There is one book in the world, after reading which you can live completely calmly with the confidence that you 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 feed 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 related to 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 a mess, should certainly read it. Being the Old Testament part of the Bible, this book is not only the progenitor of philosophy as a science, but the foundations of psychotherapy, since its main idea is that everything in this world has already been before us and will be after us, everything is vanity, which means you need to love yourself, the world and enjoy everything. that is given. Many of the thoughts contained in this book were reflected and continued in the literature of subsequent centuries. Below are just a few of them.
Time to be born and time to die …
Ernst Theodor Hoffmann "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" - without this tale, modern man cannot consider himself truly politically educated, since Hoffmann managed to create a super-image of a real politician-dictator for centuries.
Nikolai Gogol "The Overcoat" - it would be nice to read this book, if only to know where the saying came from: "We all came out of Gogol's" Overcoat ". This book is about a dream. A dream so small and insignificant, how small and insignificant was the person who dreamed. But the grief of this man after his parting with the achieved dream gave rise to such despair that it became the greatest symbol of many, many losses. Few writers have succeeded in translating into literature the disproportionality of dreams and grief, life and despair.
Fyodor Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment" - this text simply needs to be overcome at least in order not to lose face in conversation with foreigners. Almost every one of them (at least college graduates) knows this book because it is part of the required curriculum. The ratio of good and evil in the world, the possibility of permissiveness and inevitability and the primacy of God's or human punishment, responsibility for what has been done, socialist views and philosophical questions - there are really many different layers in this book. But, besides that, this is just a very good detective story.
A time to love and a time to hate
Charles de Coster "The Legend of Ulenspiegel". To understand what the cheerful spirit of a real free person is - a person for whom the words "homeland", "country" and "state" are definitely not the same thing, but faith in freedom, as the greatest gift of God, is always primary to understand, what is the real anarchist spirit, every modern educated person needs to read this book.
Lews Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The origins of absurd literature and one of the most popular literary genres today - fantasy - were born by Sir Lewis Carroll in this book. "The Adventures of Alice" became a kind of Ecclesiastes of the twentieth, and now the twenty-first century, because in this wonderful fairy tale almost the same questions and answers are revived as in the biblical book, but they are posed by the author on behalf of a little girl who personifies youth of all mankind.
Ivan Bunin "Dark Alleys" - the greatest literary collection, consisting of a story and stories only and exclusively about love, written so stylistically impeccable that it is considered a standard. And you need to know the standards. The amorous yearnings of heroes of different ages, sex and positions, their meeting and parting, create from this book truly the greatest love encyclopedia.
A time for war and a time for peace
Franz Kafka "The Trial". This book shows the absurdity of the world in which the pursuit of an irreversible state machine-system can last as long as life lasts: from birth to death. The guilt of the hero is unknown, but he is guilty by definition, and therefore will be subjected to an endless trial. The trial turns an ordinary bank clerk into a sexually attractive hero, and heroes never die of old age. They die beautifully - from a knife in the heart.
Evgeny Schwartz "Dragon". One of the greatest playwrights and researchers of human characters of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Schwartz, wrote his play knowing the prototypes of all his characters with certainty. In this play, amazingly vivid portraits of ordinary dictators and cattle-chauvinists, nationalists and non-protruding inhabitants are created who do not want any changes and can gladly destroy any hero who comes to save them from the clutches of the cruel Dragon.
Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose" is a historical detective story, a novel, a philosophical parable about literature, politics, art and religion. The book immediately became a classic of the twentieth century, the apotheosis of the postmodern outlook on life: the search for comedy in tragedy.
