Canon

[close] A group for those attempting to complete, or who have completed, the canons of their favourite writers. Share your canon-wide knowledge and opinion with the world! Offer detailed book-by-book analysis! Write withering two-line putdowns of all the duds! Direct readers to hidden delights within the oeuvres of the unknown and the esoteric! Revel in your unwavering obsessive loyalty to all the writers that give you hope for tomorrow, or even this afternoon.

[close] From...Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Sir Thomas Malory, Robert Henryson, John Skelton, Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, Henry Howard Earl of Surrey...Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson...to the future AD 4202. &Canon translated into English.

[close] The selections in this group are based on a reading plan traversing the complex landscape of the great books through space and time: Philip Ward's "A Lifetime's Reading: The World's 500 Greatest Books" http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/lit_body2.jpg and at http://www.vox.com/maps/2015/9/25/9397237/literature-map "Peregrinations": An ambitious attempt to traverse space and time through the literary landscape of the great novels, epics, plays and poetry. Ready to travel? " ... I have at one time or another glanced across a library to see a man or woman of eighteen to twenty daunted - even bewildered - by the sheer richness of the library treasures that are waiting to be enjoyed, the great minds to be understood, the poets' voices to be heard, the characters of fiction to be encountered. My heart has been touched by the magnitude of their choice. I long to offer them the plays of Euripides and the stories of Isaac Babel, the love songs of Dante and the wisdom of Mencius. But I know help must be given only when sought. A maturity that is bullied into life is not worth having." "So I have written this book - fruit of a lifetime's reading happily not quite over - in the hope that it will serve as a literary guide to readers looking forward to many thousands of hours of pleasure." You may also want to check out https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/217505-the-story-of-civilisation

[close] I'd like to put together a provisional canon of great works of non-fiction. Specifically, what are the best written, most engaging and influential books of history, biography, and science? I can think of a few, but I'm inviting others to suggest their favorites and discuss.