James Clavell's Shogun: The contrast between the Japanese and European cultures in 1600 are delicious, the characters and plot both well developed. I've read it at least a dozen times over four decades. As I age, I find I experience it very differently.
It's a very good book. I read the book and watched the 1970's TV series. I think it's a great candidate for a redo in the streaming era. It has adventure, political intrigue, romance, and on and on...
Shogun's a milestone in my reading history - it's so extraordinarily engrossing. It deflated me more than any other book as I turned each of the final, waning pages because I didn't want to leave its world behind.
I was briefly elated to see there are "sequels" but just as quickly disappointed to learn they're set centuries apart; it ended up feeling like I was clinging to the only album ever made by an amazing band. I've yet to read the other books in the saga, but I should circle back and fix that.
That’s intriguing. I read it when I was 12-13 having found it in a pile of books left behind by the previous owners of the house. I enjoyed it, I think I was curious of the cover and the size of the book. I doubt I’d ever get the time to read it again but the idea is appealing, 30+ years later.
The conversation around eddies in the space-time continuum is the single funniest thing I've ever read. I haven't read those books for years but I still chuckle every time I am reminded of it for any reason. Douglas Adams was a true master of his craft.
Absolutely HHGTTG for me. Not the "best" books I've ever ready but easily the ones I can re-read the most and still get a laugh or discover something new (or something I at least forgot and get to re-enjoy).
If I must pick one without knowing why, I would likely pick Ark by Stephen Baxter.
The story is hard sci-fi and is, very broadly, about a multigenerational spaceship which travels across the stars following a planet-scale catastrophe. The writing and the world building are amazing and i've already read it probably a dozen times. I vaguely suspect if I can only have one book forever, some shit has gone down and I'd want a book like this.
Ark is actually the 2nd book in an unfinished trilogy, Flood precedes it and is a really great read.
Baxter's NASA Trilogy (Voyage/Titan/Moonseed) also deals with similarly isolated individuals and is a great read, though the ending is... trippy.
The Sky So Big and Black is also a book I can infinitely re-read. There's a pervasive sadness to the book which I enjoy. It's the fourth book in a quadriligoy but the first four are neither required nor are they as good as the final installment.
I'll also throw out Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. It's a great read and depicts another scenario where shit has gone down and perhaps you're left with one book. The book talks about the tragedy of what would happen after the fall of civilization but also talks about (despite loss) people could be happier with a slower simpler life, which is deeply ironic considering it was published in 1959.
Second Alas, Babylon! And, in a similar vein, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. I’ve read that one about five times. It’s also about an end-of-civilization scenario. And something about it is strangely grounding and life-affirming.
it's a quadrilogy, not a book, but I'd pick Ada Palmer's _Terra Ignota_ series without hesitation. I'm comfortable arguing for it fitting within the constraint of the question, largely because it is making one sustained argument that's carried out throughout the entire series -- it's very much one book that happens to be like 4000 pages long rather than four separate books.
Anyway, Ada Palmer is a sci-fi writer whose day job is as a professor of Renaissance and Enlightenment-era European philosophy, and everything in this series (set in the 2500s in a world where the geographical nation state collapsed and world governments are now large voluntary organizations) is heavily informed by her training as a historian of philosophy.
She finished the series last year, and though each book has gotten nominated for the big awards, she's had the misfortune of publishing on more or less the same schedule as N.K. Jemisin, whose stuff typically wins the Hugo, Nebula, or both. The fandom is teensy tiny -- I've seen it described as "six people and a shoelace" -- but most people who read it get fanatically devoted to it.
> it's very much one book that happens to be like 4000 pages long rather than four separate books.
It's a good way to approach it. Because otherwise part two and so on feel "more of the same", and you may be a bit let down (like me) hoping there would be "new schtick" in the new books
Oh man, I started reading Too Like the Lightning a while ago on the recommendation of a fantasy author friend. It was really good, but I got derailed and then had to take it back to the library and never finished it. I need to pick this series back up.
But it's worth saying, N.K. Jemisin deserved those wins. I've read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy and Broken Earth blew my mind when I read it the first time. I had to stop reading sci-fi/fantasy for a while afterwards because nothing could hold a candle to it.
It was a master class in craft, with an incredibly well done drip of very thorough world building and some really fantastic reveals. I don't want to say too much - I normally don't mind spoilers but I really loved the reveals in these novels. I don't think I'd have wanted to be spoiled on them going in.
This has been a year of re-reading for me, so this is a timely question. I can't pick just one at the moment, but I'll split a couple of top choices via genre. (Also worth noting that in the end, my final choice would probably be the Bible.)
Fiction:
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Extremely well done series that straddles the sci-fi fantasy line. There's a reason Jemisin became the first person to win the Hugo three years running for three books of a series.
The Book of the New Sun. I've already read it 6-ish times, with a different interpretation every time, and I have every reason to believe that would continue indefinitely. I would say The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun, since I like them better, but there's no way to justify calling them one book when, even in fiction, they're 2 different books.
> (Feel free to substitute “the next 10 years“ for “the rest of your life“.)
Haha. I meant that it’s quite hard to claim that a book that’s had an impact on your life between 20 and 50 will still have it when you’re 95. For some books, that might seem possible (say, spiritual texts or great literature). But for some, it’s quite unlikely (say, books about business, dating, or productivity).
So, no worries. My crystal ball tells me you’ve got lots of runway left!
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace:
It includes so many sides of life: terrible misery and humor, both spicy and tender, sometimes simple, sometimes absurd, then politics, society, love, cynicism, - and poetry. And it predicted, by the way, shockingly many developments of today's (American) society. And the language, of course, is opulent and wild, it won't get boring any time soon.
Kurt Vonnegut "Breakfast of Champions": A yearly reminder that despite the terrible cruelty of human society and the awful behavior of many people and the indifference of most others, there are good people who shine love and creativity and it's worth staying alive to try to find these people to make life bearable.
Permutation City by Greg Egan. The central idea presented in this scifi novel is so compelling, I can't help but feel there is some truth in it. Also, I never feel I understood everything completely. Re reading helps clarify some new question every time.
What an existentially depressing book though, at least for me. It was wonderful, and worth reading more than once simply because it helps absorb more of its deeply complex aspects, but without a doubt it creates an unusual emotional impact.
That looks like it’s up my alley, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Count of Monte Cristo is the best revenge story ever told which is why it appeals to me, but you’re right about the immersion aspect. Maybe I would choose the unabridged version for the full experience.
I'd recommend you read "The Black Count" by Tom Reiss.
It's a non-fiction biography of Alexandre Dumas's father, the inspiration for The Count of Monte Cristo. It holds the same luster of the 19th century while giving you a factual recount of some larger than life figures.
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Something about this book speaks to me. It's a wonderful examination of how the human condition never changes in a world of magic, wonders and terrors beyond imagination.
Middlemarch by George Eliot - the greatest fiction exploration of how to live a life of integrity and significance in a world that often seems overwhelming and meaningless.
Came here to say both these things. I also read it every ten years, and take something entirely different from it each time. A philosophy book, a novel, a road trip story, a discussion of mental illness, and a father and son book alll rolled into one.
Not a book but the facilities to make one - access to either paper and pencils/pens/ink, glue, linen binding thread, leather for making covers and a book press to bind the thing. Given that I'd have the rest of my life I'd settle for access to the raw materials to make these.
I'd write the book myself, it'd probably end up like a cross between Robinson Crusoë, Baden Powell's "Scouting for Boys", Zindell's "Neverness", Tolkien's "Silmarillion", The Gulag Archipelago - for what twisted mind would keep people from reading new (to them) books other than the same mind which created the GULAG system - and more of such. It would take years to write but that'd be a good thing given that it would keep me busy.
Sam Harris’ Waking Up. I’m sure that some of the neuroscience in it will become outdated, but its effect on my worldview and life trajectory can’t be understated.
Perhaps this is apocryphal, but when Richard Feynman was asked what one sentence would contain the most information to bootstrap science after apocalypse, he said “everything is made of atoms”. Sam Harris parallels this with his one sentence for spiritual practice: “you are not this next thought”.
Being reminded of this annually by way of the excellent exposition of Waking Up seems to be the right move for me.
This is the book I came to recommend. It is different from almost anything else I've read in its causing an immediate shift of awareness which is beyond the intellectual / thinking process.
It consists of conversations which modify being and a different state of being changes everything, instantaneously.
This is my book - I open it almost every day. Not a story to re-read but a state of being to dissolve into.
The language phrasings, creation of a masterful personality, focus on clever logical deductions, varied story lines are all combined harmoniously to take the reader on a truly enjoyable read.
I think I'd pick The Wounded Sky, by Diane Duane. It's a Trek novel in which (ROT13 to spoiler-warning a decades-old novel): onfvpnyyl gur Ragrecevfr perj urycf grfg n arj zrnaf bs cebchyfvba, evcf gur Havirefr, naq va qbvat fb zrrgf n Tbq (abg Fgne Gerx I'f Tbq!) va n arj lrg-gb-or-obea cebgb-Havirefr, juvpu gurl gura uryc sbhaq vg jvgu gurve zbfg cerpvbhf zrzbevrf.
Honestly, there's so much to explore in the very concepts that she lays down that it leaves room for an intense amount of imagination and application.
I found it off-putting that Hesse distorted and criticized Buddha's teachings, but found it necessary to insert real world Buddha character into the novel and have him validate author's ideas and philosophies.
I read it a couple of days before Christmas every year without fail and have since it came out.
I absolutely adore the discworld (Pratchett's books shaped me as a child - I wouldn't be the person I am now nor have had the career I do without him).
> “The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door.
> There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it.
> 'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
> 'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
> 'Er ... why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
> 'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'
> This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.”
The culture series explores a universe where machine intelligence has obsoleted mankind, mostly through the perspective of individual people interacting with earlier stage societies.
Excession explores that higher intelligence interacting with a power they cannot comprehend.
I read that each vacation as a reminder of where I want tech to end up.
This book changed my life. It's content is based on an entire life of research. I think I will learn new things every time I read it.
I like this question because I started re-reading a few books already. I find it valuable as I already know they are good and I can extract more from them the second/third/forth time.
"Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahamsa Yogananda as its a book thats on one level about a chockful of miracles in India and weird bugs about reality (like what you see if not what you get) but on a deeper level about reality in the way that steve jobs felt compelled to hand it as his parting gift at his funeral
That was not my takeaway at all. It was mostly about a delusional, albeit charming charlatan. A testament to the power of one's conviction in crafting an identity and a sense of self.
Maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but I finished season 4 of Stranger Things yesterday, and now I have a strong urge to pick up a copy of The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. A great book, it really captured the magic that King's Dark Tower series lost along the way.
Quantum Field Theory by Peskin and Schroeder. There are many things in that book I could make into a standalone project that could occupy years at a time.
Some other picks:
The Man in The High Castle by Phil K. Dick. The Plague or The Outsider by Albert Camus. City of Thieves by David Benioff.
It's an incredible resource. For the believers, it is the Word. For non-believers, it has more snippets attributed to common wisdom than you'd suspect.
For fiction: it's a hard tossup between Snow Crash and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, though Ender's Game, The Bicentennial Man, Rendezvous with Rama series, and Atlas Shrugged also would be contenders for me.
For nonfiction: some current contenders would be Democracy: The God that Failed, The Physics of Immortality (very thought-provoking and mind-bending), and some of Robert Green's books particularly The 48 Laws of Power.
When I was a bookworm, there are a couple of topics that continually interested me as the result of a single book. But then, after a couple reads, I tended to read others in the same arena. Not just for the novelty, but the different perspective.
But that was 'then', when words seemed to matter. And this is the same Now, only different, and Life is the book. Every day a new chapter. ;-)
The Blue Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver. I read it at least once a year and live my life by it. There was no book that better described living in the digital world vs the physical world when I was growing up programming and living in muds. Every thing and every relationship in the physical world is a game that can played successfully with the right character
Regardless of taste preferences, it seems most logical to take with you some massive franchise. At least because there is more action, more characters, and therefore more room for thought.
But as for me, I would prefer Erich Maria Remarque's Three Comrades. It's simple, it's short, but it has so much life in it.
Incerto by Nassim Taleb. Best piece of work I've ever read. I'm re-reading it, and still... what a masterpiece, a mind-blowing piece of work. Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragile remain my "Holy Trinity" of books. You just couldn't stop reading them.
„Be not content - A subterranean journal“ is pretty eternal for me. So is „On the road“. Or take „Middlesex“. Why, they tell the story about a different life. If you want to spend the rest of your life miserable then „Im Westen nichts Neues“ (All quiet on the western front).
I am not sure which book I will re-read for the rest of my life, but these past few years I have read multiple times chapters from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen and Reflections on Silver River by Ken McLeod.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - One of the most vividly written books I read. The style of writing made me feel like I was in its world as the story was playing out.
Pandoras star by Peter f Hamilton. This along with pushing ice and the culture series opened a new vast world for me. Will keep rereading them every few years
Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military.
Can you put in words what makes you choose it as a book to re-read yearly?
Being able to say you’ve read this book pays dividends that go far beyond just the experience of reading the contents. It will give you instant credibility among important and highly intellectual individuals, and could lead to great job offers or securing strong investments. The prestige and recognition you carry amongst peers is priceless. Even just owning the book without reading it already puts you a step ahead of other people. The right people can be blown away just seeing it on your shelf. Read the book, yearly.
That's nice to know. I read it when I was 18/19 while travelling on the New York City subway from Far Rockaway into Manhattan. Twice a day for 3 months and sometimes outside it. I still know the opening line "A screaming comes across the sky". Difficult book.
Not OP but here's why I think it's a great choice: it's the kind of book you could read many times and still not understand every nuance. There's a joke in the literary world that nobody has ever read it in full. It's monstrously complex and I'm convinced intentionally confusing at points. But it's also beautifully written, and in a way that quietly appeals to technical people.
To give you an example of the type of metaphor you'll come across: a character navigates a pair of S-shaped train tracks in a V2 rocket bunker, which the author compares to both the SS double-lightning bolt and a double-integral. He later links that to the rockets' accelerometer-based integration over the force function to compute distance traveled, and ultimately trigger "brenschluss" (fuel cutoff). Here's a famous excerpt:
That is one meaning of the shape of the tunnels down here in the Mittelwerke. Another may be the ancient rune that stands for the yew tree, or Death. The double integral stood in Etzel Ölsch’s subconscious for the method of finding hidden centers, inertias unknown, as if monoliths had been left for him in the twilight, left behind by some corrupted idea of “Civilization,” in which eagles cast in concrete stand ten meters high at the corners of the stadiums where the people, a corrupted idea of “the People” are gathering, in which birds do not fly, in which imaginary centers far down inside the solid fatality of stone are thought of not as “heart,” “plexus,” “consciousness,” (the voice speaking here grows more ironic, closer to tears which are not all theatre, as the list goes on . . .) “Sanctuary,” “dream of motion,” “cyst of the eternal present,” or “Gravity’s gray eminence among the councils of the living stone.” No, as none of these, but instead a point in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning must end, never launched, never to fall. And what is the specific shape whose center of gravity is the Brennschluss Point? Don’t jump at an infinite number of possible shapes. There’s only one. It is most likely an interface between one order of things and another. There’s a Brennschluss point for every firing site. They still hang up there, all of them, a constellation waiting to have a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it.
That would be a hard one. A book of appetizers without a main course. I read it when I was an undergrad wanting to get a broad sense of different areas in Math I could pursue.
If I had to pick one math book it would have to be a classic with some depth to it: Euclid’s Elements, Newton’s Principia, or Gauss’ Disquisitiones.
Yes, perhaps you're right! It could be frustrating, either because it doesn't give you enough to understand the introduction to an area, or because it doesn't give you any depth. I think it would be a bad mistake not to take a maths book with exercises and solutions to ones desert island.
I stumbled across it when I was about twelve and made a habit of reading it fairly frequently for the following fifteen years or so.
In my mid twenties I was in a graduate psychology program at a Buddhist college and one of my instructors was a Chinese Buddhist nun. She said that she knew of the Tao Te Ching, but had not read it, so I brought her a copy with the text in Chinese, as well as in English translation.
On a subsequent day of the class she took a little time to comment on it. She said it was like the answers in the back of a mathematics textbook: the answers were correct, of course, but they weren't useful unless you first did the work needed to correctly understand the corresponding questions.
There was one other occasion when making a gift of that book to someone elicited a memorable response: when I was in high school my neighbor from India had a baby, and her father, a philosophy professor from Delhi, came to stay for a few months. A friend of mine and I struck up a friendship with him. On one visit we gave him a copy of the Tao Te Ching, which he had not read before. He responded by giving me a beautiful copy of the Rig Veda, and giving my friend a sitar.
> the answers were correct, of course, but they weren't useful unless you first did the work needed to correctly understand the corresponding questions.
That's a beautiful way to put it. Actually explains why some people find the books useless - they just didn't experience questions at the stage of their lives.
The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
In the Bible, Christ said he would visit his (maybe inexact, from memory) "...other sheep, which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." (In John, I think?) The Book of Mormon tells of Christ's visit to the ancient Americas, after his resurrection, where he taught them things like he taught in the Near East. It also contains teachings of ancient prophets, like the Bible does.
Along with the Bible, its teachings are amazing to me, in their ongoing ability to help me want to be a better person, and to bring peace and direction, amid hard events. (And its confirmation that Christ's resurrection is real, therefore we will all live again, with justice and the opportunity for honest mercy.)
(ps: thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes.)
(pps: fun note, I have read it in English, Spanish, Esperanto (such as there is), and over 1/2-way now in Russian. Something like 115 translations exist, per wikipedia, with more on the way. Looks like several chapters even in Klingon.)
I thank you for your comment and sharing an interesting perspective that is far removed from my own (as someone who is not religious but knows about other parts of the Christian faith)
Since I am unable to reply to the other flagged/dead comments, I'll add here that the book itself (in the intro. materials and the last chapter) says how one can determine for oneself if it is, in fact, what it says it is, and receive an answer from God. Thus the question becomes not a matter to debate harshly (which has been done enough already), but one of individual knowledge and conscience. I can't prove it to someone else, but it has been satisfactorily proven to me, about which I have written elsewhere at some length.
I find it terribly funny that just the next entry on your comment page is "Sounds like you've an abrasive personality. With emotional intelligence as lacking as yours […]". :-)
Qur'an. As my Arabic is poor, I'd pick the Tafsir al-Jalalayn in Indonesian. The English translation often miss out most of the good stuff. Religious books are a bit cliche, but here's my reasoning.
1. Information density
The reverse Blinkist effect - summaries of the book end up longer than the book itself. You read the book once, find it nice. Then you read someone else's understanding of it. Compare notes, and find a lot of depth that you overlooked. It's the kind of book which you can discuss one verse over a whole hour.
A lot of the scholars often have a favorite verse or chapter. Mine would be the first 3 verses of Al-Humazah: Don't speak with the intent of harming people directly. Don't speak with the intent of harming people indirectly. Don't count wealth with the purpose of making yourself immortal.
These are very difficult things to do in this era of social media. But it's compact - it fits into a whole English sentence, and makes for a good mantra. When I slip (and it's tempting to insult strangers on the internet!) I can use these verses to remind myself.
2. Motivation/Inspiration/Self-Control
The ideal book should elevate you, give you more control over yourself and your surroundings, and turn you into a better person. Some draw inspiration from religion, but why not just pick a religious book. I love Robert Greene's books because of how clever and practical they are, but they can be a little toxic to practice.
Core to the Quran is trust. Trust that things are working as planned. That doesn't mean doing nothing, you have to be patient and persevere. There's some incredible but logical feats of perseverance, such as refraining from saying hurtful words. There's stories of people who made their riches, and then go out and donate nearly all of it to the poor. And beggars. It requires a lot of willpower to suffer for your wealth and then just give it to someone apparently lazy and incompetent.
Meditation may train your mindfulness muscle, but there's virtues like kindness and selflessness that need to be trained too.
3. Psychology/Philosophy, society modeling
I love a lot of philosophical books but they feel a little incomplete. You learn from it. But can you really apply it and get better at it? What of it?
I sat for a whole night pondering the Quran's An-Nazi'at 79:18-24. This is something anyone speed reading (or reciting) will gloss over, and it's not apparent in most English translations too. Instead of asking Pharaoh to repent, Moses asks whether he's looking for a mentor to purify/cleanse himself. The teacher comes to the ready student, but the student must first open their heart. Then Pharaoh calls his retinue of yes-men, which symbolises that he refuses to be ready. It was at a time when I was stuck on something, and could not find a suitable mentor, and then realized that I was just being stubborn.
4. Entertainment
There's what I call active entertainment. Like you don't just watch a Marvel film, you end up searching/documenting/modeling the world in some way. Passive entertainment is okay, but shallow.
The part I enjoy about reading the Qur'an is that it's all interlinked and ties back into reality. I know if I spend time on it, I find something, and so there's a lot of entertainment value in spending lots of time digging into it slowly. For the last 6 months, I've been analyzing the second chapter of the Qur'an (al-Baqarah) and my notes for that one chapter are about 3000 words long. I have 500 words of notes on An-Nazi'at and it's only 46 verses long. The more I work on one part, the more meaning I can find when working on another part.
By comparison, my notes on a book like Deep Work is about 3750 words. Aristotle's Poetics is the only other book I combed through sentence by sentence, and it's under 2000 words.
Considering this, I think it's a good pick if I really just wanted one book.
If we're going with secular books, I'd say 33 Strategies of War. It misses many of the criteria above, but it is rereadable. It's probably not the kind of book I'd want to read for the rest of my life; I can imagine becoming toxic and paranoid from that.
Other philosophical books also come close, especially on information density. But most seem to be missing something. Maybe a hack would be reading a book on writing essays and then learning via writing.
Book of Mormon because it is both a collection of ancient records and inspired religious text. Sometimes reading it is like having a conversation with Christ Himself. Amazing book.
