Novels and short stories from before about 1970 that stay in print and on syllabuses, from Austen, Tolstoy and Dickens to Hemingway, Kafka, Camus and Borges.
A novel of a Lithuanian immigrant family ruined in Chicago's meatpacking yards.
Recommended by: Nat Eliason, Benedict Evans
Bacon's utopia of organised research; science as an institution
Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Peter Thiel
Girard reading Dostoevsky; mimetic rivalry and resentment
Recommended by: Peter Thiel
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, David Kadavy, Tim O’Reilly
Recommended by: Richard Branson
Recommended by: Patrick Collison
Captain Ahab drives his whaling crew to hunt the white whale that maimed him.
Recommended by: Steve Jobs
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Patrick Collison and 2 others
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Richard Branson
Recommended by: Patrick Collison
Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Mike Maples, Jr. and 1 other
A novel of a rich man of unknown origin on Long Island and the woman he wants back.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Patrick Collison, Anna Cheng and 3 others
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
A novel of a Brahmin's son in ancient India who seeks understanding his own way.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Naval Ravikant and 6 others
Bertie and Jeeves help, and sometimes hinder, the love-struck Bingo Little.
Recommended by: Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham
A novel of a future world where people are bred in hatcheries into contented castes.
Recommended by: Stewart Brand, Matt Mullenweg and 3 others
A psychiatrist marries his wealthy patient, and the marriage destroys him.
Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Bob Iger
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Sophie Bakalar
Recommended by: Gaby Goldberg, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
A novel of an American with Spanish guerrillas sent to blow up a bridge.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Nat Eliason, David Kadavy and 1 other
A novel built around a 999-line poem a fictional poet wrote in his last 20 days.
Recommended by: Mario Gabriele
A novel of a sixteen-year-old's days alone in New York after his school expels him.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Ryan Holiday, Bill Gates and 2 others
Short parables and paradoxes from Kafka's fiction and letters, in German and English.
Recommended by: Ricardo Semler
Recommended by: Patrick Collison
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Ryan Holiday and 1 other
An old fisherman, a boy and a giant fish in the Gulf Stream off Havana.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Jack Dorsey
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Nir Eyal, Ryan Holiday
A novel of schoolboys stranded on an island whose self-rule collapses into violence.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Alexey Moiseenkov, Elon Musk and 2 others
Recommended by: Sophie Bakalar
Recommended by: Alexis Ohanian, Joel Connolly and 2 others
Young writer friends wander from coast to coast in search of whatever they find.
Recommended by: Ev Williams
Recommended by: Diana Kimball, Guy Proops and 2 others
Recommended by: Ryan Holiday
Recommended by: Patrick Collison
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Shane Parrish and 1 other
One day of a prisoner in a Soviet Gulag labour camp, and the suffering it holds.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
Recommended by: Naval Ravikant, Tim Ferriss
A novel in which the devil, as Professor Woland, brings chaos to Soviet Moscow.
Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Alexey Moiseenkov and 3 others
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Richard Branson, Fred Wilson
Recommended by: Naval Ravikant
Recommended by: Safi Bahcall
Recommended by: Frank Blake, Tyler Cowen
A novel of a clerk who rewrites history under a totalitarian state that watches all.
Recommended by: Richard Branson, David Heinemeier Hansson and 4 others
Recommended by: Ryan Holiday, Ed Cooke
Recommended by: Paul Graham
Recommended by: Susan J. Fowler
A novel setting Anna's ruinous affair against Levin's search for how to live.
Recommended by: Nat Eliason, Austen Allred, Laura R Walker and 3 others
Recommended by: Ricardo Semler
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
Recommended by: Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Paul Grahamrecommends 6 books here
Sam Altmanrecommends 4 books here