Books, Books, Books...
You can follow The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy if you like, but here's a completely subjective list of books that have actually been helpful in my academic career. It's up to you to decide what particular volumes enrich your life, which ones make for impressive conversation, and which ones you'd rather just have hanging around to jazz up your bookshelf.
- Douglas Adams
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (all five books); Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul; Last Chance to See.
- Henry Adams
- The Education of Henry Adams
- Alicia Appleman-Jurman
- Alicia: My Story
- Hannah Arendt
- Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Human Condition (especially "Action"), The Origins of Totalitarianism
- Margaret Atwood
- The Handmaid's Tale
- Randall Balmer
- Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
- William Blake
- Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience
- Scott Brookie
- Unix for Luddites
- Kenneth C. Davis
- Don't Know Much About History
- Robin Deneslow
- When the Music's Over: The Story of Political Pop
- Elizabeth Ewen
- Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars
- Susan Faludi
- Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
- E.M. Forster
- A Room with a View, Howard's End
- Paul Fussell
- Class
- John Gaventa
- Power and Powerlessness
- Rita Gross
- Buddhism After Patriarchy
- Carlos Guerrero
- A Chicano Theology (one of the best books on liberation theology that I've ever read)
- John Wesley Harding
- Collected Stories (it's probably not strictly fair to include a promo item on a recommended reading list, but you can find the stories in song form on Wes' first couple of albums)
- Joseph Heller
- Catch-22
- Brian Herbert
- Sudanna, Sudanna; Sidney's Comet
- Frank Herbert
- Dune (sequels optional)
- Susannah Heschel, ed.
- On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader
- bell hooks
- Yearning
- Aldous Huxley
- Brave New World
- Joseph C. Landis, Ed.
- A Yiddish Omnibus
- Martin A. Lee and Norman Soloman
- Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media
- Machiavelli
- The Prince (stop groaning--it builds character)
- Walter M. Mller, Jr.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz
- Toni Morrison
- Beloved
- Kadye Molodowsky
- "Women's Songs"
- Shirley Nelson
- The Last Year of the War
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry
- The shorter edition will suffice.
- George Orwell
- 1984
- Dorothy Parker
- I suggest starting with The Portable Dorothy Parker and working from there.
- Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
- Why Americans Don't Vote
- Judith Plaskow
- Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective
- Plato
- Republic
- Thomas Pynchon
- The Crying of Lot 49
- Adrienne Rich
- An Atlas of the Difficult World, Your Native Land, Your Life, The Fact of a Doorframe
- Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza
- In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins
- William Shakespeare
- Just about everything, but especially Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, As You Like It, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet
- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
- The Illuminatus Trilogy
- Leslie Marmon Silko
- Ceremony
- Mona Simpson
- Anywhere But Here
- Christine Stansell
- City of Women
- Hunter S. Thompson
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, Better than Sex
- Thucydides
- The Peloponnesian War
- Michael Walzer
- Just and Unjust Wars
- Walt Whitman
- American Vistas
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
- Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America