There is one book in the world that you can read and live in peace with confidence that I have read everything written after it: there are so many storylines, philosophical thoughts, scary and love stories in it. This book is the Bible. The plots given in it are truly inexhaustible, since they still nourish the imagination of many writers, artists, directors. But, meanwhile, an educated person must certainly read at least 10 books in his life. If education is not humanitarian, but, for example, is associated with management or marketing, then this amount may be quite enough.
The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most cited books in the world, created by an unknown author, so an educated person, in order not to get into trouble, certainly must read it. Being the Old Testament part of the Bible, this book is not only the ancestor of philosophy as a science, but the basics of psychotherapy, since its main idea - everything in this world has already been before us and will be after us, all vanity, so you need to love yourself, the world and enjoy everything that given. Many of the thoughts contained in this book are reflected and continued in the literature of subsequent centuries. Below is just a part of them.
Time to be born, and time to die …
Ernst Theodor Hoffmann "Baby Zahes, nicknamed Zinnober" - without this tale, modern man cannot consider himself truly politically educated, since Hoffmann has managed to create for centuries a super-image of a real politician-dictator.
Nikolai Gogol “The Overcoat” - it would be nice to read this book at least in order to know where the saying came from: “we all came out of the Gogol's“ Overcoat. ”This book is about a dream. A dream is so small and insignificant as small and insignificant was that person He dreamed, but the grief of this man after breaking up with his dream created such despair that it became the greatest symbol of many, many losses. Few writers succeeded in translating in literature the disproportion of dreams and grief, life and despair.
Fyodor Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment” - this text simply needs to be overcome, if only in order not to face the face in a conversation with foreigners. Almost any of them (at least graduated from college) knows this book, since it is included in the compulsory program. The correlation in the world of good and evil, the possibility of permissiveness and inevitability and the primacy of God's il human punishment, responsibility for the deed, socialist views and philosophical issues - in this book there are really a lot of different layers. But, and besides this, it's just a very good detective.
Time to love and time to hate
Charles de Coster "The Legend of Ulenspiegel". To understand what the cheerful spirit of a real free man is - a man for whom the words "homeland", "country" and "state" are definitely not the same thing, and faith in freedom, as God's greatest gift, is always primary, to understand what is a real anarchist spirit, every modern educated person needs to read this book.
Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". The origins of absurd literature and one of the most popular literary genres - fantasy - were born by Sir Lewis Carroll in this book. "Alice's Adventures" has become a kind of Ecclesiastes of the twentieth, and now twenty-first century, because in this wonderful fairy tale practically the same questions and answers are revived as in the Bible book, but they are posed by the author on behalf of a little girl personifying youth all of humanity.
Ivan Bunin "Dark Alleys" - the greatest literary collection, consisting of novels and stories exclusively and exclusively about love, written so stylistically flawlessly that it is considered a reference. And you need to know the standards. The love languor of heroes of different ages, sex and positions, their meeting and separation, create from this book a truly great love encyclopedia.
