There are books, and there are books. Why we read and what we read matters. There are some books with titles like Anna Karenina, Invisible Man, Walden, Steppenwolf, books that are spoken of as “must reads.” I always question why? Why should we read them? What will the value be for me? Of course I understand they will broaden my mind and probably introduce me to sentences longer than most emails.
But beyond the resume-padding or the vague promise of sophistication, some of these books hit a nerve. They don’t just educate; they irritate. They challenge your assumptions, your habits, your sense of who you are. They’re uncomfortable. And that’s precisely the point.
Nobel Laureates are famous for reading from a wide range of genres. For instance, Peter C. Doherty, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996, stated that he would “spend a great deal of time reading anything and everything.” Another Nobel Prize winner, in Physics (2005), Roy J. Glauber, indicated: “My first salvation was reading. I visited the local public library regularly and began reading the great adventure stories of Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas and Walter Scott.”
Book lists of ‘must-reads’ have never appealed to me. I tend to reach for the obscure, the out-of-print, the books with cracked spines and questionable theses, those such as Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen. A few years ago I read Where Troy Once Stood, a book whose central claim is that the Trojan War took place not in Anatolia, but in England. It's far from the canon, but it was bold and meticulously argued. It made me think, and not just about Homer or geography, but about the value of contrarian voices and what it means to question what ‘everyone knows.’ That kind of reading, difficult, sometimes a little mad, is not so different from tackling the books on the Mensa list. Both ask you to engage, not skim. To stay with the argument, even if it leads somewhere strange.
One book list I am intrigued about is the Mensa Excellence in Reading List for grades 9–12, which is not a reading list I would have encountered at that age. I was blessed to have a great literature teacher, Miss Curran, who had also taught my mother at the same junior school some 25 years, or so, earlier. (I later found out her first name was Maisie. Maisie Curran, what a wonderful literary name!)
Miss Curran’s class.
The Mensa list reads like a school assignment, but it is filled with cultural literacy, these books are existential quicksand. You don’t finish these books; you get overtaken by them and they stay with you through your life, planted deep in your psyche, isn't that what a good book should do?
But then I think, why should a high schooler, someone juggling hormones, history exams, and TikTok algorithms, wade through The Divine Comedy or The Magic Mountain? Not because they’ll automatically avoid TikTok or any other distraction, but because they’ll have practiced a different kind of attention, the kind that stretches across chapters, through difficult sentences, and into ideas that don’t resolve neatly.
Because the point isn’t just to prepare them for college and the latest meme. It’s to prepare them for contradiction, for ambiguity, for boredom that eventually gives way to revelation. I realize that Mensa-level reading isn’t about elitism; it’s about stamina. About learning to sit with a thing you don’t yet understand, and may not even like, and figuring out why it matters anyway. These are not comfort reads. They’re early warnings. Training grounds for the inner life.
I’ve read a good chunk. These books don’t give you a tidy map; they ask you to draw your own. The Aeneid? Read it while pretending to understand Latin roots. Brave New World? It left me with that quiet discomfort that lingers when you realize pleasure, when engineered and prescribed, becomes a form of control. Huxley didn’t bother with tyrants; he gave us distractions and indulgence and asked us to call that freedom. Rabbit, Run? It was claustrophobic in its honesty. Updike forces you to sit with a man who doesn’t know what he wants, only what he wants to run from. It's not redemption he's after, it’s escape, and the book doesn't flinch from the consequences.
The Magic Mountain tested my patience, hundreds of pages of fevered introspection and long conversations about death, time, and the illusions of progress. But in the long silences between monologues, it asked unsettling questions: Is health ever neutral? Or is it always shaped by the culture that defines it? Mann's sanatorium isn’t just a setting, it led me to reconsider how many of my convictions were just borrowed and I’d never bothered to examine.
Steppenwolf was no easier. Hesse gives you no comfort, no resolution, only a fragmented man caught in a maze of selves, each one more conflicted and unstable than the last. I didn’t enjoy reading it. That’s not the point. The point was that it left me with the uneasy feeling that identity, especially the tidy, cohesive kind we try to present to the world, is always a fiction under strain. It asked me to live with that discomfort instead of solving it.
The Trial was no kinder. I read it in a week and spent the next one looking over my shoulder. Kafka doesn’t need monsters; bureaucracy is enough. The book made me paranoid, not about some future dystopia, but about the systems we already live inside. Maybe what makes the list quietly brilliant, it isn’t built for satisfaction. It’s designed for friction.
You don’t breeze through Crime and Punishment without wondering, uncomfortably, how much Raskolnikov you might have in you. You don’t read All the King’s Men and come away thinking politics is a clean business. These books drag you into long conversations you didn’t agree to have.
Take All Quiet on the Western Front, it reveals in the deepest essence of what war looks like underneath. Or The Crucible, where hysteria runs on the fuel of cowardice dressed as righteousness. They teach ambiguity, not as an academic concept, but as a lived reality. They deal in contradiction, in things that are simultaneously right and wrong, or neither. They force you to sit with questions that don’t resolve, and answers that shift depending on who's asking.
Some of the best ones are short and mean. The Stranger, for instance, punches you in the chest and walks off without apology. Night is barely 100 pages but heavier than most academic textbooks I’ve owned. Then there’s I, Claudius, which is history’s version of reality TV, if reality TV were written by a paranoid genius with a gift for spite.
Many such as Jane Eyre, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Pride and Prejudice, they are not just love stories. They are revolutions in autonomy and self-definition, waged in a world that often mistook control for care and silence for virtue. They don’t beg for space in your mind, they seize it. These are not tales of longing. They’re lessons in endurance, in identity carved out under pressure.
Some titles, like The Age of Innocence or Silas Marner, appear deceptively gentle at first glance, yet they carry subversive truths beneath their period costumes. Edith Wharton threads a critique of societal constraint through every ballroom, and George Eliot slips class struggle into the quiet life of a weaver. Then there’s Things Fall Apart, which doesn’t whisper, it shouts, a colonial reckoning told not through thesis but through heartbreak.
Moby-Dick might seem like overkill, until you read it and realize it’s not about a whale. It’s about obsession, and how quickly the sublime turns into the monstrous when ego takes the helm. The Sound and the Fury throws you headfirst into disorientation, and you have to learn to read it as you go, like learning a new dialect of grief.
Don Quixote mocks romanticism while secretly mourning it. The Good Earth teaches humility in the language of land and toil. And A Doll’s House? It ends with a door slam that still echoes through modern conversations about agency.
The list doesn’t coddle, like the American mind has become. It includes 1984 and The Fountainhead. It pairs The Great Gatsby with Native Son, knowing full well they aren’t playing in the same emotional ballpark. It’s a reminder that reading isn’t about agreement. It’s about exposure.
It took me a while to realize the point of the whole exercise of the Mensa list. It’s not to become well-read. That’s a side effect. The point is to lose your smugness. To get knocked off balance by something older, stranger, smarter than you. To stop assuming you know it all.
There are a few half-read volumes from the list that glare at me from shelves. But if these books have taught me anything, the only thing worse than ignorance is certainty. Especially the kind you don’t realize you’re carrying.
For me there is no Mensa medal at the end of the list, I read because every time I think I’ve understood what a book wanted from me, another is waiting and reminds me how much is left to learn, and how much of that learning, insight and enjoyment can still come from good books.
Stay curious
Colin
Link to the Mensa Excellence in Reading List for grades 9–12
Image from ChatGPT, the joy of reading.
Note the inkwell holes in the desks, classic!
There is a good thread of comments on Hacker News about this post and other lists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43601190#43601359
I have only read five books from the list. I believe IQ is a limited measure of human intelligence as human intelligence is more than just our verbal, math, and spatial abilities. However, since we like to measure things, it provides a way to categorize people—though not necessarily in meaningful or holistic ways.
Here are some of my thoughts and observations about reading:
1. The Influence of Environment: The environment in which you are raised plays a significant role in shaping your habits. I am grateful to my parents for fostering my reading habits, as they were both avid readers. Growing up surrounded by people who read sparked my curiosity and instilled a love for books.
2. Reading as the Greatest Bargain: Reading is one of the world's most valuable and inexpensive activities. As Gene Roddenberry said:
“I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives.”
3. Successful People and Reading: I’ve noticed that most successful people read a lot. As Charlie Munger put it:
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”
4. The Compounding Effect of Reading: Reading, like money, compounds over time. I dedicate 30 to 40 hours a week to reading, and this habit has significantly improved my ability to think, understand the world, and write. The more you read, the greater your intellectual growth.
5. The Value of Broad Reading: Reading across diverse subjects is the best way to develop a holistic understanding of the world and sharpen problem-solving skills. Many of the solutions I’ve found in life have come from knowledge outside my primary field of interest.
6. Learning from Multiple Authors: To truly grasp a subject, you should read works from different authors. Even if one book feels definitive, exploring other perspectives is essential, as even the best experts only have partial knowledge of any topic.
7. The Timeless Wisdom of Old Books: Older books often provide more enduring wisdom than newer ones, except in fast-evolving fields. If a book has stood the test of time, its insights remain relevant. This is an excellent example of the Lindy Effect, where timeless works remain valuable.
8. The Power of Re-Reading: Francis Bacon's quote sums it up the best: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously, and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
If you find a book that should be chewed and digested, you should reread it, as one reading may not be enough, and we remember only a tiny part of the book.
9. Start Many, Finish a Few: Life is short, and not every book will resonate with you. If you find a book you don’t enjoy or find valuable, stop reading it. Instead, focus on exploring many books, starting plenty but only finishing the ones that truly capture your interest or provide meaningful insights.
10. Reading Multiple Books Simultaneously: Reading more than one book at a time, especially on different topics, can be highly rewarding. It allows you to shift between subjects based on your mood or energy level, keeps your mind engaged, and helps you draw connections between different areas of knowledge. For example, reading a history book alongside a science book can spark insights you might not get from either alone.
11. Connecting Knowledge Across Fields: One of the best ways to excel is by connecting ideas across different areas. This knowledge synthesis creates unique insights and solutions rarely found in any book.
12. Delaying Opinion Formation: I rarely immediately form an opinion on a topic. Instead, I read and retain a few key ideas, forming an opinion only when necessary, such as when answering a question or writing a post. This delay allows me to think, research, and approach the topic more deeply.
13. Questioning Ideas and Staying Open-Minded: Never accept anyone’s ideas, opinions, or thoughts as absolute truth, no matter who they come from. Think critically, apply your own experiences, and deliberate before accepting them. Even then, remain open to new ideas that might challenge or improve your current understanding. The motto of the Royal Society sums it up best: Nullius in verba (Latin for "no one's words" or "take nobody's word for it).
I will end with the following two quotes:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin
and
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” — Mark Twain (for some people, it may be videos as one of the genius I know reads very little, but he watches YouTube videos to learn things)