The Book Capsule is not about the best books or of one’s favourite books. It is rather about books that have had a significant influence on one’s understanding of, and, perception of humanity. The idea is to create a selection of books that one would perhaps consider giving to another so as to help them understand your way of looking at the world.
So, the point of the project is to solicit from various people the books that they would put into their capsule for the rest of us.
I have divided the list into fiction and non-fiction. I have limited the selection to 10 books, in no particular order. All the links will take you to the respective Wikipedia entry.
My Fiction Top 10
- Albert Camus – The Stranger
- Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
- Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and The Sea
- Franz Kafka – The Trial
- George Orwell – 1984
- Herman Hesse – Siddhartha
- Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
- Julian Barnes – The Sense of An Ending
My Non-Fiction Top 10
- Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
- Bertrand Russell – A History of Western Philosophy
- Christopher Hitchens – Letters to a Young Contrarian
- Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist
- George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia
- Germaine Greer – The Female Eunuch
- Jean Paul Sartre – Existentialism is a Humanism
- Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punishment
- Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet
- William Strunk and EB White – The Elements of Style
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