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Conversely, do you suspect a close friend is an insufferable book snob?
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If you've read most of the books on this list, you may be a book snob... but don't panic! Wear the title with pride, you deserve it.
Here is a list to get you started.
Conversely, do you suspect a close friend is an insufferable book snob?
Catch them reading the following in public and your suspicions are confirmed!
If you've read most of the books on this list, you may be a book snob... but don't panic! Wear the title with pride, you deserve it.
Score
A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
| 201 |
History of Beauty
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3.82 avg rating — 66,996 ratings
score: 84,
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1 person voted
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| 201 |
Politics
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3.98 avg rating — 42,508 ratings
score: 84,
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1 person voted
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| 201 |
The Portable Nietzsche
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4.21 avg rating — 9,407 ratings
score: 84,
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2 people voted
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| 204 |
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling
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4.25 avg rating — 257 ratings
score: 83,
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1 person voted
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| 205 |
Introduction to Metaphysics
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4.03 avg rating — 4,342 ratings
score: 82,
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2 people voted
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| 205 |
Xorandor
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3.46 avg rating — 79 ratings
score: 82,
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1 person voted
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| 205 |
The Ego and the Id
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3.82 avg rating — 12,304 ratings
score: 82,
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1 person voted
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| 208 |
The Second Sex
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4.18 avg rating — 46,847 ratings
score: 81,
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1 person voted
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| 209 |
Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (Anomaly)
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3.87 avg rating — 1,191 ratings
score: 80,
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1 person voted
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| 210 |
The Philosophy of History
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3.81 avg rating — 3,751 ratings
score: 79,
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3 people voted
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| 210 |
Undoing Gender
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4.11 avg rating — 3,286 ratings
score: 79,
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1 person voted
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| 212 |
The House of Intellect
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really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 167 ratings
score: 78,
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1 person voted
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| 212 |
Demons
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4.30 avg rating — 61,685 ratings
score: 78,
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2 people voted
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| 214 |
Who’s Afraid of Gender?
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4.03 avg rating — 3,891 ratings
score: 77,
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1 person voted
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| 215 |
Misreadings
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3.83 avg rating — 1,945 ratings
score: 76,
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2 people voted
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| 215 |
Dhalgren
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3.78 avg rating — 12,210 ratings
score: 76,
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1 person voted
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| 217 |
The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei: Vol. One: The Gathering
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4.05 avg rating — 400 ratings
score: 75,
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1 person voted
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| 217 |
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
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4.24 avg rating — 36,553 ratings
score: 75,
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1 person voted
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| 217 |
The Stranger
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4.03 avg rating — 1,367,418 ratings
score: 75,
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2 people voted
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| 220 |
The Tale of Genji
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3.72 avg rating — 14,632 ratings
score: 73,
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1 person voted
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| 221 |
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia
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4.22 avg rating — 2,659 ratings
score: 72,
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1 person voted
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| 222 |
Baudolino
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3.80 avg rating — 25,235 ratings
score: 71,
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1 person voted
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| 222 |
Divine Days
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4.32 avg rating — 78 ratings
score: 71,
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1 person voted
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| 224 |
Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Centennial Books)
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4.43 avg rating — 763 ratings
score: 70,
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1 person voted
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| 224 |
The Island of the Day Before
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3.49 avg rating — 16,297 ratings
score: 70,
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1 person voted
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| 224 |
Kristin Lavransdatter
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4.31 avg rating — 14,282 ratings
score: 70,
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1 person voted
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| 224 |
4 3 2 1
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3.97 avg rating — 36,858 ratings
score: 70,
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2 people voted
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| 224 |
Crime and Punishment
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4.28 avg rating — 1,059,516 ratings
score: 70,
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2 people voted
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| 229 |
Travels In Hyperreality (Harvest Book)
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3.89 avg rating — 2,880 ratings
score: 69,
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1 person voted
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| 230 |
Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge
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4.04 avg rating — 633 ratings
score: 68,
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1 person voted
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| 230 |
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
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4.15 avg rating — 3,314 ratings
score: 68,
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1 person voted
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| 230 |
White Nights
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4.08 avg rating — 318,314 ratings
score: 68,
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1 person voted
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| 233 |
Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition
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3.82 avg rating — 1,148 ratings
score: 67,
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1 person voted
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| 233 |
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
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4.09 avg rating — 5,820 ratings
score: 67,
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1 person voted
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| 233 |
Being and Nothingness
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3.99 avg rating — 34,765 ratings
score: 67,
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2 people voted
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| 236 |
The Iliad/The Odyssey/The Aeneid
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4.38 avg rating — 1,103 ratings
score: 66,
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2 people voted
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| 237 |
On the Genealogy of Morals
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4.12 avg rating — 35,084 ratings
score: 65,
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2 people voted
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| 237 |
The Year of Magical Thinking
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3.93 avg rating — 294,614 ratings
score: 65,
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1 person voted
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| 239 |
Play It As It Lays
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3.90 avg rating — 89,194 ratings
score: 64,
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1 person voted
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| 240 |
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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4.18 avg rating — 81,508 ratings
score: 63,
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1 person voted
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| 241 |
Great Expectations
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3.80 avg rating — 867,596 ratings
score: 62,
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1 person voted
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| 241 |
Blue Nights
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3.94 avg rating — 47,730 ratings
score: 62,
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1 person voted
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| 243 |
The Scarlet Letter
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3.44 avg rating — 912,101 ratings
score: 61,
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1 person voted
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| 243 |
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
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3.84 avg rating — 19,729 ratings
score: 61,
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1 person voted
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| 245 |
The Sublime Object of Ideology
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4.07 avg rating — 6,090 ratings
score: 59,
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1 person voted
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| 246 |
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
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3.78 avg rating — 4,760 ratings
score: 58,
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1 person voted
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| 247 |
No Longer Human
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3.95 avg rating — 244,114 ratings
score: 57,
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2 people voted
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| 247 |
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections
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3.89 avg rating — 5,401 ratings
score: 57,
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1 person voted
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| 249 |
Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon
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4.21 avg rating — 193 ratings
score: 54,
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1 person voted
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| 249 |
Philosophical Dictionary
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4.05 avg rating — 2,253 ratings
score: 54,
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2 people voted
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| 251 |
Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage
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3.80 avg rating — 118 ratings
score: 52,
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1 person voted
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| 251 |
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
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4.13 avg rating — 4,119 ratings
score: 52,
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1 person voted
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| 253 |
Meditations
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4.28 avg rating — 336,522 ratings
score: 50,
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1 person voted
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| 254 |
Two New Sciences/A History of Free Fall
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4.06 avg rating — 372 ratings
score: 48,
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2 people voted
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| 255 |
Hunger
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4.04 avg rating — 64,068 ratings
score: 47,
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1 person voted
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| 256 |
The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology
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4.27 avg rating — 4,308 ratings
score: 46,
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1 person voted
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| 257 |
The Masks of God, Volume 2: Oriental Mythology
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4.28 avg rating — 2,441 ratings
score: 45,
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1 person voted
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| 258 |
The Masks of God, Volume 3: Occidental Mythology
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4.33 avg rating — 1,863 ratings
score: 44,
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1 person voted
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| 259 |
The Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology
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4.30 avg rating — 1,752 ratings
score: 43,
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1 person voted
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| 259 |
The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time
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3.61 avg rating — 296 ratings
score: 43,
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1 person voted
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| 261 |
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
by
4.01 avg rating — 16,110 ratings
score: 41,
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1 person voted
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| 261 |
No Exit
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4.11 avg rating — 46,083 ratings
score: 41,
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1 person voted
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| 263 |
Nights at the Circus
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3.88 avg rating — 14,567 ratings
score: 40,
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1 person voted
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| 263 |
The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre
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3.73 avg rating — 10,213 ratings
score: 40,
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1 person voted
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| 265 |
The Third Policeman
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3.96 avg rating — 22,695 ratings
score: 39,
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1 person voted
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| 265 |
The Age of Reason (Roads to Freedom, #1)
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3.98 avg rating — 15,930 ratings
score: 39,
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1 person voted
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| 267 |
Realm of the Dead
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3.50 avg rating — 90 ratings
score: 38,
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1 person voted
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| 268 |
Tennyson: Poems
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4.23 avg rating — 677 ratings
score: 37,
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1 person voted
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| 268 |
The Iliad / The Odyssey
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4.07 avg rating — 83,165 ratings
score: 37,
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1 person voted
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| 270 |
The Eclogues
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3.90 avg rating — 3,235 ratings
score: 36,
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1 person voted
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| 271 |
The Georgics
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3.73 avg rating — 2,506 ratings
score: 35,
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1 person voted
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| 272 |
History of the Wars, Volume I: Books 1-2
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4.08 avg rating — 220 ratings
score: 34,
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1 person voted
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| 273 |
Untimely Meditations
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4.12 avg rating — 2,391 ratings
score: 33,
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2 people voted
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| 274 |
Twilight of the Idols
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3.95 avg rating — 14,102 ratings
score: 30,
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2 people voted
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| 275 |
A History of My Times
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4.03 avg rating — 3,341 ratings
score: 29,
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1 person voted
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| 275 |
Physics
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3.98 avg rating — 4,411 ratings
score: 29,
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2 people voted
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| 277 |
A Universal History of Iniquity
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3.90 avg rating — 11,651 ratings
score: 28,
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1 person voted
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| 277 |
The Birth of Tragedy
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3.98 avg rating — 20,988 ratings
score: 28,
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2 people voted
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| 279 |
A New System of Chemical Philosophy Volume 2
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3.50 avg rating — 6 ratings
score: 26,
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1 person voted
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| 280 |
The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
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4.24 avg rating — 4,804 ratings
score: 25,
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1 person voted
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| 280 |
The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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4.26 avg rating — 20,294 ratings
score: 25,
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2 people voted
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| 280 |
The Elementary Particles
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3.80 avg rating — 50,041 ratings
score: 25,
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1 person voted
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| 283 |
Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus
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4.09 avg rating — 2,350 ratings
score: 24,
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1 person voted
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| 283 |
Soumission
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3.65 avg rating — 51,321 ratings
score: 24,
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1 person voted
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| 285 |
Meditations on First Philosophy, with Selections from the Objections and Replies
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3.74 avg rating — 2,394 ratings
score: 23,
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1 person voted
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| 286 |
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
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3.77 avg rating — 36,499 ratings
score: 22,
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1 person voted
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| 287 |
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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4.10 avg rating — 22,210 ratings
score: 21,
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1 person voted
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| 288 |
Philosophical Essays
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3.91 avg rating — 4,998 ratings
score: 20,
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| 289 |
Elements of the Philosophy of Right
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3.87 avg rating — 3,846 ratings
score: 19,
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| 290 |
Meditations on First Philosophy
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3.74 avg rating — 29,229 ratings
score: 18,
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| 290 |
De Anima
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4.03 avg rating — 6,650 ratings
score: 18,
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2 people voted
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| 292 |
The Blue and Brown Books
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4.13 avg rating — 2,437 ratings
score: 17,
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| 293 |
Discourse on Method
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3.72 avg rating — 25,049 ratings
score: 13,
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| 294 |
A Brief History of Time
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4.21 avg rating — 474,735 ratings
score: 11,
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| 295 |
Black Swans
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3.86 avg rating — 15,332 ratings
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| 296 |
Sex and Rage
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3.55 avg rating — 17,753 ratings
score: 9,
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| 297 |
L.A. Woman
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3.49 avg rating — 4,220 ratings
score: 8,
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| 298 |
Salvador
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3.73 avg rating — 3,772 ratings
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| 299 |
Basic Writings
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4.07 avg rating — 5,201 ratings
score: 6,
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| 299 |
Democracy
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3.85 avg rating — 4,277 ratings
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307 books ·
153 voters ·
list created March 15th, 2012
by Holly Lindquist (votes) .
Holly
1716 books
61 friends
61 friends
Karen
1868 books
69 friends
69 friends
A
1710 books
1 friend
1 friend
Matthew
1285 books
25 friends
25 friends
Read Between The Lines
6212 books
62 friends
62 friends
buppyspek
403 books
13 friends
13 friends
Samuel
1106 books
74 friends
74 friends
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads
3386 books
852 friends
852 friends
More voters…
Comments Showing 1-20 of 20 (20 new)
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message 1:
by
Limey
(new)
Nov 08, 2013 05:40PM
Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's, non-hipster, pompless, friendly-neighborhood, genuinely readable, unpretentious, happybrow, fun, top-entertainment books inside it, so that people think you're ultra-hip and highbrow and can actually make sense of that wacko shit.
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Read Ulysses today at the Social Security office (it's just what I happened to be reading!), so where do I pick up my pompous card?
I'm personally thankful that so few female authors have to resort to being overbearingly pompous in order to write quality literature. If they don't make the list, I think that's a success, not a failure...because face it, this list is obnoxious! Pew! PS: Although.. after some reflection I realize Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia belongs on the list. Very much so.
Perhaps a list for Genuinely Thought-Provoking Books or Deeply Intelligent Reading would have better diversity. I know several female authors that could wipe the floor with the competition in that case.
Um. Why is the "The Road" on this list? Its an easy-to-read page turner that was turned into a blockbuster movie, and by far Cormac McCarthy's most accessible mass audience genre novel...
must we be ironic and postmodern about good literature? perhaps you just want to read a good book when you read Ulysses.
Grant wrote: "must we be ironic and postmodern about good literature? perhaps you just want to read a good book when you read Ulysses."Well, we are still in the "postmodern" era, so... yes.
Mark wrote: "Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's..."this has to be satire
But 'Ulysses' is flat out brilliant. It's one of a handful of books that make me laugh out loud, and yes several times in coffee shops. "Atlas Shrugged" is brilliant entertainment, but basically a pretentious soap opera! Proust is a magnificent writer!
Mark wrote: "Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's..."Mark, well, in the 1st grade I had Agatha Christie books hidden within those silly readers like "See Jane Run." I had no other choice but to hide what I really wanted to read.
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