I love great books. Sometimes I surprise myself but the need to share my opinions on truly great literature overrides every other intention at times. I am an avid reader and throughout my reading I have come across books that really changed my life, my thinking, my point of view, and I do consider them the greatest books of all time. They may not be bestsellers, they may not be amazing to read to the average reader, but to me, they are the greatest books of all time. The greatest books of all, not novels, not plays, not poems.
- The Bible – Everything about the bible just smells great. The teachings, the philosophy and the style just smell of greatness. I may not follow everything that it teaches, I may not agree with everything that is contained within those pages, but I have to admit it. It is the greatest book of all time for having changed my life, and my thinking, and probably the thinking of billions the world over. If this book was to be considered a collection of books, and I was to pick on one of the 66, I would settle for the book of Revelation.
- Das Kapital – It amazes me to this moment that a single human being could come up with all that stuff. Karl Marx had many great thoughts, and he wrote very good literature, but Capital is not here for any of those reasons, its here for the shear nature of its complexity. How he managed to come up with all that information still entrances me to this very minute. It’s no wonder that it follows the Bible in sales!
- The Analects of Confucius – I have mentioned it before in some other article. Jesus Christ and the Chinese philosopher K'ung-fu-tzu popularly known as Confucius had many things in common, and probably, Jesus must have been a student of Confucius. The sayings and fragments of information contained in the aforementioned text are simply amazing though they were collected years after his death.
- The Quran – Now, have I heard question marks? Am not Muslim but I have read the Quran from cover to cover and like the beauty of this wonderful book. This is a collection of wonderfully written poems that smell so much of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament in general, but it inspired my creativity a while back and made me a better man. Nowadays, I have learned to appreciate all religions.
- The Mahabharata – Probably there are murmurs from some quarters, but my first contact with this great piece of literature was in form of its television series that were broadcast on national television when I was very young. I made a point of looking for it when I joined university later on and wasn’t disappointed. I consider it the greatest of all the Hindu classics I have read (Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita and Mahabharata) and probably one of the greatest books of all time. Consider this randomly chosen line from this text: ‘What may be the greatest of gains? What may be the greatest happiness?’ and the answer: ‘Health is the greatest of gains; contentment is the greatest happiness.’ It’s this great insight, this great story telling that I find too great to let go.
- The Republic – Plato’s The Republic is one of the greatest books in western philosophy. Well I stole the copy I have for I couldn’t get this in the bookshops and would probably still it again if the circumstances wouldn’t have changed. Its greatness lies in the simplicity of its style: plain dialogue. No one, not even the great David Hume, Rene Descartes, Marx or Hegel did present their ideas this simple.
- War and Peace – Yes, you guessed it. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy may be the greatest novel of all time, but this title, War and Peace by the same author left a profound effect on my writing. It shocked and thrilled me at the same time. That a human being could keep so many characters (almost the total number of people in a whole town!) in control and still tell an amazing story of human nature in times of war, still amazes me to this very minute. Save for the size which may scare many a reader, if you have some three weeks of quality time, dedicate it to this masterpiece and your view of art shall never be the same again.
- Think and Grow rich – This book by Napoleon Hill got me thinking, and wanting to be rich, and well, I think am on the right track.
- Gitanjali – Perhaps you screamed Gita…what? Well I wouldn’t blame you. This is a rare book of beautiful poetry written by the 1913 Nobel Prize winner in literature, the Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. It’s beautiful and short enough for the lazy reader. It taught me that poetry is music, and music is poetry, but that great poetry lies not in words, not in meaning, not in rhyme, but in the rhythm.
- Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung – Love him or hate him, these 427 quotations Chairman Mao Tse Tung of china form one of the greatest books in the world. They are better known in the west as The Little Red Book. Of all the communist leaders of the past Mao stands out as the best of all time. Not just for his ideas, but for the way he transformed china within the shortest time possible. His ideas remain attractive to me and this little book simplifies these great ideas for both intellectuals and laymen alike.
Have I left out your pick? Well it’s my list of the ten greatest books of all time. The ten that I have read, and then ten that I would save from any fire seeking to consume a library.