"If you could recommend any one book to read, what would it be?"

The economist Tyler Cowen considers the ultimate desert island question:

That is a question from a very smart person, over thirty years of age, who claims not to have read very much (I don’t know how much). 

So which book should I recommend? 

Conditional on the person knowing me, the idea of simply introducing economics is not going to win, even if that would be the correct recommendation for many others.  And “Collected Works” are not allowed. 

How about a broadly philosophical novel, such as Don Quixote or Homer’s Odyssey or In Search of Lost Time?  Moby-Dick?  A play of Shakespeare?   

A current favorite, such as Ferrante or Knausgaard? 

How about a perfectly constructed travel book, touting the virtues of a new and magical place?  But most travel books I find dull, unsatisfying, and too scattered with wasteful, overly subjective sentences about sunsets and train trips. 

A didactic, moralizing book, perhaps on charity or Effective Altruism? 

For many people music may be more powerful than the written word, so perhaps the recent Jan Swafford biography of Beethoven, or John Eliot Gardiner’s book on Bach, or any number of good books on Mozart.  A critical guidebook to some of the best movies available?  Almost everyone can glean new ideas for their Netflix queue, even if they already have seen lots of films. 

I don’t know of a biography which is inspirational for everyone or even most people, and I figure an intelligent person older than thirty already has been exposed to the world’s major religions. 

How about a book which is a compendium for a hobby, such as a bird watcher’s guide, a Sotheby’s auction catalog, or a Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook? 

I keep finding myself drawn to recommend a book which leads the advice recipient away from books, rather than toward them.  Is that a strength or weakness of the book medium?

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