I've been working pretty intensely with Anthropic's Claude on my father's letters, but every once in a while I need a break and delve into something else that might be interesting. For example, I recently asked Claude to tell me the 10 books written in English (or translated) that it would consider the most important. The response surprised me. Shakespeare and the Bible were obvious, but some of them I'd never even heard of.
- Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Widely considered the first modern novel. It shaped storytelling itself and introduced ideas about reality, fiction, and idealism that still resonate.
- The Complete Works of Shakespeare – William Shakespeare Cheating slightly by bundling them, but no single body of work has shaped the English language and human self-understanding more profoundly.
- The Bible (King James Version) Whatever your beliefs, its influence on Western literature, law, ethics, and language is simply unmatched.
- Hamlet – William Shakespeare (if we're picking one) The deepest exploration of consciousness, mortality, and indecision in the English canon.
- In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust The most ambitious novel ever written — a towering meditation on memory, time, and what it means to be human.
- The Iliad – Homer (translated) The foundational text of Western literature. War, honor, grief, and fate — all still urgently relevant.
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky Perhaps the greatest psychological novel ever written, and a profound exploration of guilt, free will, and redemption.
- 1984 – George Orwell No book has done more to shape how we think about political power, surveillance, and the fragility of truth — and it only grows more relevant.
- To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf A revolution in how fiction renders consciousness and time. Woolf changed what the novel could be.
- The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin Not a novel, but arguably the most consequential book written in English — it changed our understanding of life itself.
A few honorable mentions that nearly made the cut: Middlemarch, Moby-Dick, The Divine Comedy (translated), The Brothers Karamazov, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Although I am an avid reader, of this list I've read embarassingly few: Shakespeare (not the complete works, but I have watched all the plays); the Bible (all of it, many times, including the Apocrypha), Hamlet (of course), and 1984 (indeed I did find it much more relevant when I returned to it in 2020 than when I first read it back in the 1960's). I started both The Iliad and The Origin of Species but didn't get very far. The books for which I didn't even know the titles are In Search of Lost Time, To the Lighthouse, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
It sounds like an interesting challenge. Not that I really need additions to my To Read list; straw and camels keep coming to mind.... Then again, just last week I read a book recommended by one of my favorite granddaughters that was such a delight I would hate to have missed out just because my list is overwhelming. (Full disclosure: all my granddaughters are my favorites.)
