List of books to educate Kids & adults from being crazy/emotional man-childrens.

Agreed about being a good parent who's actually involved, but if you want a good reading list, then here would be my picks. Some of them are informative and others are works that are entertaining to read and can make reading fun without resorting to YA-tier garbage like Harry Potter.

These are just general recommendations as opposed to a comprehensive list, so pick and choose as you please. Some are better for grade schoolers and middle schoolers (Andrew Lang, Treasure Island, The Hobbit) and others are strictly for the older teens (The Stand, Mists of Avalon, Titus Andronicus)

Fiction & Short Stories
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
1984 - George Orwell
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne
Candide - Voltaire
The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe
The Five Orange Pips - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Stand - Stephen King

Mythology, Religion, & Folklore
The Trojan Cycle (Illiad, Odyssey, Aeneid)
The Prose Edda
The Metamorphoses
The Pentateuch
The Four Gospels and The Acts of the Apostles
The Book of Invasions
Water Margin
The Journey to the West
The Arthurian Cycle (History of the Kings of Britain, Le Morte D'Arthur, Once and Future King, etc.)
Fairy Tales in general (The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Andrew Lang)

William Shakespeare
The Tempest
Romeo & Juliet
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
Cymbelene
Antony & Cleopatra
Titus Andronicus
The Taming of the Shrew
A Midsummer's Night Dream
Henry V
Richard III

Non-Fiction and Commentary
Common Sense - Thomas Paine
The Gulag Archipelago - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Black Book of Communism - Nicolas Werth, Stephane Corutois
The Civil War: A Narrative - Shelby Foote
 
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Not technically a book but recommend Harley Quinn's origin story Mad love. It's a comic made to go with Batman the animated series that basically did a story that wasn't allowed to a kids show. It was too dark, too sexy and generally very much flirting with not suitable for kids. Still the comic got approved suitable for kids after some minor changes and it's good, really good. Mad love eventually got made to an actual episode because the comic was that good and well received. It's very faithful but I still recommend the comic. BTAS art style looks amazing as comic, absolutely wonderful use of strong shadows but what really makes this comic a stand out is the story telling. The angles, colors and panel choices really bring out feelings, drama and horror of what Harley goes trough while allowing humor for contrast.

I recommend Mad love because it's an excellent portrayal of abusive relationship witch is something people need lear to recognize. I don't recommend just for that, Mad love is also just a fun superhero story, with great action and intriguing villain plots. It's genuinely entertaining comic but at same time it manages to show how people end up in abusive relationships and why do they stay. Harley's journey to the person we see the show makes sense and is sympathetic without potraying her as a perfect angel or lacking agency. Harley starts as an independent and quite successful if morally questionable young woman. She studied psychology to become a tv personality and she is trying to earn her big break to fame when she meets the Joker. She sees him as a famous criminal who she can exploit but he turns the table on her. He manipulates her, to enjoy spending time with him, see him as victim and eventually take leap to help him. Joker basically love bombs Harley and she falls for it. Still Joker being Joker, he eventually shows his true colors and currently treats Harley badly. Harley isn't ignorant to this, she very much dislikes how he treats her but she excuses him and is sure they can have a perfect future eventually. She is clearly delusional and story takes her beliefs to breaking point but then shows the true horror of someone like the Joker. She beaten down, emotionally and physically broken, and has admitted to herself that this Joker's fault. She ready to take her life to a new direction but then he does something nice and special to her. With this he gives her hope that the perfect future she dreamed is still possible and she falls back in bad habits.
 
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My two cents:

Fiction:
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare
A Cask of Amontillado - Edgar Allen Poe

Philosophy:
Enchiridion - Epictetus
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
The Republic - Plato
 
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Isn't this supposed to be specifically about raising people with common sense, rather than a general reading list?

My recommendation would just be to encourage broad cross-cultural reading in history and philosophy, starting with one's own culture and then broadening the scope. The best grounding is for people to know why things are the way they are, and how they got there.
 
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The Record of a Quaker Conscience: Cyrus Pringle's Diary. It will teach them what standing for something unpopular really means.
 
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Starting young, the classic fairy tales and fables were meant to instill common sense. Be aware of danger signs (Little Red Riding Hood), those who work will reap their rewards (The Little Red Hen), don't panic (Chicken Little), don't lie and cause others to panic (The Boy Who Cried Wolf), etc.

For those a little older, Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain (which had a sequel or two) is a great story about self-reliance with some practical (?) wilderness living tricks built in. It didn't make me want to run off and live in the woods, but it teaches a healthy respect for outdoorsmanship, independence, and adaptability.

Good science fiction (or "speculative fiction") teaches one that ideas can change society, and the results of those changes are unpredictable, and frequently unimaginable. Should knock any silly notions about the "arc of history" out of the little one's head. Good skiffy usually focuses autistically on one or two ideas, like FTL or cloning or whatever, so the better writers sneak in some education.

J. R. R. Tolkien's writings are a great representation of several modes of storytelling. He consciously did a number of interesting things, such as the combination of Christian and pre-Christian elements in imitation of Beowulf (but subtler), and some gentle mockery of the academic gasbags called upon to introduce critical editions of story books. The Hobbit-Lord of the Rings-Silmarillion cycle is the core of his fictional work and should be read in that order. The first focuses on the theme of bravery, the second on duty, and the third on what happens when those are taken too far, as well as the theological underpinnings of the universe. While Tolkien's creation myth, theodicy, eschatology, etc. are clearly fiction, it's still a thoughtful construct worthy of careful reading and appreciation.
 
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Kosher Dill said:
Isn't this supposed to be specifically about raising people with common sense, rather than a general reading list?

My recommendation would just be to encourage broad cross-cultural reading in history and philosophy, starting with one's own culture and then broadening the scope. The best grounding is for people to know why things are the way they are, and how they got there.
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Books to raise people with common sense if there's no parent figure plus indoctrination from public schools, colleges, mainstream media and overall the internet.
 
Smolrolls said:
Books to raise people with common sense if there's no parent figure plus indoctrination from public schools, colleges, mainstream media and overall the internet.
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I do have to ask, how are you planning to get books into the hands of these malleable young minds if you're not their parent or teacher?
 
Jimjamflimflam said:
Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson

A bit eccentric and a bit odd manual of how to break free of imprinted and programmed behavior.
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Beat me to it. Really solid choice.

But (as for OP's question) IMO your youth years should be about turning off your brain and being outgoing, and actually getting your own life experiences and interesting stories to tell later in life. Not viewing other people's and being an armchair pseudointellectual. Caring so much about knowledge and reading in my teen years only made me a jaded socially disconnected faggot, hating of life from an early age and jealous of literary stories of people my age doing wild shit. no matter how smart you actually are you're not even old enough to be taken seriously by anyone at these ages anyway.
 
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Relying on fiction to teach kids is partly why we're in the situation we're in today, just look at how upset some adults got over JK Rowling because they identified so much with the Harry Potter books or how some new creators are obsessed with shoehorning in their sexuality or ideology into kids cartoons because they think it's the best way to teach kids.
 
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