Karina's comments (member since Jun 14, 2009)

Karina's comments from the The Great Books Corner group.

By posting the two new topics on Plato and Aristotle, Mary Alice, you've reminded me of my Intro to Philosophy class, so I guess I read some of those authors... Hehe. I still have the essays I wrote for the exams on morality. Questions were:

1. How exactly does Socrates' views about the justice differ from the views of the majority? How does Glaucon argue that no one is volutarily just? Finally, why does it appear as though it is better to live an unjust life rather than one that is just?

2. What, for Aristotle, is Human good? What is the connection between happiness, virtue, and reason? Why must ethical virtues be acquired through habit rather than teaching? Finally, explain what Aristotle means when he describes ethical virtue as a mean disposition with respect to both actions and feelings?

I'm curious about Lord of the Flies... I haven't read that.

Mary Alice: The Woman in White is pretty good - I think I even read it twice, but I really don't remember much of it anymore. It's rather sad that I forget the stuff I read. But on the positive side, if I forget I can enjoy the book all over again! There are a few books I re-read multiple times.

Welcome, Kay! this group has a great start, and I hope it will be both educational and fun.

From the 100 Greatest Novels list

I've read: 1, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31, 33, 38, 53, 59, 61, 63, 64, 67, 73

I'd like to read: 2, 3 (?), 27, 32, 40.

Is that what you wish to read or have read? In the other thread,you mentioned you have read Brothers Karamazov and Little Women...

Confessions of St. Augustine are definitely on my to-read list too.

Mary Alice wrote: "I wish I could come up with a way to list a ton of books with a checkloist so people could jus..."

Yeah, that would be great. I'm seeing more books I've read from the lists you are putting up here in the group. The fact that everyone lists various books makes it hard to keep track of ...

From the second list a few more:
The Decameron (good stuff!)
Les Misérables
Frankenstein
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Vanity Fair
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Treasure Island
Grimm's Fairy Tales

Since I'm Russian, you can bet that the Russian authors on that list are pretty well covered. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov, Ostrovsky, Chenyshevsky, Blok, Chekhov - read a bit of everything.

Little Women
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
H.G. Wells science fiction
Brave New World
1984

Russian stuff again, same thing as above. I've read a bunch. One of my favorite poets is in this list :)

Solaris - at least partially. I remember I didn't like it, so I might not have finished it.

Katherine Mansfield's stories.

The Catcher in the Rye

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Wow this second list was huuuge. It seems like there's no way anyone can read the whole of it in a lifetime.

Just looking at the first of the lists, and starting from the bottom, I've read:

136. Nausea
115. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
114. War and Peace (Only partially, in school - and I bluffed through the essay question based on the talk of my teacher. It was interesting but too long...)
112. Madame Bovary
111. The Brothers Karamazov
105. I've read a bunch of Dickens, including David Copperfield, but I couldn't get into Pickwick's Papers and didn't try Hard Times yet.
93. The Red and the Black
91. Both Pride and Prejudice and Emma (and a few other Jane Austin books that aren't mentioned there)
86. Faust
68. Gulliver's Travels
60. Maybe, partially? Pensees
59. At least one comedy by Moliere, more likely two.
52. Some Shakespeare. King Lear is a favorite.
49. Don Quixote
38. The Canterbury Tales
37. The Divine Comedy. Read most of it, although I don't think I got through the whole Paradise part.