Friday, February 06, 2009
The 75 books "every man should read"
I admit, I'm a sucker for silly lists. I was therefore fascinated by Esquire's "unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published." The description is not accurate, actually. The list is really a batch of mostly modern or contemporary novels and famous non-fiction works, some of which are very pop. It is, though, a good list. I have read perhaps a quarter of the books on it, and do not think that the compiler erred by including any of them. That said, given the tone of the list and its authentication of such authors as Larry McMurtry and Stephen King, I would have included The Fountainhead
What books would you include on the "man" book list?
32 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Feb 06, 08:42:00 PM:
I didn't see Raymond Chandler on the list. He had enormous influence on hard-boiled fiction and on the motion-picture industry.
Chandler defined the modern hero: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid ... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."*
(* From Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder.")
By GreenmanTim, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:02:00 PM:
Chick Lit now gets Chuck Lit?
The Sound and the Fury would be on my list.
By Purple Avenger, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:09:00 PM:
Maybe 20% here, probably similar to your 25%. Most of the rest looked like very expendable drivel.
Kurt Saxon's Poor Man's James Bond series - seriously, what good is a male if he doesn't know how to blow up something when it really needs blowing up?
Anything written by Edward Abbey. Anyone who think the desert is empty will change their mind after reading Abbey. Desert Solitaire holds up very well 40 years after it was written.
The Quiet Warrior: Biography of Admiral Raymond Spruance.
Angleton's Wilderness of Mirrors.
Fred Brooks Mythical Man Month.
Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Strunk and White's Elements of Style. If you can't write effectively in business, you are handicapped.
John Muir's How To Keep Yor VW Alive. Sure its a car repair manual, but it also reads like a novel. The novel part is about how learning to fix things and using tools is an act of liberation. In grad school this book changed my life. It turned me into a tool freak and empowered me to tackle things later on that would have seem overwhelming to a lot of people.
Petroski's To Engineer Is Human. You don't need to be an engineer to appreciate this book. Petroski's main point is that failure is a necessary component of later success.
Victor Papanek's: Design For The Real World. When you come to realize your own life is a "design" just like anything else, this book takes on new meaning beyond engineering.
George Will's: Men At Work, the Craft of Baseball.
That's just a few of my faves...
By 
, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:13:00 PM:
I would have substituted All the Pretty Horses for Blood Meridian. Pretty Horses is much more relatable what I think most men's lives are like while Blood Meridian is a work of unmitigated violence. Pretty Horses is defined but what is largely missing: the love story. Truely heartbreaking. (The rest of the trilogy is good too.) John Grady Cole. What a gangster.
I'm ashamed to say I've read exactly 2 books on the list. However, I love lists like these because Amazon tends to get me stuck in a rut, reading wise. I added a few on the list to my wish list. Who knows if I'll ever read them. I like good literature but it's hard to read. For instance, I've twice tried to read Gravity's Rainbow and been defeated.
I would add these two:
Killing Rage by Eamon Collins. It's about a member of the IRA who learns the pointlessness of his tactics. A true and unflinching look at modern guerilla warfare.
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer. I don't know what this one is about but it spoke to me. It's at least partly about outgrowing your heroes. And about booze, and dating women out of your league, and failure. I think any man who can't tell a story worth a beer about one of those topics hasn't lived.
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:17:00 PM:
Hey, where do I get that book called "La Quinta"?
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:22:00 PM:
Eiouww, Cheever, Updike, Styron, and both Kingsley and Martin Amis.
I think that list was put together by a refugee from the New Yorker editorial staff.
How about the Maxim hot 75?
By , at
Fri Feb 06, 09:32:00 PM:
Jules Verne - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"
A least one of the great biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt
By Unknown, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:42:00 PM:
I would suggest at least one book each by Robert Rourk and Kenneth Roberts. I'm OK with Stephen King being on the list but not sure that The Shining would be my choice. I agree with the last commenter that there should be a book either by or about Churchill.
By SR, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:50:00 PM:
Hayek's Road to Serfdom
Sharansky's A Case for Democracy
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:56:00 PM:
I think they were missing the King James and the first folio too.
By , at
Fri Feb 06, 10:51:00 PM:
Not surprising that Esquire would exclude the great wealth of SciFi in their list. Frank Herbert's Dune, Asimov's Foundation/I Robot, any of Heinlein's works, or James Blish's "Cities in Flight."
Further, Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces" is abysmal reading, as is Faulkner's "As I lay Dying", included I'm sure because some cloistered literary snot said they are great.
And Koestlers "Darkness at Noon" is a revelatory insight into the Stalinist paradise.
By , at
Fri Feb 06, 11:05:00 PM:
And where are Shakespeare's works, the medevils, or the ancients? "As You Like It"? "The Prince"? "The Odyssey"?
By Stephen, at
Fri Feb 06, 11:26:00 PM:
To make the list it seems that the book had to have a manly theme (e.g. war), a manly narrator, and/or a manly protagonist. Maybe what they have in common is that after a few pages you can tell a guy wrote them.
You mention Travis McGee. I also liked the other MacDonald, Ross, and his detective Lew Archer. Long-buried secrets, greed, and the treachery of the fair sex--a Lew Archer novel could always be counted on to make a reader question the goodness of hiss fellow human beings.
Before James Michener got rich from thousand-page historical novels, he won the Pulitzer for Tales of the South Pacific. It's a quick read and depicts the brutality of war in a Pacific paradise that's all but vanished. (I enjoy the Rodgers & Hammerstein songs, but the musical's sensibility is as different from the book as My Fair Lady is different from Pygmalion.)
By , at
Fri Feb 06, 11:34:00 PM:
"Gates of Fire" by Steven Pressfield. Manly reading for manly men.
I agree. Nothing by the Bard? Herodotus? H.G. Welles? Charles Dickens? Saul Bellow? V.S. Naipul?
Barack Obama? Okay, now I'm getting punchy.
"The Shining"? Get real. Steven King grinds this bilge out by the truckload.
"The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe. (?) Better to choose "The Bonfire of the Vanities" if you want a book by Wolfe, but that would be too telling.
If they had to have a book by Ken Kesey, they should have chosen "Sometimes a Great Notion", rather than the book about the crazy people (heh) "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
And we should be thankful that "Catcher in the Rye",or "Lord of the Flies" weren't included.
"War and Peace"? Nobody reads that, it's too frickin' long and boring. I tried. Makes a great paperweight, though.
I think Jack Nicholson must have had a hand in this list, because he was in several movie versions of books listed (looking for coincidences): "The Shining", "The Postman Rings Twice", "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest".
-David
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Feb 06, 11:42:00 PM:
To Stephen
In 1968 I had an opportunity to chat with Michener for an hour. He talked about the books he had written up to that point.
"Which is your favorite?" I asked.
"The Bridges at Toko-Ri," he responded. "That was, artistically, my favorite. In that book I did what I wanted to do."
By DJMooreTX, at
Sat Feb 07, 01:09:00 AM:
There is no excuse not to include even a single volume of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Personally, I'd put in at least two as a diptych: Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms.
But if I had to choose one and only one, it would be Going Postal.
In every one of his books, PTerry puts the English language up on the lift, takes it apart, polishes the pieces to perfection, then puts them back together to make something utterly new and true.
His word play is fractal.
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 02:53:00 AM:
I subscribed to Esquire magazine for a while. I canceled my subscription when an article on men's suits became an article about President Bush looking like a monkey. Such hate filled bias ruins their credibility for me.
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 04:38:00 AM:
No Allen Drury, Michener, John OHara, Wilbur Smith, Fred Forsyth, Louis Lamour, Zane Grey, mumble (the guy who wrote "Shane"), Dick Francis, Tolkien, Cloete, Sir Walter Scott etc?
And every young man should read Louisa Alcott's "Little Women", Mara OHara "The Green Grass Of Wyoming", Rosemary Sutcliffe "Sword At Sunset".
(Missing Lamour is unforgivable)
JC
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 04:58:00 AM:
"Lonesome Dove" and "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" come to mind.
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 04:59:00 AM:
The previous comment was mine.
Memo to self: Don't comment in the wee hours.
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 07:53:00 AM:
If we are opening it up to non 'modern' works My list would include:
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Federalist Papers
From the modern area I would Include:
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
And
Theodore Rex
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Feb 07, 08:40:00 AM:
'Song of Ice and Fire,' (aka Game of Thrones series) by George Martin.
The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Bradley.
Dune, by Frank Herbert. (although I must admit that since learning Arabic, I personally have less respect for his 'creativity.' Fierce desert people who rise up under the influence of a religious prophet to take control of a natural resource unique to their deserts that happens to be vital for maintaining the economy and performing long-distance travel? What a concept.)
Lord of the Rings!
By wayne fontes, at
Sat Feb 07, 10:27:00 AM:
No Orwell?
I'd have substituted "The Path Between The Seas" for "The Great Bridge".
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Feb 07, 11:04:00 AM:
For readers with an interest in international business, I would recommend James Clavell's "Tai-Pan" and "Noble House." You need to read them both--they are Part 1 and Part 2 of the same story.
The books have some things in common with the history of the Jardine Matheson Group.
History of Jardines:
"Since its foundation Jardines has been one of Asia's most dynamic trading companies, often having to reinvent itself in order to survive and prosper."
http://www.jardine-matheson.com/profile/history.html
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 11:29:00 AM:
For sea adventures I prefer C. S. Forester's Hornblower series to Patrick O'Brian, and I'm old enough to remember waiting for the next installment to be published. I'm reading through Dewey Lamden's Alan Lewrie series the first two of which give a view of the American Revolution from the other side.
In mysteries and thrillers my favorite author is the late Donald Hamilton whose Matt Helm character is at least as good as Travis McGee. Try Death of a Citizen. He also has many Western Novels and non-Matt Helm works from his early period. My favorites are Assignment Murder and Line of Fire. He gets the gun bits right. The Rabbi series by Harry Kemelman is also enjoyable. Finally there's Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series which was well done on A&E Television.
For early spy books you can't beat Manning Coles (Manning and Coles, a writing team). The first, Drink to Yesterday, is situated in First World War Cologne where protagonist Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon an English public school languages teacher turned spy and his former star pupil operate. The second, A Toast to Tomorrow, takes place during the rise of Hitler in Munich and Berlin in the early 1930s. Of course the premier spy novel of which all others are derivative is Ashendon by W. Somerset Maugham.
JLW III
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 03:07:00 PM:
James Clavell was a fascinating story in himself.
His seminal work was probably "King Rat", which was based on his own experiences as a POW of the Japanese at Chiangi prison (pretty horrible stuff).
"Shogun" , the novelized version of Japanese medieval history is of course well known.
Alistair McClean seems to have been forgotten; his Cold War thrillers were actually pretty good and imaginative, like "Ice Station Zebra", "Circus" and "A Road to a Dusty Death".
And there is also the series of Cold War spy novels by Len Deighton, which were pretty good, too.
And Edward N. (Ned)Beach, who was a sub commander in WWII, wrote some really good novels, "Up Periscope" and "Run Silent, Run Deep", a classic.
I read "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" about 40 years ago, and though it is rather short, it is easily the best of Michener's books that I have read (though I have never read "Tales from the South Pacific").
-David
By , at
Sat Feb 07, 03:29:00 PM:
Thinking about these thousands of great books and authors..
On balance I go for Michener; he introduced me to the most diverse topics and studied them in depth, albeit in a novelists way.. is there anything more poetic than the description of the birth of the island Hawaii?
JC
By GreenmanTim, at
Sat Feb 07, 10:15:00 PM:
Jack London...Boon Island, or the short story "To Build a Fire"
The Cruel Sea. The Battle of the Atlantic, 2 ships, one doomed.
Sometimes a Great Notion: My favorite of Kesey's novels. The Stamper family of heroic strikebreaking loggers gives the finger to the world and refuses to give an inch to man or nature.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Feb 07, 11:51:00 PM:
I would choose something else by LeCarre. I would indeed add Heinlein and Orwell, plus Tolkien and Solzhenitsyn as well.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Feb 08, 12:07:00 AM:
I do hope the spy-novel fans have read Eric Ambler. From his NY Times obit in 1998: "Mr. Ambler, a worldly Englishman, is generally credited with having raised the thriller to the level of literature."
Said one literary historian: "Virtually single-handedly, he redefined the thriller so as to make possible the achievement of such postwar realists as John le Carre and Len Deighton."
The obit adds: "Graham Greene praised him as 'the greatest living writer of the novel of suspense' and called himself one of Mr. Ambler's disciples. Mr. le Carre, who is 22 years younger than Mr. Ambler and is best known for his espionage novel 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,' called Mr. Ambler's novels 'the well into which everybody had dipped.' "
By , at
Sun Feb 08, 09:50:00 AM:
Most of what's on the list is a poor imitation of a high school reading list, composed mostly of authors whose only hope of being read is if they are assigned. But rather than pick apart a bad list, I'll add to it.
In fiction, I'd include more O'Brien (maybe as many as ten books from his Aubrey/Maturin series), Wodehouse (one of the best ever), certainly Dickens (OK, I'm a sucker for 19th century English lit. so, given freedom, I'd throw the Bronte's and Austen in there too). As a poster pointed out, excluding Shakespeare is bizarre (especially his wonderful and often overlooked histories, like Henry IV). If we're only talking modern books that appeal to Manhattan editors, I like Nabakov's Pnin. I prefer later period Hemingway to his early books, and would choose Islands in the Stream over For Whom the Bell Tolls. From earlier Hemingway, I like Old Man and the Sea, which I just reread. The best thing Faulkner ever wrote was the screenplay to "To Have and Have Not", by the way. How many authors get to move from grandma listening to her coffin being made to working with a 19 year old steamy beauty like Bacall as they get older during their career?
As a big fan of detective novels, historical novels and science fiction, I'd include lots of representative books from those genres over the tripe on the list. Chandler has been mentioned. Walter Mosley might become a great writer someday if he writes more novel length stuff and with a touch less self-righteousness. Even with his uneven works, Mosley is very good as it is and I highly recommend his books. Read any of his Easy Rawlins stories. Travis McGee is one of my default series (stuff I reread when I don't have anything new in the house), so I'm a sucker for MacDonald. For "western" novels, Larry McMurtry is very readable. So much more...
Why no biographies? I love biographies!
Thank the lord above for books.
By , at
Sun Feb 08, 02:08:00 PM:
I forgot the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser.
Tony Hillerman's and Dick Francis' books are also good reads.
JLW III
