A question for any teacher

[Goldom]

of any sort.

Name a book you think everyone ought to read to be "culturally literate". I know, quite the selection, but pick one. Even if it's not the best, as that would be hard to decide. Can be anything really, but preferably of the fiction/novel variety. But not neccisarily. Oh, and being in English would help.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. Culturally literate in the current US? Or the world?

[Goldom]

5. either really..

[LearnedHand]

2. New translation ...

...of Anna Karenina. I haven't yet read it, but it's supposed to be fantastic.

If you want more modern stuff, try anything by Margaret Atwood (if you prefer female writers); or John Updike or Pat Conroy if you prefer male writers.

Tim O'Brien writes spectacular stuff, especially his earlier works. Try "The Nuclear Age" or "The Things They Carried."

There's so much more; hard to know where to even begin.

[roguevalley]

3. Lord of the Rings because it was the start of popular fantasy.

[BigMcLargehuge]

4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque

deals with coming of age, the horrors of war, loyalty, honor, love, sadness, and madness.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

6. The People's History of the US by Howard Zinn

[strategery blunder]

10. I second that nt

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

7. The Grapes of Wrath

There's so many good ones to pick. I hate just picking one.

[LiberteToujours]

18. I found that book incredibly boring

Maybe I wasn't sophisticated enough for it or something.

[Bluebear]

8. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo (Read powerful excerpt here)

"If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed, if there are bullets to be fired, if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us, the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food, the guys who make cloths and paper and houses and tiles the guys who build dams and power plants and string the long moaning high tension wires, the guys who crack crude oil down in a dozen different parts who make light globes and sewing machines and shovels and automobiles and airplanes and tanks and guns. Oh no, it will not be us who die. It will be you.

It will be you---you who urge us on to battle, you who incite us against ourselves, you who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler, you who would have one man who works kill another man who works, you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who only wants to live. Remember this. Remember this well, you people who plan for war. Remember, this you patriots, you fierce ones, you spawners of hate, you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.

We are men of peace. We are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace, if you take away our work, if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us, we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent. It lies within or own boundaries here and now. We have seen it and we know it.

Put the gun into our hands and we will use them.

Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one, not ten, not ten thousand, not a million, not ten million, not ten millions, not a hundred millions but a billion, two billions of us, all the people of the world. We will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars and point us the way and we will point the gun."

[Bat Boy]

9. To Kill a Mockingbird n/t

[flygal]

11. I agree

[ropi]

12. The Giver

eom

[Dudley_DUright]

19. Another vote for Mockingbird

[Whoa_Nelly]

13. A Separate Reality

Further Conversations with Don Juan
by Carlos Castaneda

[JSJ]

14. "huckleberry finn"- twain

[mrbill]

15. anything by joseph campbell

The Hero With A Thousand Faces is a good start.

[realisticphish]

16. 1984

orwell. no better time for it


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[REP]

17. "The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth