What five books should be on your bookshelf? David Walsh responds

I’m going to assume that by ‘everyone’s bookshelf’ you mean everyone that is likely to stroll into Readings. And not the kind of person that would then dart out of Readings with a stolen tome underarm. And not people of a particular moral or philosophical bent. I wouldn’t recommend the same books for a jihadist that I would for as schoolteacher. Then again, perhaps I would. Teachers, of course, are probably more coerced by economic circumstance to purloin a letter or two than jihadists.

There are books that don’t belong on your bookshelf, but at the local library. These are books that I think are stunning, critical to developing life skills, establishing the nature of reality, undermining of our sense of self-worth, whatever, that everyone should read once, but only once. Amongst these are some novels like Germinal and Crime and Punishment but I talk about them in A Bone of Fact (which definitely belongs on your bookshelf; I’ll explain why later), so I won’t reiterate. One should read the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay to learn that it is possible to think for oneself, and also The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch to learn that it isn’t.

However, since these, so far, are books that don’t answer the question posed, I’ll add just one more then move on. The Bible is a must, if only to refresh your disgust. Or to remind oneself how much pain people will inflict on other people when they know where they belong.

To belong on your bookshelf at least one of the following criteria need to be satisfied:

1. Books need to be worth looking at more than once.

A book with pictures or annoying words of wisdom (say Leonardo or Kahlo or Michelangelo or Plato or Plutarch on Cato).

2. Books need to be worth reading one day.

You really need to know how the universe works, so Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe is necessary, as is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. War and Peace might belong here, unless you happen to have read it, in which case it belongs in the next section.

3. Books need to remind you of the stuff that is in them.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut can be forgotten, but should not be for long. Nassim Taleb’s Antifragility can change your life, and can then change it back.

4. Books need to remind you that you made the effort.

Recent marvels of this type include Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday, which shows us how much we can learn from the past and Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which shows that we managed to learn nothing. Much to my annoyance a recent novel that is worth having made the effort with is Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

5. There are also books that are appropriate for reminding others of the effort you made.

They should have words like ‘axiology’ or ‘hermeneutics’ in their titles. But they don’t belong on your bookshelf. They belong on your coffee table. A Bone of Fact definitely doesn’t belong on your coffee table. You don’t want to be a laughing stock (and it isn’t called An Astragalus of Veridicality). Put it on your bookshelf, and it will admonish you to circumvent your propensity to squander.


David Walsh’s biography, A Bone of Fact, is out now.

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A Bone of Fact

David Walsh

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