The Art of Manliness’ 100 Must-Read Books

1. bean
   May 14th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

   I normally hate lists like these, but this one is really good. I haven’t read most of the Russian lit, but they seem to have a good selection.

2. oldie
   May 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

   Has anyone compiled a text-based list of the titles and authors?

3. Jo-E
   May 14th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

   I thought there were entirely too many Roosevelt books for a list of only 100 books. And what about such classics as Anthem (Rand), A Clockwork Orange (Burgess), Cold Mountain (Frazier), The Road (McCarthy), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)…I would have put these above the many Roosevelt pieces listed. Isn’t it just more of the same? And you are telling me one of the 100 books isn’t Peter Mayle’s “What’s Happening to Me?” PAH! Come on! Otherwise, I totally agreed with the list.

4. andrewdoane
   May 14th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

   You’re sure going to sound smart at parties if you read all these. Or at some kinds of parties, anyway.

5. bean
   May 14th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

   Jo-E -

   Since they already had Atlas Shrugged, I think they figured two Ayn Rand books would be repetitive. As for the multiple Teddy Roosevelt bios… yeah, I don’t get that. I would have had Glory Road or Starship Troopers by Heinlein at the top of the list, myself.

6. kid_icarus
   May 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

   jeez……don’t get me wrong, i love teddy roosevelt and have read a lot about and by him, but way too many books on him in there. i also sat there wondering when hunter thompson, tolstoy, and sir walter scott were going to show up….definitely more important reads than some they had in the list…..”into the wild”….c’mon…..a good book, yes, but a MUST read? no way.

7. The Mutt
   May 14th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

   A very nice reading list. I was particularly glad to see Cyrano de Bergerac included, since most people overlook the fact that romance is the manliest of arts.

   But if you are looking for a manly role model, there’s none better than Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.

   Jack Reacher, in the series of novels by Lee Child, comes close, except that he’s a little short on hygiene and compassion.

8. Alex
   May 14th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

   Hah! I love Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. I think I’ve read them all …

9. NeuroGirl
   May 14th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

   I have more than half of those books on my bookshelf. Dostoevsky ranks up there as one of my favorite authors of all time, but seemed a little heavy on the list along with Roosevelt. As a woman, I think there should have been at least one chick book on there if for no other reason than to give men insight into the incomprehensibly twisted, emotional minds of women.

10. Alecks
    May 15th, 2008 at 2:56 am

    Something really rubs me the wrong way with The Art of Manliness’ self-branding and its subsequent popularity with Digg. Don’t get me wrong, I love most of what its articles have to say, as they contain sound life, practical, and career advice. But the fact is, TAOM applies to anyone who wants to be a level-headed, well-balanced mature adult who lives life to the fullest. To suggest that such concerns are purely the domain of men makes me feel like we’ve stepped back into a less enlightened time…

    And what more, the site’s prose often has glimmers of homophobia and a dated appeal to the fantasy of rugged individualism, and often moans about the emasculating nature of today’s society, romanticizes war, denies the value of psychiatry and the medical nature of depression, and also brazenly perpetuates the stereotypes and accentuates societal gender differences between the sexes, mistaking them for inborne traits essential to a sexual identity.

11. ted
    May 15th, 2008 at 4:27 am

    Good point, Alecks.
    This list could just as easily have been labelled “100 Must-Read Books for Pretentious Assholes”.

12. MoonCake
    May 15th, 2008 at 5:07 am

    thanks alecks.. i was hoping someone would say something along those lines. agreed 100%. although yes, it’s great to identify with series of books, but they should not be used in order to establish a particular identity (here, it is to be identified as ‘manly’), rather, they should be used to gain perspectives that help shape your identity. i think HALF of those books should have been by women because half of the world is female. if you only know and exhibit the patriarchal perspective, half the world is going to hate you.

13. Homer J. Simpson
    May 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Even if this site seems to have a slight tinge of testosterone poisoning, this is a fairly good list of books. There are a few I would’ve left off (I actually think that The Dharma Bums is a much better Kerouac novel than On The Road), but overall, not a bad list. I also really like a lot of the pictures of books that accompany the list.

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