slaves" pastiche.

And for what little good it does as an authors homage, "Fear And Loathing" kicks "Hell's Angels" ignorant biker ass up and down the block.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Lol. I was just going to say, The Foundation Series. All of it, including the robot books.

[gogogodzilla]

Read 6 out of the 75. And half of those I read were crap. As for the rest that I haven’t read, they look to be crap as well.

[GOP Golfer]

Ping

[djf]

South of no North

Charles Bukowski

[Krankor]

I've read the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find and quite enjoyed it. You can read it here. I know there's a lot of Freepers who'll read it and scream, "If only they had conceal carry!"

[ml/nj]

Really weak list! I've read four of the books on the list, and I do a reasonable amount of reading. Of course, the list was mostly or all fiction; and I read mostly non-fiction.

I guess there was at least one non-fiction book as I noticed that a David McCullough book was on it. I just finished his Truman which was mostly very good (the exception being the treatment of Senator McCarthy). This impelled me to read Witness (highly recommended) now which I've had lying around for a long time but had never read.

Neither the Bible nor Atlas Shrugged made Esquire's cut.

ML/NJ

[flowerplough]

75 Books Every Woman Should Read

Esquire put up a slideshow of 75 books every man should read, and it is indeed a very good list. However, it’s a very good list that’s also extremely myopic. It relies way too heavily on the old white dude cannon (particularly the WASP angst end of it) with books by Updike, Cheever, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Hemingway, McPhee, Joyce, Roth, Mailer, and the token Russians. There are only four non-white men on the list (Ellison, Rushdie, Haley, Wright) and just one woman, the incomparable Flannery O’Connor with her classic book of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find. The only really offensive choice on the list is Bukowski. I’ve read Bukowski, and even though he’s an old cuss, I like his writing. However, I would never call something so unapologetically misogynistic something men “should” read. Anyway, in light of Esquire’s myopia, we decided to curate a list of 20 books every woman should read. You should fill in the other 55 in the comments! http://jezebel.com/5052468/75-books-every-woman-should-read

[sushiman]

Dharma Bums by Keroauc deserves to be on the list IMHO .

[sushiman]

Kerouac - pardon moi .

[kaylar]

10/20. I did like that the ‘man’ list included Jorge Luis Borges; he’s been one of my favorite writers for 3 decades now. And Wide Sargasso Sea from the ‘woman’ list deserves its listing, and also was made into a splendid film.

[GonzoGOP]

I didn't see Sun Tsu’s the art of war or Machiavelli's The Prince on that list. Seriously if you haven't read those two you just aren't going to understand the world. Sun Tsu teaches you how to get an empire, and Machiavelli teaches you how to keep it. Be it business, politics or international intrigue you need to understand these guys. Even if you don't want to be Machiavellian it is a fair bet the other guys does. And as Sun Tsu said “Know your enemy, know yourself and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril”.

[dog breath]

Who selected these, a liberal woman? I would of read more of the books on the list but I think I would become an angry gay socialist if forced to read all of them. Is this a list of books to read to make a person want to shoot themselves?

[BunnySlippers]

Good post. Thanks!

[McLynnan]

Thanks, I’m always looking for reading suggestions and see a few on this list I’d like to add to my wish list. I hope I live long enough to read everything on my list!

[GreenHornet]

I highly recommend the following book by my favorite journalist, Ed Anger of the Weekly World News: “Let’s Pave the Rain Forests and Give Teachers Stun Guns.”

[Texas Eagle]

I don’t click on strange links. Just tell me. Is the Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes series’ on the list? If not, it’s not worth knowing what is.

[magslinger]

I read about 19 of them. Masochist, I guess. I would recommend maybe 4 or 5. Long before I recommended Master and Commander I would recommend C.S Forrester.

[SES1066]

As others have mentioned, it lacks Shakespeare, the Bible and others. What I notice is that it appears to be the educated Metrosexual's reading list. I don't have time to check but I think "Moby Dick" [1851] is the oldest one listed with a few others from the 1800s (Twain, Tolstoy & Dostoyevsky). The rest comes from the last century and therefor, to my mind, lacks depth and perspective.

What I see lacking is items that would make the aforesaid Metrosexual look into the deeper values or references to idealism. While there is a place for the grit of life, one should not always dwell in it or on it. How about some poetry? How about some biography? How about some Kipling, James F Cooper, Robbie Burns and the like?