Nine Books to Drop Everything and Read

Reprinted from Mental Floss



If you’re a passionate reader, you’re always on the hunt for the next book that will totally engross you. We’ve pinpointed some that are worth the old drop-everything-and-read treatment.

1) The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

After he’d won the Civil War and spent two terms in the White House, Grant was strapped for cash. His pal Mark Twain convinced the retired general to pen his memoirs, which Twain then published. Just how good was the finished product? Twain called it “a great, unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece.”

2) The Moonstone  by Wilkie Collins

Nothing is quite as gripping as a good mystery novel, and Collins’ masterpiece, first published in 1868, is sometimes credited as the very first detective novel. If you like a good whodunit, it’s worth the effort to find out where the genre got its start.

3) The Amateur Cracksman  by E.W. Hornung

Hornung enjoyed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories so much that in the 1890s he set out to craft his own take on the brilliant investigator. Hornung got creative, though. Instead of creating his own detective, he dreamed up A.J. Raffles, an anti-Holmes who made his living as a “gentleman thief” and burglar. The resulting stories are thrilling and often hilarious.

4) Tom Sawyer, Detective  by Mark Twain

Twain would know a little something about literary masterpieces. He’d also know something about baffling sequels. Published in 1896, Tom Sawyer, Detective details the title character’s efforts to solve a murder in a burlesque house. How can you not drop everything to read that?

5) The Wealth of Nations  by Adam Smith

For a book published in 1776, Adam Smith’s revolutionary The Wealth of Nations is a surprisingly engaging and approachable read. It can get a little technical in parts, but a solid read will arm you with more economics knowledge than you ever thought you’d have.

6) Pride and Prejudice  by Jane Austen

If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, what are you doing reading on the Web? Pride and Prejudice is funny, beautifully written, and indispensable. The only downside is that since writing wasn’t considered an honorable vocation for a woman of Austen’s class, she couldn’t take credit for the novel when it came out. The title page reads “By the author Sense and Sensibility.” That book, in turn, only reveals that it was written “By a lady.”

7) Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Bronte

Like Austen, the brilliant Bronte sisters disguised their identities. Before Charlotte Bronte broke out with her incredible novel Jane Eyre, the three sisters adopted the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. In 1846, the Brontes self-published a collection of poetry under these pseudonyms. How did the three literary titans’ debut fare? They sold a whopping two copies. Things took a positive turn for Charlotte the following year when, still writing as Currer Bell, she found a publisher for Jane Eyre.

8) One Thousand and One Nights

Sure, you probably know Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad. But there are still hundreds of classic Middle Eastern folk tales waiting for you in this volume. How can you read a story title like “The Fakir and His Jar of Butter” and not be just a little intrigued?

9) Walden  by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau’s beautiful account of living in New England seclusion is gripping for its simplicity, but it wasn’t easy to write. Thoreau needed seven years to write and edit the 18 essays that he wrote while living in a cabin on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s land for two years. It’s hard to blame Thoreau for heading to the wilderness; his other option was sticking with the family pencil-making business.
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Inspiration?

So You Want to Be a Writer
By Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

 

 

The Lunacy of Language

All hail my fellow wordsmiths!

 

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

 But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

 One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,

 Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

 You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,

 Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

 

 If the plural of man is always called men,

 Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

 If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,

 And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

 If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,

 Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

 

 Then one may be that, and three would be those,

 Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,

 And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

 We speak of a brother and also of brethren,

 But though we say mother, we never say methren.

 Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,

 But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

 

 Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

 There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;

 Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

 English muffins weren't invented in England .

 

 We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,

 We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,

 And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

 And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing,

 Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

 Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

 If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,

 What do you call it?

 

 If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

 If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

 

 Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English

 Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

 In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

 

 We ship by truck but send cargo by ship...

 We have noses that run and feet that smell.

 We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

 And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,

 While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

 

 You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language

 In which your house can burn up as it burns down,

 In which you fill in a form by filling it out,

 And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

 

 Oh well, we can all shake our heads as we nod in agreement.

 

From The Writer’s Platform (a Facebook page)