I often browse around on YouTube just before I go to bed. Sometimes you see the most awful bait and switches ever committed, sometimes you see some really interesting stuff. And then there are the cat videos. One particularly ubiquitous type of video is of the 7 or 10 or 15 things you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO DO or SEE or READ. I just saw one of the "15 books Jordan Peterson thinks you should read." Now, of course he is not thinking you or I should read anything in particular, he has other stuff to worry about. My first reaction to things like that is to start parodying them "The 15 Hairstyles Vin Diesel Recommends"
or "Marcel Proust's guide to writing short, pithy essays." But my second reaction is to think that there are a few books that might be worthwhile to read. Not for everyone, of course, you there, in the back, could skip a few, but the rest of you might, who knows, enjoy them in a sort of desultory fashion. Here goes:
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
- Selected Poems, Wallace Stevens
- The Odyssey, Homer
- Master & Commander, Patrick O'Brian
- Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
- Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell
- Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann
- Modern Times, Paul Johnson
- Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick
- From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun
- Complete Works, William Shakespeare
Except for the last, not too heavy. Lots of variety. Fiction, classics and non-fiction. Most importantly is what is not on the list. Crap. No crap.
9 comments:
Great list; I thought separated at birth? But then I saw the Heinlein and the O'Brian and I thought well maybe second cousins separated at birth. I know Heinlein has a good imagination and that we can re-construct the British Navy from O'brian but ..... Where's the Iliad? Joyce? Yeats? Not to get too picky ...
Oh no, you are quite right. I was throwing together a list for the maximum of variety and accessibility, not a comprehensive one. No Dante, for one thing! Heinlein and O'Brian are really the best at what they do.
It's a fun list. Have read a few and half read a few more (looking at you Doctor Faustus, which has defeated me time and time again), but the only one I've never heard of is From Dawn to Decadence. Looking it up I'm interested. Added it to the to-buy list. I'm making my way through the O'Brian series in fits and starts. I don't have the same intense fascination with the series some seem do, but I do keep coming back, if only for more Stephen Maturin.
If there is one book that is for me indispensable -- assuming, as per the rules of Desert Island Discs, that I am to have a copy of the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare as well -- I'd have to choose Boswell's Life of Johnson. It really is a whole lifetime somehow condensed into a single book. For every ill temper it is a tonic, for every restless night it is the perfect diversion, such good sense and good company. I'm always surprised how few 'educated' people have read it.
A fun list is what I was aiming for. But other than that, I think that I was trying to invoke the idea of a well-rounded reader. Yes, read the great works of literature, but mix in some other kinds of things like Sowell on Basic Economics (his Vision of the Anointed is also worth a serious look) and a couple of brilliant works of genre fiction. Homage to Catalonia is a window on a history that, if you are currently residing in a country on the verge of a possible civil way, you really should know. Johnson and Barzun give some other glimpses of history that are very worthwhile. And well, yes, Doctor Faustus is worth the trouble. It is high on my list to re-read after I have finished Proust. Thanks so much for the recommendation of the Life of Johnson. I have read so many quotes from it I almost feel I have read it. I will put it high on my list!
Yes I've read Homage to Catalonia, and it's definitely high on my re-read list at the moment. 1984 too given current post-covid trends, though I'm less keen on his novels. Read some of the Paul Johnson at university, good stuff. Sowell is definitely someone whose books I must read. I think I've generally avoided reading him because of his being an economist, and I'm rather averse to economics... Vision of the Anointed looks interesting though.
I don't know about Mann. I will definitely try again. Though sometimes I come across writers who are undoubtedly brilliant, but I really struggle to 'get'. Dickens is one that comes to mind. The problem is, I'm sure, all mine
AGH, I meant to write "if you are currently residing in a country on the verge of a possible civil war" not "way"!
Sowell is about the sociology of economics as much as anything.
Oh no, Steven, don't blame yourself! It's called "individual taste" and we all, apparently, have it. It's just that Doctor Faustus has a lot to do with music and there don't seem to be any other books anything like it. Have you read Dante? Or Marlowe's Doctor Faustus?
I was teasing you a bit Bryan because I did see another of your reading lists with the Iliad at the top ... I'd like to recommend Steven give Dickens' 'Great Expectations' a try; most of Dickens' good points stand out or rather stay in control in that novel ...
I was working on Dante in the original ..but it's not so easy. I can read enough of his Italian to see that his language is very plain, succinct; it is in his metaphors and similes that he flies. All English translations are flowery compared to the original. That irritates me. I tried reading it in Spanish since Italian and Spanish are cousins. But the same thing with Spanish, antique, lush, flowery language ...sheesh. Anyone have a favorite English translation?
Bryan I've got Mann's 'Faustus' on my list. Didn't the Schoenberg family get upset over the book since Mann used his life and theories throughout?
I would like to throw in a recommendation: any books by Eric Hoffer; he became famous for writing 'The True Believer' but he wrote many others afterwards. They are all worth looking into; much like Tom Sowell, he had an interesting counterintuitive understanding of America ....
Dex, I bow low before anyone that can read Dante in the original Tuscan! I don't even remember doing another reading list, though likely I did. This blog is eleven years old now and I have done 3,200 posts.
I really liked the version in the Portable Dante I lost years ago. "Midway the journey of our life..."
Yes, Mann used Schoenberg as a model, but I don't recall how much umbrage the family took. I will keep an eye out for Hoffer.
Yes others have recommended Great Expectations to me too, Dex. I've tried David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities, the latter of which I finished but did not much enjoy. I know Great Expectations from the film with John Mills and Alex Guinness, which is a fine film indeed. My current tastes when it comes to novels are perhaps strange: I'm not terribly enthusiastic about most of the 19th century with the notable exception of the Waverley novels.
Hm, Bryan, I think my individual taste is fairly changeable. I never used to like olives but one peculiar day I sat down and ate a few dozen of them and began to tolerate the taste. Now I rather like them. Of course the opposite effect can be true: I used to like Mahler, then I tried to listen to all the symphonies... I do often return to books with a change of heart one way or the other.
Yes I've read some of Dante, I don't think I got round to Paradiso - my copy is in the Longfellow translation if that's of any interested to you Dex. Haven't read the Marlowe.
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