Everyman's comments

Everyman's comments from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group.

Note: Everyman is no longer a member of this group.

Laura-jayne wrote: "I'm just begining to read it, can I join in too?"

You just did! Welcome!

Come share your insights, appreciations, dislikes, etc.

And now yet another list. Newsweek's latest issue is on books, and includes a list of "What to Read Now. And Why."

Their Number 1 book is Trollope's The Way We Live Now, which isn't even on the 1001 list. Nor is their next novel, their no. 5 book (the majority of their books are not novels), Faulkner's The Bear. Nor is their third novel, number 12 on their list, Flannery O'connor's A Good Man is hard to Find.

I haven't gone through the two lists and compared them title by title, but it's interesting, at least to me, that there is no crossover with the top novels on the Newsweek list.

I've been enjoying this discussion about Emma, which is one of my very favorite books. A few comments.

First, I think we have to look at her in the context of the era in which she was created and in which Austen was writing. She may seen naive compared to modern young women, but I don't see her as naive in the context of the society in which she was raised and lived.

Second, she lived (and Austen wrote) in a very structured and class--centered society. She lost her mother early, and was raised by a devoted companion/governess, whose job it was to praise her more than to criticize or correct her. She was of the highest class in the local community, was raised with that ingrained into her being, and had no other social structure to compare it against. She certainly seems arrogant and spoiled by modern standards, but do those around her see her that way? It doesn't seem so to me, with one notable exception.

I don't see her, frankly, as immature. She is, indeed, remarkably mature for her age, running a major household with servants, caring for a not-easy-to-please father, carrying out her social duty of caring (not perfectly, but generally successfully) about the lower classes. And of course what was expected of her as a woman was totally different from what was expected of young men of her acquaintance, and still more totally different from what is expected (or should I better say permitted?) of modern young women.

If one tries to look at her not as a modern young woman, but as what she actually was, I think the picture of her becomes quite different. Perfect she certainly is not. But successful in the role she has been given to play in the highly structured society of her day, I think yes.

It isn't on the 1001 list because it's not a novel, but Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey is a delightful read.



visit the Classics and Western Canon book group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1986...

Linda wrote: "Thanks for starting that Classics group, Everyman! I will be joining. I see that we share many favorite authors (Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare) Yea!"

Glad to see you there!

Lyn wrote: "Lyn wrote: "i am using the list as a challenge to broaden my reading picks. When I was in high school, many years ago, I went through a classics period, but lately have fallen into a single or dou..."

The "Classics and the Western Canon" group has just been formed. For those interested in reading and discussing classic books, come join us.
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1986...

Paula wrote: "Oh, gee - drop Dr. Peter B's list and focus on real Western Canon? Twist my arm :)

Perhaps we could toss Dante into the mix if everyone hasn't already read it? I know it's a bit of a staple, bu..."

I'm sure we'll get to Dante not too far down the road.

Dianna wrote: "I have always had trouble with Shakespear's history but maybe if I had someone to help me understand.
..."

King Lear isn't really history (not like the other King plays). It's one of his -- I believe his greatest -- tragedies, a fantastic play, very rich, very deep, very sad, but also very affirming. But I think it is best appreciated by, let us say mature readers. (Doesn't that sound better than "older than dirt people"?)

I agree with you about the challenges with the history plays, but we can do them; I think the key is not to worry too much about the details of the history -- Shakespeare changes lots of details around anyhow, so they aren't accurate history to begin with -- and focus on the human interactions and underlying meaning, such as Richard II which is a marvelous study in personal disintegration and the meaning (or lack of meaning) of kingship:

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Paula wrote: "... Are we all doing the 1001 Dr. Peter B's list? If so, I'd be good with sticking to those.
..."

I'm not doing the 1001 list, because most of the books are long after the period I most enjoy reading, and he limits himself to novels, whereas a lot of my reading time is spent on other reading -- history, philosophy, biography, criticism, etc. If we stuck to his list we would drop out the majority of the traditional classics and much of the standard Western Canon.

That's why we need a separate group!

Gerald wrote: ... The apex of my reading life was spending much of 2006 reading "In Search of Lost Time."

You're ahead of me. The first two volumes, plus Botton's How Proust can Change your Life have been sitting on my TBR shelf for longer than I care to admit, but every time I reach for them I realize that they will mean putting back quite a few of my other urgent TBR choices, and I sigh and move my hand to another volume on the shelves.

We seem to have, so far, Everyman, Gerald, and Carly (and maybe Dianna?) interested in a group to read and discuss classic/Western Canon books. Are there any others who would be active in such a group if it formed? I think a core group of five active people would be a good start for a robust discussion; I would hope there would be other readers here who would eventually find and join us.

If there is the interest, I'll propose a few ideas and then set up a group.

I would think starting with a great but fairly quick read would be a good introduction, and give time to get a discussion started fairly quickly before we started in on major works. A few suggestions would be:

Sophocles's Antigone -- an absolute must read for any thinking reader. Over two thousand years ago, Sophocles was already exploring a the conflict between individual duty and state interests -- a conflict still highly relevant today.

One of the less complex Platonic dialogues -- Meno perhaps -- how do we acquire virtue? What is the nature of knowledge? Or maybe Crito -- a very different exploration from Antigone of the issue of individual interests vs. state interests.

A Shakespearean play is also a possibility -- would it be too ambitious to tackle King Lear at the outset?

Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey or Gray's Elegy in an Country Churchyard both are eminently discussable poems. (Bloom would add The Old Cumberland Beggar.)

One or two of the Canterbury Tales would also be a possibility.

There are a few shorter novels from the great novelistic period which are short enough to read fairly quickly but rich enough to serve as a good basis for discussion. I think, for example, of Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Far from the Madding Crowd, to name just a few.

But first we need a group!

Gerald wrote: "...In the 2008 edition, he added about 250 books. He also eliminated many of the books on his original list ..."

Which raises an interesting question. If somebody had read the entire 2006 list (assuming, which I frankly doubt, that such a person actually exists) but died in 2007, now that there are other books they must read before they die, but they can't because they've died, do they get into book heaven anyhow? Or are they soomed to live forever in book forever in book limbo???

I like this approach. I'm going to feel free to substitute books I want to read for books on the list. I'll just give it slightly different title: 1001 books I desire to read before I die. Desire is much friendlier word than must anyhow.

So instead of reading, say, Duskland, I can read (well, reread; I'm not going to back and start substituting in retrospect, or I would be done already) Paradise Lost and count it as the substitute book for Duskland. Since I've read 195 of his books, I now have to read 806 books either from his list or substituting for books on his list, and I'm home free. Won't be a piece of cake at my age, since tend to prefer substantive books to fluff books -- Dombey and Son, near the top of my TBR shelf, will take more than a few days -- but I'll work on it.

But this approach has given me new hope that I won't die with my reading obligations unfulfilled. Just redefine the task and it becomes achievable!

Thanks for the great suggestion.

Gerald wrote: "...since there are many books on the 2008 list that interest me, when I read one of those I give myself credit on the 2006 list for a book I'm sure I will never read. That way I can read 1001 books I find enjoyable, and insure myself a place in heaven. I figure I can finish 1001 by the time I'm 90 and include a number of great books that are not on either list..."

I like Bloom's Western Canon -- sort of. [g:] I like his opening essay, and most of his selections, but I find some of his comments on the works to be less than helpful.

The book I like even better than Bloom is the original edition of Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan. It's been replaced by the not so good (IMO) New Lifetime Reading Plan, but the original is still available on alibris and abebooks -- look for a publication date of 1986 or earlier. Alibris has new copies of the 1968 printing for $20 and up, and several of the first edition, 1960, edition in good condition, for $1.99.

Judith wrote: "Everyman:

I have read the book, and one key point to note is that it is supposed to be a recommendation of novels only. There are exceptions- essays and short stories; but as far as I have found,..."

Gerald wrote: "I use the list to get myself to read classics I've missed (just finished "Anna Karenina" and started "Middlemarch" and to discover modern authors who come highly recommended. I also read a lot of c..."

Both excellent choices. There are legitimate reasons to consider Middlemarch the best novel in the English language. Of course, the idea of one best novel is somewhat silly, and even if one were to try to name it there are other legitimate contenders (Bleak Hose for one), but Middlemarch would certainly be high in the running

Gerald wrote: "Yeah, but you won't go to heaven :} You're right, of course, this list has few rules it doesn't feel ok breaking. No, I haven't read 1001 Nights either and don't think I will.
Gerry"

If I have to read his numbers 1-20 to get into heaven, I'll pick a different heaven to go to, thank you very kindly. :)

Paula wrote:
And Everyman - I've been looking for that kind of book club and haven't found it either."

If there are enough people here on goodreads interested, maybe we should start it?

Dianna wrote: "Oh, I tried so hard to get into the Odyssey. I have real difficulty with things written in verse form. Faust was horrible for me and Shakespear's histories I can't do either, though I love the co..."

There is a prose translation of the Odyssey by Palmer in the Barnes and Noble Classics edition if the verse is what's getting to you. Though I think the Fitzgerald translation reads just as easily as prose. You just need to read about ten pages to get into it, and then I find it reads beautifully. JMHO.

If limiting it to novels was his intention, he should have called the book 1001 Novels, not 1001 books. As it is, it's very deceptive.

But as you note there are a few weird exceptions. He includes Metamorphoses and Aesop's Fables, neither even remotely a novel. And if he's going to include the Thousand and one Nights, how does he exclude the Decameron, which is far more influential, IMO, than the Nights? (An aside: how many people here have actually read the entire Thousand and one Nights? Hands up, please? Hmmm -- I don't see any. Mine isn't -- I've read the Modern Library Bennett Cerf selection, but not the whole collection, which I think Burton put out in eight volumes. )

I haven't thought about novels that should be on the list but aren't, but there are for sure a few (or more than a few) that are on it that I will be perfectly content dying without having read.

I admit that I haven't read the book, so I don't know what his criteria are for the selections he picked, but I must say that I find some of his choices rather unusual.

I started going down the list to answer the questoin of this topic, but I found myself more and more mystified at what was excluded. Maybe they explain that they are leaving out many of the books that traditionally would be on such a list and concentrating only on the ones that readers are less likely to know, but I still consider some of their choices inexplicable.

But since this is a thread on "how many have you read," I'll start there and say:

Of the 2000s: none of 69.
Of the 1900s: 77 of 716
Of the 1800s: 84 of 157
Of the 1700s: 27 of 46
Of the pre-1700s: 7 of 13

But I'm very disappointed that people who believe in this list apparently accept that it's okay to die without having read a single word of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, any of the Greek dramatists, Augustine, Cicero, Herodotus, Thucydides, Dante, Virgil, Milton, Wordsworth -- and it's not only the ancient writers. I Robot but not Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead?

Ah well.