What are some great intellectual books you have read?

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and recommend?

maybe even a little review or summarization
or maybe just a good quote that might help me decide whether I should read it.
(btw at the bottom of my post I have a list of eBooks I have,
please give your opinion on any you have read)

Some musicians that I listen to seem to be filled in with some great philosophers
or masters of the art of writing.

Once upon a time when I used to listen to Marilyn Manson I was thinking of getting a book on Nietzsche
or something similar but his music started to affect me in a bad way so I thought his (Manson's whole vibe) philosophies were untrue to me.
Although I do like me some Alexandro Jodorowsky films!

I've moved on to listening to Nine Inch Nails and The Beatles etc;
and the whole scene seems much more positive to me.
When I watched Beside you in time by Nine Inch Nails it seemed like his progression out of a hell and into a heaven,
key philosophy being "progression"...for the good.
Each song wavered between positives and negatives and finished with a higher state of being.

Now what I'd really like to know is what the Beatles were reading into,
because it seems each song is filled with constant love and beauty.

Anyways I'm not sure whether I should go Greek and poetic because I just don't get it, maybe it was just the stupor I was in and mind-state,
but when I tried to read "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri I only managed to understand the footnotes (word ???) before each chapter summarizing what is basically happening in the chapter.

Now that reminds me,
I need to find my damn copy of "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle and read it properly.

Anyways what I have now in eBook form (yet to read) is:
Ernest Hemingway
The Art of War
Sacred Geometry
The Elements of Modern Philosophy
50 Psychology classics
The Satanic Bible
Oscar Wilde
Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
The Metamorphoses
Paradise Lost by John Milton

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is my number one top recommendation. Yes, it's long, but definitely worth the read if you want to learn about morality, ethics and the true nature of those around us.

It is a philosophical work written in the form of a novel, that explains many of the apparent insanities of those who inhabit this world. It tells of their motivation and desire to enslave those of us who have skills and abilities and who work to support themselves.

guns, germs, and steel by jarod diamond. explains how different cultures got ahead of others by virtue of their environments. thorough and convincing.

Deleted because it's a terrible book. Please don't waste your money.

"Collapse" by Jared Diamond. He gives examples of societies, past and present, that destroyed or are destroying themselves through bad choices.

The Holographic Universe - Michael Talbot
Hyperspace - Michio Kaku
Warped Passages - Lisa Randall

When you listed The Metamorphoses I wondered if it was that story by Kafka, but googled just to check and see that it is not.

However I do recommend Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It's about a man who wakes up one morning to discover that he has changed into another creature. The story is about how he and his famiy adapt to his new physical being. It is fascinating. I also enjoyed Franz Kafka's The Trial. Unfortunately it is in bits becuase he died before finishing it.

I also recommend Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It's about apartied in South Africa. It is a novel, but beautifully written. It is just such enjoyable prose. I can't remember much about it. I read it a long time ago. I should read it again.

All of the above plus Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain).

Humes' Dialogues. Plato's Symposium. Aristotle's Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations, collectively called the Organon. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles. Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, which focuses on epistemology ("epistemology" referring to the theory of knowledge). Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity. Sextus Empiricus' Against the Mathematicians, a wonderful piece of Pyrrhonic skepticism from Plato's Academy around the 2nd century. H. von Arnim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, a three volume work on the early Stoics and their philosophy.

Aldous Huxley - A Brave New World

Dan Simmons - Illium & Olympos

Paco Underhill - Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

Enchiridion of Epictetus

Fahrenheit 451

1984 by George Orwell, Freakishly Prophetic!!

I liked these two a lot

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter

The Screwtape Letters - C. S. Lewis

The Politics of Aesthetics.

I second the vote for "collapse", heartily.

Caesar's Messiah by Joseph Atwill
A book that gives the most plausible historical account of the origin of Christianity that I have ever come across.

Anything and everything by Ivan Illich, a critic of modern society who possessed an expansive view and understanding like no one else, IMHO. His books include "Deschooling Society"
"The Right to Useful Unemployment", "Medical Nemisis", and "Shadow Work".