TOP 20 Books I've ever read

After reading Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, book club we all compile our Top-10 book lists so we can discover such hidden gems again. It's weird to call Dunces a hidden gem considering it won a Pulitzer Prize, but it seems to be a cult classic.

So, I started compiling my top 10. I was surprised how quickly it came together, but it didn't take long to start feeling bad about leaving out certain titles and authors. For example, I'm ashamed to say that my initial top 10 did not include anything by Dostoevsky. I am staying true to that initial list for the most part because I am currently reading a book that suggests over-thought decisions often lead to disappointment. But, Dostoevsky had to be in there and now he is.

Books carry certain emotional responses that guide any rating. My list is no different. In fact, I am not sure I would have some of these books listed had I read them at any other time in my life than the time I read them. Revisiting the feelings inspired by these books has been a real joy.

I decided to compile my top 20 to accommodate those great books and because I feel like it.

So, without further ado, my top 20 books of all time.

20. (tie) Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell and Moonwalking with Einstein, by Josh Foer. So sue me, I'm adding a book. I couldn't leave either off, so they can both carry the "behavior science" flag that would be wildly missed among any list of my favorite books. Outliers changed how I look at and handle people and Einstein showed me how to use memory palaces.

19. Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman. I read this book after I had finished a draft of my short story and decided this was the kind of book I wanted to write. This book is awesome. It's very "slice-of-life." It has some great phrasing... such as: "He told Cindy Brewer that her voice reminded him of 'a cuntier version of Joan Rivers;' or "He probably enjoyed remembering their conversations more than he ever enjoyed having them;" or "He once punched an alter boy in the chest for ringing a bell incorrectly (which, to be fair, did improve the overall quality of pre-Mass bell ringing by an unbelievable degree."

This book is about a small town and the basic "goings-on" about town. The writing is witty and fun. It is enjoyable and intelligent. I enjoyed it very much.

18. The Book of Basketball, by Bill Simmons. That's right, a basketball book. I laughed so hard reading this book. I love the NBA and basketball. I also love comedy and this book is one of the funniest I've ever read. I stayed up late waiting for the kindle release with my kindle logged on so I could start reading as soon as possible. I've read it twice in a year's time and may read the paperback yet this year. Dave included a book by a wrestler, and I'll include Simmons.

17. Profiles in Courage, by John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I took this book with me to New York when I had a summer internship at Time, Inc. Instead of going out in Manhattan, I read this book and was inspired to aim a little higher. A very inspiring book with great examples of political courage.

16. Guns, Germs & Steele, by J. Diamond. Diamond asks one of the boldest and most uncomfortable questions about human history: Why did certain societies and people progress faster than others? He answers that question definitively. Although his book was very, very detailed and thick with information, I think his conclusion is simple. The mass of information proves his simple conclusion conclusively in my mind. The difference? Chance. Geography. I am convinced that any group of people, if they began civilization at the Fertile Crescent, would have been the ones to thrive rather than suffer. This book was not always easy to read (and sometimes downright difficult), but it earned the Pulitzer it won.

15. Bearing the Cross, by David Garrow. The definitive history of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. (one of my heroes). A view inside the dirty work of moving a people past prejudice (at least in the legal sense). The burdens of being the face of the civil rights movement were beyond comprehension. King is shown with all his brilliance and his flaws equally. An inside look at the cross he carried will leave you breathless.

14. Brothers Karamozov, by Fyodore Dostoevky. The greatest diversity of deeply plumbed characters I am aware of in literature. The characters serve purposely diverse and yet interdependent personalities and paradigms. The concepts tackled in this book are deep and thorough. The Grand Inquisitor is a masterpiece of its own and it is just a part of one chapter. This book is listed as the greatest novel ever written by more than a few sources.

13. Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. Ignatius J. Reilly is one of my favorite characters ever created in literature. This book is funny and a complete joy to read. I just finished it and it made a very strong initial impression that carried through the duration of the book.

12. 1984, by George Orwell. I did not read this book in high school like so many others. I read it many years later, but I enjoyed it deeply. This book introduced words and concepts to our culture and our dictionary (groupthink... Big Brother... etc.). This book impacted our culture and it will make you think long and hard.

11. Memoirs of the Second World War, by Winston Churchill. A first-hand account of WWII by one of its heroes. You will hear Churchill's voice on every page. I love that he makes no bones about this being his attempt to win the narrative of the war. I also love the amazing information and his unique and brilliant (although un-apologetically self-serving) commentary.

10. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodore Dostoevsky. The only author who can stand in the same zip code with Dostoevsky on character depth is Leo Tolstoy. It's those two alone and then everyone else looking up at them. Raskolnikov is an all-time great character and Dostoevsky's creation of his inner dialogue is brilliant. The reader is inserted into Raskolnikov's mind and witnesses his guilt, survival instincts and torment. It is a book about the mind of a man trying to cover up his crime. This is Dostoevsky at his best (and I say this even though Brothers Karamozov is widely considered his masterpiece).

9. A Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. I do not remember much of the plot. I remember Holden Caulfield and that I related to this book because I had moved during my 10th grade year. The famous quote from this book spoke to me at that time: "Don't ever tell anyone anything. If you do, you start missing everyone." That quote fit for me when I read it.

8. War & Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. I am almost done with this one, but I need to put it here with flexibility to move (but not too much) either direction. Already, this book has proven to be profound in a way I can appreciate only as an adult. This book is the wisest novel I have ever read about people. To paraphrase one of our "gifted and talented" book club members, "if you can't relate to a character in a deep way, you aren't paying attention." It is true, as shown by the many posts made on this blog about this amazing tome.

7. The Old Man and the Sea, by Earnest Hemingway. I have read this book probably 4 or 5 times. It is brilliantly written, and the story is so wonderful and pure. This book was one of the first I was able to appreciate on a deep level. I read it in 8th grade. The story is so simple, and the fisherman in this book is a monumental character in literature. I read this book in German (Der Alte Mann und Das Meer) and somehow felt like I was reading it anew. And yet, nothing was different.

6. A World Apart, by Gustaw Herling. Among all the sadness and horror of this book, the part that I will never forget involves the most painful and yet joyous defecation ever described. He describes the joy of freedom from a Gulag while emptying his body of a turd that had been so thoroughly mined for nutrients by his starving body that it was essentially a rock. I have at times read just that chapter because of the amazing power of that scene. The tears of pain and joy are powerfully described.

5. The First American, the Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by H.W. Brands. I love Benjamin Franklin. The amount of information in this book was amazing and it was a page-turner even though it is very long.

The introduction will pull you in for good. From the Prologue, I can still see the image placed in my brain by the author of Franklin walking into Parliament as a loyal British citizen, suffering a humiliation that clarified the true divide in his mind between Britain and the Colonies, and then leave as the first American citizen. The writing was gripping. a few tastes...

Revolutions are not made in a morning, nor enemies lost in a day. But Britain did itself more damage in those two hours than anyone present imagined. By alienating Franklin, the British government showed itself doubly inept: for making an enemy of a friend, and for doing so of the ablest and most respected American alive. At a moment when independence was hardly dreamed of in America, Franklin understood that to independence America must come.

He sailed for home - his real home- still burning with anger and disgust, and immediately took a place at the head of the opposition to British rule. Once the most loyal of Britons, now he became the most radical of Americans, demanding independence and driving the rebellion to a genuine revolution.

The lesson? DO NOT MESS WITH BENJAMIN FRANKLIN! This small passage does not do justice to the prologue. The reader feels as if he or she is standing in public humiliation contemplating the truth of a revolution begun and plotting a path to shove that revolution down the throats of Parliamentarians attempting to humiliate the smartest person on the planet at that time. If you ask me, a more brilliant person has never walked this earth than Benjamin Franklin. This book will at least make you consider him for the title.

Brands makes his bold assertion in the prologue: "Of those patriots who made independence possible, none mattered more than Franklin, and only Washington mattered as much."

Brands makes that case brilliantly.

4. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. This book inspired me to a different life outlook. This book is 1984 applied to the social rather than political realm. The idea of "Soma" made me cancel cable television. This book inspired me to use the time saved to read more books and learn a language. Although I found the end of the book much less satisfying than the beginning, it will always be a favorite for the paradigm shifts it inspired. This book also made me thankful I grew up in a society where a late-bloomer could still succeed. I am grateful never to have been identified early as an "epsilon" only to have so many doors closed so soon. On pure impact in my life, this book is nearly unmatched.

3. Simple Justice, by Richard Kluger. The complete history of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas desegregation case. Segregation is an issue that seems so clear to us today. But it was anything but easy to overturn. This book will take you to the front lines of social change and progress. You will never read the names Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall again without wanting to stand and applaud.

The legal strategy was anything but simple and involved years of small wins to build their own precedent. Those cases were then brought to bear upon the next small victory until all those little victories (allow interracial marriage before school integration, for example) were finally hurled together at the United States Supreme Court. Even then, the outcome was not certain until the chief judge (not sympathetic to the cause) actually died before a decision could be rendered. The re-hearing involved newly-minted Chief Justice Earl Warren, who then navigated a volatile issue and produced a 9-0 decision.

Meanwhile, the Civil Rights movement was fractured on how best to proceed and the different organizations fought over how to proceed and whether the other interfered with progress being made. I read this book while in school and could not put it down. This book will show you how hard progress can be even on such seemingly-clear issues, but it also shows that progress remains possible for those willing to take heroic action!

2. Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book also instilled life lessons. If you want to know how Abraham Lincoln held this country together, read this book. I have never been more impressed with how a person handled crisis. Although the book focuses on the team Lincoln put together, it best illustrates Lincoln's brilliance, patience, and almost perfect demeanor for any task.

After reading this book, I imagine Lincoln on a different plane. His mix of compassion, toughness, political savvy and unimpeachable judgment was unique in history and perfect for the crisis he solved. Dave told me I would mourn Lincoln's death when that part came in the book and he was right. After following him through our most perilous time, his death will hit you like a freight train.

Although his burden's weighed heavily on him, Lincoln never wavered. This book made him human. Kearns-Goodwin makes his personal sadness and his difficult family life very clear. She paints a complete picture and his humanity make him so much more impressive.

Every political science class I ever took spoke of Lincoln's place as our nation's greatest president as if debate were long over. I took an American Presidency class and a ranking of presidents was only controversial if Lincoln were dropped to 2 or 3. He is listed as No. 1 on a vast majority of rankings (many of the lists have political leanings, but Lincoln remains at the top). I had studied the reasons given before, but, although the reasons were strong, it usually involved "well, he saved the Union, so what can you say?" Seemed overly simple an answer and it does not prove that was all his doing.

Team of Rivals ends that debate for me. This nation will never have another president as great as Abraham Lincoln and I am now dead certain of that.

1. Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin. I have always been very skeptical of self-help books. I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey on the recommendation of a friend. Covey openly admitted that Benjamin Franklin's autobiography guided his ideas. So, I decided to go right to the source.

There is no better self-help book, and it is so effective because it does not seek to be a self-help book. This autobiography is really just a look into the life of a person who sought only improvement in his own person and engaged in continuous self-reflection to achieve that end. He advocates pillars of morality that should not bend and even explains his efforts to be perfect, ultimately to determine we can't be perfect, but the effort remains worthy.

Most illuminating is Franklin's attempts to become better at discussion. He studies himself as if he were his own lab rat and chronicle's his results like the scientist he was. He reminds himself to use phrases like "that is a good point, but have you considered... ?" for the purpose earning his adversaries fair consideration of a point.

Unlike many scientific minded among us, Franklin was equally brilliant in the social, political and scientific worlds. And you will see that he takes as much pleasure in the opening of the first library in Pennsylvania as any other accomplishment. It is a great slice of a unique life at a unique time in history.

And it is the best book I have ever read.