Thus far in your life, how many classical/canonical works--including poems and plays--have you read (50, 100, 200)? And a rough estimate is fine.
If you had the chance, how many would you read in your lifetime?
How did you choose the ones that you've read; for example, did you get recommendations or did you read them for school, etc?
In the thousands by now, especially if you count World Canons. By far the most being poetry.
I think that question requires a verdict on what we mean by 'classical/canonical' works - a lot of the stuff I read is on the fringe. Is Arthur Machen a canonical writer? Is Lord Dunsany? Margery Kempe? These might not be famous writers whose names, or indeed texts, are instantly recognizable, but they are nevertheless important and influential.
Pedantry aside, like JBI I'm certainly in the 1,000+ category.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
No idea.
I'm trying to read a good balance of new and classic in order to discuss, compare and develop some idea of how literature has and is developing. It's a mere hobby for my own edification, and I get a lot of good pointers from the discussions on here. In the end though, there are so many books and too little time.
It would be better if you offered a list for quantified questions, otherwise it's hard to know exactly what you mean by canonical and to decide exactly what works should be included.
I'm pretty sure I've read at least 2 though!
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 08-25-2013 at 06:50 PM.
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I've read pieces of several dozen "canonical" works.
So far the only works I can name off the top of my head that I've read through fully are The Iliad, The Odyssey, Gulliver's Travels, and The Bible. I've read a few plays, poems, essays, and anywhere from 10 to 200 pages of selected work from various Western Canon authors. I think I read about 400 pages of Herodotus's Histories, which is probably the largest sampling of an author's work I have read, in which I did not read the full piece, but plan to.
I've read several of Plato's works, several essays of Montaigne's, bits and pieces of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, etc.
I'm currently reading selections based on the 10 year reading plan from The Great Books of the Western World set, while interspersing poems, plays, essays, short stories, and novels of my own choosing in-between sections of the planned reading list.
While I can guide myself, it is nice to have a guide when reading these works, especially when it presents the material in such a way that it all builds on itself and you can see how authors were influenced by previous works that came before them, as well as sample a broad range and get an idea of who's work you would really want to sit down and read through fully.
I've built up a pretty solid library of some 400+ books, and believe that to read them all once, would take me until my 70's, at a minimum of two hours reading per day, every day. It's fairly daunting when I think about it, and what's even more vexing, is that I have a couple hundred more books I plan to eventually acquire to have what I would consider a pretty complete home library.
That doesn't even account for the re-reading of truly great and worthy works, be they short story to a series of books in which even greater pleasure or deeper understanding is likely to occur from additional readings.
Phaw! Too much!
Not nearly enough full canonical works. I had a very bad habit growing up of starting books and not finishing them, as well as not reading books fully (or even at all) that I was assigned (I was an English literature major in college). So in terms of canonical works that I've read myself in adulthood (I don't really "count" anything before that...I'm OCD like that), I have only read The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the King James Old Testament (hoping to reading the Apocrypha and New Testament after I finish applying to law school this fall/winter, but I do consider the Old Testament to be, in some ways, a work in and of itself, separate from the NT.
In terms of bad habits cropping up recently, I did not finish War and Peace, despite getting over 700 pages into it and loving it. The truth was, I was drinking heavily at the time, and I didn't want to ruin the book by not reading it for weeks, only to come back to it after my drinking binges ended, so I gave up reading it for another time when I was more sober. But in truth, I still consider it my favorite of all time, because even of the three-fourths or so that I read, it was an extraordinary novel, unlike anything else I had read in its depiction of life's vitality and of the human experience.
Modern Warfare by "Ubique". Lots of canons in that.
I read it with excitement as a ten year old but now I find it rather grim as it was an account in detail of a German invasion of France and was published in 1903. It was realistic in details of infantry manoeuvres and artillery but optimistic in what the outcome would be. If the military were convinced of a German attack on France and a European war as early as thatwhy could more not have been done politically to avoid it?
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