Essential Books every Gentleman Should Have?

[Feng_Li]

At least one foreign-language dictionary. Or a work of literature in the original, which he can and has read.

 

[Mossyrock]

I wonder how many people maintain a minimum of 36" of shelf space dedicated to books of any kind?

Are you kidding? The stack of books next to my BED is bigger than that!

 

[Mossyrock]

OK, let's put a little different twist on this. When Theodore Roosevelt went to Africa, he took a trunk of books with him, and agonized over each selection. If I was limited to one trunk or 36" of shelf space, off the top of my head with about five minutes of consideration, these would be my choices:

"The Real George Washington"
The Real Thomas Jefferson"
"The 5,000 year Leap"
The US Constitution"
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
"Hell, I Was There!" by Elmer Keith
ANYTHING by Jeff Cooper
ANYTHING by Theodore Roosevelt
"Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry
"All the Pretty Horses" "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
"Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose

 

[Sertsa]

I can't imagine limiting to just a few books, but I'll take a slightly different route: a few books that everyone should read to better understand... everything.

-Homer - The Odyssey (Combines the myths, ancient culture, relationships, offers a lesson in ego and humility, and shows that we're all really trying to find home).

- Complete works of Shakespeare (Because all of western literature since then owes a debt to these plays).

- Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man (To gain empathy and better understand the African-American experience.)

- Virginia Wolfe - To the Lighthouse (A seemingly tranquil setting with subtle clashes of ideas in a world about to enter into chaos, dealing with loss).

- James Joyce - Dubliners - (Joyce at his most accessible, and an exploration of paralysis and how we often keep our dreams just out of grasp).

- Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (Also to gain empathy and better understand both mental illness and a woman's perspective in 50s America.)

- Saul Bellow - Any of Seize the Day, Herzog or Humboldt's Gift - (Trying to stay human in a world that makes doing so difficult).


I could go on for ages, but I think the best thing about fiction is that it teaches empathy, and several of these books offer perspectives which many people may not otherwise gain.

 

[Pyroxene]

A few of my own..

Just adding to all the great suggestions that have been posted above... These are not some of the books I just read and put away. I keep these or my notes from them close by for reference.

• Gentleman's guide to grooming and style [link]
• Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul [link]
• The Millionaire Next Door [link]
• Tipping for Success: Secrets for How to Get In and Get Great Service
  [link]
• The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate [link]
• The Complete James Bond Lifestyle Seminar [link]

 

[Marc Chevalier]

.


My Secret Life (1890), probably by Henry Spencer Ashbee.


.

 

[Torpedo]

Hello,

Some I definitely recommend, in no particular order:

"I, Claudius" and its sequel, "Claudius the God", by Robert Graves.
"Treasure Island", R.L. Stevenson.
"Tom Sawyer", Mark Twain
"Lord of the Rings", J.R. Tolkien
"Les misérables", Victor Hugo
"The Three Musketeers", Alexander Dumas
"Dune", Frank Herbert
Some Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
Some Cthulhu mythos novels, H.P. Lovecraft
"Moby Dick", Hermann Melville
"The Pillars of Earth", Ken Follett
"The Foundation", Isaac Asimov
"First Man in Rome", Colleen McCullough
"20.000 Leagues under the Sea", or "Around the World in 80 Days", by Jules Verne

I think I will leave it there... some of the above are first books of a series, which I would in some cases recommend too, but we are talking of a single shelf...

(Someone asked about how many people have even one 36'' shelf - I have a lot of them, plus boxes of books stuffed in some dark corners, and more "temporarily on storage" at my parents, and my parents in law, homes... so making so small a selection is hard. I have tried to mention some books I have specially enjoyed.)

Regards!

 

[NicknNora]

I wonder how many people maintain a minimum of 36" of shelf space dedicated to books of any kind?

My problem is not in filling the minimum amount of space but how to have enough space for the books. lol

 

[carebear]

I was thinking about this the other day.

I have a list of books, adventure stories and the like, that I will be reading or giving to read to my nephews to help give them examples of what real manhood is and examples of character to model themselves on (or warn against). Call it the "young Gentleman's esential instructionary books".

How does that expand the lists?

Books/stories for the boy, the adolescent, the young man and finally the man in full.

 

[Geronimo]

A stack of 1-Terabyte hard disks filled with all the contents of the Library of Congress.

Let's see... a Bible (NKJV, NIV), Wodehouse (Code of the Woosters at the least), Machiavelli's Prince, C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Weight of Glory... and something else I forget, G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and Complete Father Brown, A.C. Doyle's Complete Sherlock Holmes stories, Complete Works of Shakespeare, Tolkein's LOTR Trilogy, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, F. Forsyth's Odessa File and Dogs of War.
Oh. And an old blue Calculus book who's author escapes me. Think it was Larson.
I use more than 36" of shelf space, of course, as I include a pretty large collection of G.A. Henty books (lots of information on the bush wars in Africa) and I refuse to let go of my Hardy Boys collection. Not classics, but at least they have pictures.

 

[Corto]

This is a great thread.

Here are a few of my suggestions.

While there are a lot of classics a gentleman should have on his shelf (Plato, Keynes, Melville, Waugh, Maugham, Dickens, London, The Letters of Benjamin Franklin, "A History of Political Philosophy" by Strauss, etc.) my recommendations are mostly modern novels. There are a couple bios, non-fiction and at least one policy book in here. These are books I think contain some lesson on selflessness, bravery, comportment and ethics in trying situations. I suppose you could consider those some (but not all) of the facets of being a "gentleman".

The Complete MacAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser (The trials and tribulations of a young, newly minted post-war British Army officer stationed in the Middle East.)

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (A good primer on skullduggery, loyalty and honor.)

The James Bond Series by Ian Fleming (How to act like a cad and a refined gentleman, all for a cause bigger than yourself.)

Up Front by Bill Maudlin (A good piece of satire on how men act in the worst possible environment: war.)

Corto Maltese in Siberia by Hugo Pratt (A gentleman's adventure)

The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy (A study of a young refined gentleman at war. This is a short one. If you haven't plowed through War and Peace you can at least honestly say you've read some Tolstoy.)

Delilah by Marcus Goodrich (Every gentleman should have a good Navy novel on his shelf. This is one of the best. A good study on comportment by a Navy mustang. Eloquently written. Pre-WWI era. Philippines.)

The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat (Ok. Every gentleman should have two Navy novels on his shelf. This is a fine study of men fighting the elements and the Nazis. Heroism and hard choices in the brutal North Atlantic.)

The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna (Alright. Who am I kidding. You need 3 Navy novels. This one is about standing up for what's right, no matter what it's going to cost you.)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Truly a gentleman's classic.)

The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich (Real gentleman understand there's more than one way to skin a cat.)

Fields of Fire by James Webb (Keeping it together and stepping up-or not- when the shit hits the fan and the rulebook goes out the window. Best novel by a Vietnam veteran in my opinion.)

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton by Edward Rice (Burton made and then broke the mold)

The Fifties by David Halberstam (Good for an American gentleman to get a grip on our national weltanschaung)

The Ravens by Christopher Robbins (I've never read tales of bravery more selfless than those about the Ravens and their Lao counterparts.)

Flight to Arras by Antoine de St. Exupery (Want real emotional toughness? Exupery watched the German army invade his crumbling country from the cockpit of a lightly armed, malfunctioning reconnaissance plane. This is his memoir.)

 

[Story]

Books/stories for the boy, the adolescent, the young man and finally the man in full.

From the limitless opportunities and horizons of the very young to the tempered view of a balanced adult, without becoming cynical?

The titles and authors previously offered all have their place along that arc, although I haven't seen Eugene Burdick's Ugly American listed - something for when they're older.

However, under close supervision and with the cans of FFFG under lock & key, this book has to go to the top of the list : http://www.dangerousbookforboys.com/

 

[Story]

oops, doubled.

 

[Corto]

The titles and authors previously offered all have their place along that arc, although I haven't seen Eugene Burdick's Ugly American listed - something for when they're older.

I'm actually in the middle of that movie right now. Phenomenal story, especially considering since it was written in 1958! Prescient for the time, and very relevant today considering how important road-building strategies are in Afghanistan (and how alliances get tangled, not to mention the disconnect between policymakers and the reality on the ground). I just read the Wikipedia article on the novel...makes it sound even more fascinating...I debated putting this on a list for "gentlemen", but Cecil B. Currey's bio on Edward Lansdale "The Unquiet American" is a great read in the same vein.

I'm looking forward to reading "The Ugly American".

 

[Shangas]

Some of these have been repeated, some, I hope not...

The complete Sherlock Holmes canon - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The complete works of Shakespeare - William Shakespeare.
Dracula - Abraham Stoker.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee.
Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin.
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame.