100 Books to Read in a Lifetime (That Are Older Than 200 Years)

aulsmith: Silverbooks is correct, but I found it engaging. Of course, I was only 12 and never reread it, so I'm not sure how it would come off now.

: mostly propaganda

Turambar: True, Franklin does a good deal of propagandizing, but the book is a sparkling example of Enlightenment Plain Style as well as being one of our earliest examples of American Exceptionalism and a sort of Pragmatism. It doesn't matter if you agree with his views or not; it's undeniably significant.

aulsmith : Definitely parts of it, but the whole thing? Nah.

aulsmith : Published 1843

camainc : One only needs to read Augustine's City of God to know that Gibbon was so very wrong about the reasons for Rome's "decline and fall."

Turambar: Whether Gibbon was wrong or not is irrelevant to whether The Decline and Fall ought to be read. We don't read Herodotus because he was right. We read him because he helped shape how a civilization thought, as did Gibbon in his own, later way.

JacobKirckman: Gibbon's not 'on my list', as I have it (just not catalogued on LT yet)! Commenting purely to counter Camainc's claim that Gibbon was wrong. I'd take an historian (even an 18th century one) over a Bible-Basher any day...

aulsmith : Not the whole thing. I took a seminar on Donne, and we didn't even read them all.

: another white dude book and religion - bah

karenb: Squeaking by, barely (published 1812)

karenb : Taking Chretien de Troyes instead.

camainc : A better choice would be Idylls of the King by Tennyson.

: boring and more white dudes

Betelgeuse: Idylls of the King is too recent: published between 1859-1885.

lorax : I really don't think everyone needs to read a book that's been called "the book nobody read" (see http://www.librarything.com/work/16335 ). I have a PhD in astronomy and even I never read this; it's important to know about it, and why it was important, but actually reading it? Reading the old, old primary sources isn't important in science the way it is in history.

cemanuel : Agreed. The purpose of this list is specifically for alternatives to Amazon's. Great book though.

aulsmith : Awful. Instead of an adventure story, I got a White Man triumphs over nature with a sermon.

Betelgeuse: Wonderful. A gripping adventure and morality tale. More than a shipwreck story, it is also about repentance and humility. Defoe's novel has several Biblical parallels, including Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, the parable of Jonah, and the sufferings of Job. Lessons can be learned from this book, if one overlooks Crusoe's anachronistic imperialism. But Robinson Crusoe is not a dour sermon. It is surprisingly fast-paced, and the first-person narrative gives it even more immediacy. Everyone knows the basics of the plot: the shocking discovery of the footprint, the appearance of Friday, the threat of cannibals, Crusoe's mastery of the island and its elements. There are also lesser known action sequences, such as the exciting wolfpack scene near the end of the book. A great early novel.