I’ll play: (I will stick to fiction, but not Europe) (ping Daffy)
1) Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
2) Hamlet - Shakespeare
3) Pilgrims Progress - Bunyun
4) Odyssey - Homer
5) Nibelungenlied
6) War and Peace - Tolstoy
7) Rashomon
8) Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
9) Genji Monogatori (my preference over Nihongi or Kojiki for Japan)
10) Faith of the Fallen - Goodkind (while one in a series of 11, this fantasy novel is one of the best stories of liberty overcoming an oppressive government and what men can do that I’ve read; and yes it’s self-serving for my preferences to include it here)
11) Orlando Innamarato (Tale of Roland) - Boriado
12) Don Quixote - Cervantes (this is really really hard to limit to 10)
13) Dee Goong An - Van Gulik (translaton of 17th century chinese detective novel originating in the first century and considered by many to be the first in the genre)
14) Silence - Endo (a historical fiction novel of christian persecution in Tokogawa Japan)
non-fiction
1) Bible (King James Version (pure artistry and accurate lingual interpretations) - God (through Moses and many others) (by the way national geographic had a semi-nice article about the history of the KJV recently just stop 1/2 through as they go into hit mode after a nice start)
2) The Republic - Plato
3) Analects - Confucius
4) Killer Angels - Shaara(very accurate historical fiction on Gettysburg)
5) The Art of War - Sun Tzu (over Musashi’s Book of Five Rings and the Hagakure)
6) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy - Newton
7) History of English Speaking People - Churchill
8) Wealth of Nations - Smith
7) Heike Story (Japanese historical fiction debatable)
8) Influence of Seapower Upon History - Mahan
9)Revolutions of the heavenly spheres - copernicus
10) Five Love Languages - Chapman (required as it has been a personal help, again self serving)
11)....I’ll stop now
That was much harder than I anticipated I couldn’t get to Tolkien, Locke, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Twain, Kepler, Milton, Frost, Sandburg, Asimov, Yoshikawa, Orson Scott Card, ... sigh
Here’s a nice link by the way to great books that I occasion, note it is euro-centric as most lists tend to be though there is a lot of great literature throughout Asia as well.
http://books.mirror.org/gb.titles.html
>9) Genji Monogatori (my preference over Nihongi or Kojiki for Japan)
Oh lord no. I had to read that and it was VERY dull.
If you’re looking for great Japanese fiction - Soseki’s Wagahai ha Neko de Aru (I am a cat) is great, so is Kokoro (heart), and Botchan. I really am a fan of Kobo Abe’s “Woman of the Dunes.” I agree with you completely about the Heike Monogatari. Great historical fiction, as is the Shinsengumi. The first book I read all the way through in Japanese was Takami Koushun’s “Battle Royale,” and what a trip it was.
Bookmarking your list for later. I’ll have to try some of these!