The books that started it all for me - I started a vigorous campaign of self-education when I was in freshman year of high-school by reading all of these. It took well over a year, but I managed to get through them all, and I learned so much because of them. I regularly return to my favorites. Has some obvious gaps, but then, doesn't anyone's reading?

The high rating here is partly due to my sentimental attachment to them and as the start of my long journey into reading. ( )

First inspired by Emerson's observation about the sheer volume of
volumes available to read ("There are 850,000 volumes in the Imperial
Library at Paris. If a man were to read industriously from dawn to
dark for sixty years, he would die in the first alcove. Would that some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false
books and alighting upon a few true ones, which made him happy and
wise, would name those which have been bridges or ships to carry him
safely over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred
cities, into palaces and temples"), the purpose of Harvard was to
SELECT the works fitted for a liberal education. [Reading Guide 11, 7].

We note that this collection gives the lie to the claim by
religious fanatics that "the West" is ignorant of Mohammad or the
Koran. Both are cited in detail by numerous influential thinkers in
this library. The lively interest the West has shown toward Islam is
not reciprocated. Islam's scholars were often hounded to their deaths
by mobs incited by the "puritan" competitors of scholarship and truth.
Ibn-Sina, Hankal, Ibrahim.
Compare, the fortunes of "nonconformists" in 1600-1700 England,
such as the Pilgrims and Penn. Compare, Shakespeare's works almost
disappeared shortly after his death. The plays were hunted out and burned by religiously-incited
round-head mobs, and only really recovered by Johnson (2d).
And those persecuting Puritans include Milton himself, in turn, persecuted. ( )