I think of reading it sometimes, but it would take an awfully long time. Maybe if I broke my leg or something. Speaking of really early novels, JR, did you ever read Simplicius Simplicissimus? That looks like it might be fun, too.Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson
My blushes, Danik! First Molly Bloom's dream and now this? I am an innocent beside you, sir!
We all have our innocent sides, PB!
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I have to say I wasn't aware of Simplicissimus until you mentioned it. You bowled me a googly - a reference prendrelmick as a Yorkshireman will understand.
Thinking of German classics, there's Goethe's Faust. Although I understand generally regarded as up there with Dante in importance, it is not a work I hear much about in the English speaking world. There are annual translations of the Commedia, but hardly any I know about of Faust.
I don't really like reading poetry in translation - I am bound to miss one of the most important elements. Unless I come accross a brilliant translation, I'll give it a miss. Also The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
Lolita's excellent. I think both of you would enjoy it quite a bit.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
An off break disguised as a leg break - or is it the other way round? (I'm in the corridor of uncertainty)
ay up
Envious PB? What I am envious of is that someone wants to sell you brides! Be careful and don't purchase a bum steer.
It's muslima.com, if you're interested. Before that it was "Date a Ukranian girl!" (apparently the default). And whenever I go to Taiwan, it's suddenly "Hot Asian babes want to meet you!" I can sympathize. I mean, it gets damn hot in Taiwan, but it's not like I can help the poor things. Besides I'm loyal to my wife, even though she doesn't want me to drive anymore. She says she won't have a bum steer. ba-DUM!
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 10-25-2016 at 10:23 AM.
Since I just started reading classic books, my list is far fuller of the more obvious classics than everyone else's. That combined with the fact that I so rarely read books that I was assigned in school (and yes, I was an English major).
King James New Testament (did read the old one)
All of Shakespeare
The Divine Comedy
Paradise Lost
Any Dickens other than Christmas Carol
Never finished War and Peace, although I read a lot/Anna Karenina
Aeneid
Don Quixote
Ulysses
Canterbury Tales
In Search of Lost Time
Brothers Karamazov/Crime & Punishment
Really any poetry
I am reading Moby-Dick now, though!
You can skip The Three Musketeers. I read it and it is just a waste of time. There is nothing in it. It is just swashbuckling action during the siege at the Rochelle in France under Louis the XIII and his Machiavellian cleric Cardinal Richelieu.
Read Ulysses instead and you won't have wasted your time.
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
I'm sure some readers would enjoy a swashbuckling costume action flick. But I'll take Red's word for it and give it a miss.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
I agree that Uncle Tom's Cabin was more of a social document than a good book, but it is also fun to read because of the number of phrases from it that have entered the English language. It doesn't give Shakespeare a run for his money in this regard, but it either employed a huge number of cliches or originated them.
OP. HOW could you list the books you hadn't read? Myself, if I find it appealing I should have read it, by my stage of life. If it doesn't appeal I refuse to carry it around as some sort of "should have" regret.
My one exception to this is Finnegan's Wake but I know myself well enough to be aware that I wouldn't persevere.
The Divine Conedy, The Aeneid, Jerusalem Delivered, Orlando Furioso, William Blake': prophetic books, The Prelude (Wordsworth), Plato's Republic, Utopia, Leviathan, Aristotle's Nichomaean Ethics, Longinus's On the Sublime, Edmund Burke': On the Sublime and Beautiful, Aristophanes' plays, Sophocles's plays, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Idiot, Mason & Dixon, Demons (Dostoevsky), Notes from the Underground
And more...
Yea, I actually enjoy swashbuckler stories if written by someone who knows how to write, though I don't think valuing books based on their content, rather than their entertainment is an incorrect way of dealing with literature.
- Did science finally figure out death?
+ Why?
- I just saw a girl walking on the street, laughing out loud, and saying to her friend: "I'm literally dying."
+ *sighs*
I believe Faust Part II is the one that is supposed to be superior. I only read Part I. Part II is denser and richer and you have to have a thorough knowledge of Greek mythology to understand it.
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
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