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] Star Wars books as God intended them - Pre-Canon! Explore the Star Wars Expanded Universe with Jared, Freddy, and Meg of the Legends Lookback podcast as your guide. Part of the Youtini universe. Tune in to the podcast for round tables and reviews! Live stream on Thursday nights at 9:30 EST at YouTube.com/youtini

[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] Who makes it onto the Canon of Great Literature? The “most important, influential, definitive”? I reject this criteria for my list of the best novelists of all time. Often a novelist who did something for the first time is given great weight with this criteria. I am not interested in who was the most innovative or who defied the standards of their day. My criteria: the novelist has created work(s) that withstands the test of time. It is transcendent because of great storytelling, exceptional writing, its portrayals of the human condition, powerful drama or insightful intellectual discourse, and sublime use of language. The contemporary novelists on the list may be the most controversial because there are so many writers to choose from and I have not read them all. Please make your case for any changes or additions. I reserve the right to make edits as I become better informed.