Becoming an Intellectual

<p>What are some of the "books" on that "books-almost-everyone-has-read-before-going-to-college"-list? You know, books everyone talks about for some reason or another. Preferably good books, that most people have enjoyed.</p>

<p>goosebumps.</p>

<p>lollerskates, you want to become an intellectual? roflcopter!</p>

<p>Hahahaha, ptmagnolia, that was perfect.</p>

<p>The World is Flat
From Beirut to Jerusalem
The Lexus and the Olive Tree--all by Thomas Friedman
Freakonomics--Steven Levine
The Life of Pi
all your usual classics, Gatsby, Hemingway, etc.</p>

<p>The Republican War on Science. It'll blow your mind. Basically it shows how politicians have and do tweak science for their own agenda. It's mostly about Republicans, but Democrats get a few mentions as well.</p>

<p>some of my favorite authors: ayn rand, george orwell, joseph heller, kahlil gibran, daniel quinn, ralph ellison, aldous huxley, william burroughs, george l. jackson, jean-paul sarte, kurt vonnegut, jm coetzee, franz kafa, albert camus, homer, peter singer, richard wright, james baldwin, henry miller, jean genet, upton sinclair, arthur miller, hermann hesse, jostein gaarder</p>

<p>ANYTHING by john irving. everyone will have read the world according to garp, but a prayer for owen meany and especially the 158 pound marraige are well worth reading as well. i'd also recommend lolita, it's the most beautifully written book i've ever read.</p>

<p>For Shaganov:
have you read Nabokov's Ada Or Ador yet? I could not agree more, he's undoubtedly the most lyrical author I've ever read. Of course, he's always somewhat of a disturbing author for any moral reader haha. I hated Humbert for his lust and Lolita for even more. On the other hand, Ada pushes the barriers of "PC" even more so than Lolita, but it still becomes his most magical, idyllic writing in my opinion (I've read almost all of Nabokov). Check it out.</p>

<p>Sry guys, I've read all the goosebumps already. Thanks for all the other suggestions though. Keep them coming!</p>

<p>Goosebumps are good, but how about the Wayside School series? They are the best!</p>

<p>In all seriousness, the titles I recommend are "Catcher in the Rye", "The Great Gatsby", and "Fareinheit 451".</p>

<p>I've also heard listening to classical music makes you smarter. Then I heard trance music makes you smarter. I listen to mostly European stuff so I really like trance--if you think the effect is legit (ever since I got hooked on trance I've done really well in school, but it may just be the courses and professors I had) I recommend "No Silence" by ATB. Even if you don't want to use it to become more intelligent (that effect may just be someone joking around) it's worth getting--the music is great to study to, drive to, do anything to! If you insist on classical, Mozart is considered to have the most effect.</p>

<p>And if you really want to be an intellect, don't drink. It impairs your judgement. Eat fish--it supposedly is brain food--I like to eat it 3 times a week or so. And don't do drugs either.</p>

<p>pffft...drinking doesn't impair your judgement, people only use that to justify how they act. For the most part, it makes you, as I call it, "lag". and freakonomics=nothing new. Just read Dilbert: "The Way of the Weasel"and you will be set for life, and possibly win</p>

<p>anyone know any good physics books? i dont mean like textbooks but i mean for knowlegable reading...</p>

<p>"surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" by Dr. Feynman</p>

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anyone know any good physics books?

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<p>You may want to try "Crack in the Edge of the World" by Simon Winchester. It just recently came out regarding the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. It integrates history, physics (seismology...in laymen's terms), and geology into an excellent book that spans genres. Unfortunately it's still only in paperback, but it is definately worth the price.</p>

<p>See Spot Run</p>

<p>
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anyone know any good physics books?

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</p>

<p>I read a great physics book titled "Art and Physics. Parallel visions in Space, Time and Light". It's by Leonard Shlain. It looks at the parallels between art and discoveries in physics. So it's not completely a physics book, but it's still very interesting. </p>

<p>To the OP: Read some Nietzsche. And "Crime and Punishment".</p>

<p>Feynman's Lectures on Physics are very very good, but they're pretty long and are probably more useful as a reference than just something to plow through....although I like reading it just for fun sometimes.</p>

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<p>mactech never ceases to make me smile.</p>

<p>its not that the comment seems horribly out of place. rather, its that he had just recommended an 'intellectual' book written by a raging alcoholic, f scott fitzgerald. i love irony.</p>

<p>anyway, being an 'intellectual' (not that i claim to be one) requires a lot of reading and most importantly a strong understanding of the history of western thought. the following would probably be a good start:</p>

<p>plato - the republic; aristotle- metaphysics, nicomachean ethics, politics; the bible; aquinas- on being and esssence, the principles of nature; erasmus- the praise of folly; machiavelli- the prince; descartes- meditations on first philosophy; hobbes- leviathon; spinoza- ethics; berkeley- treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge; rousseau- the social contract; montesquieu- the spirit of laws; kant- get a reader; hume- a treatise of human nature; smith- ...the wealth of nations; hegel- logic and phenomenology of spirit; marx- the communit manifesto, capital; schopenhauer- the world as will and representation; freud- civilization and its discontents; nietzsche- thus spoke zarathustra; heidegger- being and time; russell- get a reader; sartre- being and nothingness; kierkegaard- either/or; rand- pick one, i preferred the fountainhead; foucault- get an anthology.</p>

<p>throw in some more classic works of fiction (pilgrims progress, the count of monte cristo, david copperfield, wuthering heights, jane eyre, the scarlet letter, anna karenina, the picture of dorian gray, jude the obscure, ulysses, brave new world, the great gatsby, the trial, 1984, lord of the flies, lolita, the tin drum (a good movie, too), catch-22, et cetera) and youll be set.</p>

<p>yes, its summer and im bored.</p>

<p>Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, it's a crucial read in my opinion. Eric's list is spot-on, but I'd add Walden by Henry David Thoreau to the list.</p>

<p>and the Brothers Karamazov. Especially pay attention to the speech by the Grand Inquisitor (to Jesus).</p>

<p>And I second ericatbucknell's suggestions.</p>

<p>And since my friend just asked me for a list (to study for the MCAT w/)...I took this one from someone else's lj:</p>

<h1>1 The Bible</h1>

<h1>2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (HATED IT)</h1>

<h1>3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes</h1>

<h1>4 The Koran</h1>

<h1>5 Arabian Nights</h1>

<h1>6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain</h1>

<h1>7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift</h1>

<h1>8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer</h1>

<h1>9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne</h1>

<h1>10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman</h1>

<h1>11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli</h1>

<h1>12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe</h1>

<h1>13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank</h1>

<h1>14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert</h1>

<h1>15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens</h1>

<h1>16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo</h1>

<h1>17 Dracula by Bram Stoker</h1>

<h1>18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin</h1>

<h1>19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding</h1>

<h1>20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne</h1>

<h1>21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (HATED IT)</h1>

<h1>22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon</h1>

<h1>23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy</h1>

<h1>24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin</h1>

<h1>25 Ulysses by James Joyce</h1>

<h1>26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio</h1>

<h1>27 Animal Farm by George Orwell</h1>

<h1>28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell</h1>

<h1>29 Candide by Voltaire</h1>

<h1>30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee</h1>

<h1>31 Analects by Confucius</h1>

<h1>33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck</h1>

<h1>34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway</h1>

<h1>35 Red and the Black by Stendhal</h1>

<h1>36 Das Kapital by Karl Marx</h1>

<h1>37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire</h1>

<h1>38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</h1>

<h1>39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence</h1>

<h1>40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley</h1>

<h1>41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser</h1>

<h1>42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell</h1>

<h1>43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair</h1>

<h1>44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque</h1>

<h1>45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx</h1>

<h1>46 Loary by Samuel Pepys</h1>

<h1>48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway</h1>

<h1>49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy</h1>

<h1>50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury</h1>

<h1>51-54 MISSING</h1>

<h1>55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller</h1>

<h1>56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X</h1>

<h1>57 Color Purple by Alice Walker</h1>

<h1>59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke</h1>

<h1>60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison</h1>

<h1>61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe</h1>

<h1>62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</h1>

<h1>63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck</h1>

<h1>64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison</h1>

<h1>65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou</h1>

<h1>66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau</h1>

<h1>67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais</h1>

<h1>68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes</h1>

<h1>69 The Talmud</h1>

<h1>70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau</h1>

<h1>71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson</h1>

<h1>72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence</h1>

<h1>73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser</h1>

<h1>74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler</h1>

<h1>75 Separate Peace by John Knowles</h1>

<h1>76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath</h1>

<h1>77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck</h1>

<h1>78 Popol Vuh</h1>

<h1>79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith</h1>

<h1>80 Satyricon by Petronius</h1>

<h1>81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl</h1>

<h1>82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov</h1>

<h1>83 Black Boy by Richard Wright</h1>

<h1>84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu</h1>

<h1>85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut</h1>

<h1>86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George</h1>

<h1>87 Metaphysics by Aristotle</h1>

<h1>88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (ALL OF THEM...HAH!)</h1>

<h1>89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin</h1>

<h1>90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse</h1>

<h1>91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene</h1>

<h1>92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner</h1>

<h1>93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner</h1>

<h1>94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin</h1>

<h1>95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig</h1>

<h1>96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</h1>

<h1>97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud</h1>

<h1>98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood</h1>

<h1>99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown</h1>

<h1>100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess</h1>

<h1>101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines</h1>

<h1>102 Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau</h1>

<h1>103 Nana by Emile Zola</h1>

<h1>104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier</h1>

<h1>105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin</h1>

<h1>106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</h1>

<h1>107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein</h1>

<h1>108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck</h1>

<h1>109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark</h1>

<h1>110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (HATED TOO)</h1>