books every home library should have

[k.brignell]

Hey, we just brought a new house and I have been given the spare room to start my own library. I have quite a few books but was just wondering what fiction and non-fiction is essential for my library, thanks

[kelby_lake]

Ulysses
The Bible
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Nietschze/Marx/any philosopher

[kasie]

What you put in your personal library is entirely up to you and depends upon your personal interests.

If you do not have one already, then a good dictionary is an essential, I believe. Then ask yourself what you cannt do without in the way of reference books: I'd be lost without a fairly extensive overview of literature, similar volumes for music, gardening, wildlife, birds, history, cookery, an Atlas, a general information book which can be updated from time to time such as Whitacker's Almanac or Hutchings Factfinder (UK: don't know what the equivalents are in other parts of the world) - I wouldn't buy an encyclopaedia, they go out of date quite quickly and are expensive. Like Kelby, I'd want a Complete Works and a Bible, preferably one with an Apocrypha. I'd also like a good Anthology of English Poetry.

Thereafter, what you put on your shelves will reflect your interests and the development of your collection will reflect your changing interests over the years.

Lucky you, to have a room just for books!

[Michael T]

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Two volumes)
'Roget's Thesaurus'
'The History of Western Philosophy' Bertrand Russell
'The Shorter Routeledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy'
'The Road To Reality' Roger Penrose (A complete guide to the laws of the Universe)
'World Politics, 1945 - 2000' (8th Edition) Peter Calvocoressi
'The Norton Anthology of Poetry' Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy.
'The Norton Shakespeare' (Based on the Oxford edition)
'The Norton Anthology of American Literature' (Volumes 1 & 2)
'The Riverside Chaucer'
'The Oxford Companion to English Literature'
'The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism'
'The Times Atlas of the World'
'Pears Cyclopaedia' (Latest edition)

Work outwards from there. All good literature is worth having on your shelf, and it looks like you're going to get some great suggestions on this thread. (I'll give you one...Anna Karenina) :D

Beware of just lifting any old philosopher off the shelf...It can lead to utter confusion and taking things out of context. If you feel you do want to look further into philosophy then Plato is the place to start...after the Russell book above. :)

[mortalterror]

The books I find indispensable line the top shelf of my bookcase and are:

Moby Dick
Madame Bovary
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby
1984
Lolita
On the Road
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and the Sea
A Moveable Feast
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Dante's Inferno
Ovid's Metamorphoses
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Flowers of Evil
The Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot
The Oresteia
The Oedipus Cycle
The Complete Plays of Aristophanes
The Tragedies of Seneca
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Eight Dramas of Calderon
The Works of Jean Racine
Waiting For Godot
The Republic
Montaigne's Essays
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The cornerstone of a good library is always the reader's favorite texts. A personal library should reflect a point of view, but at the same time be varied, both hard and soft, with lightweight champions mixed in with the serious heavyweights.

[mayneverhave]

The cornerstone of a good library is always the reader's favorite texts. A personal library should reflect a point of view, but at the same time be varied, both hard and soft, with lightweight champions mixed in with the serious heavyweights.

Yeah, I noticed how you slipped Fear and Loathing in there.

[blackbird_9]

Might want to squeeze in some philosophy there. Plato's <b>Republic</b>, maybe some Voltaire or some transcendentalists. And I'll back the Shakespeare, Gatsby, and Moby Dick in addition to the others mortalterror listed.

[k.brignell]

thankyou everyone, this is really helpfull, I am currently on amazon buying all your suggestions, please keep them coming :)

[BienvenuJDC]

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
The Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum
Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

[andave_ya]

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
The Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum
Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

most excellent additions :).

[a_little_wisp]

EXCELLENT choices, guys!! As kasie says, you really should go on your personal interests - my bookshelves are chock full of random stuff: Toni Morrison's Beloved is sitting by Tolkien's Silmarillion which is crushed next to Night Flight by de Saint-Exupery which clings to Dostoevsky's The Idiot which is right next to Shanna, a fabulous romance novel by Kathleen Woodiwiss (the last book on that shelf is Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged). Michael T's is probably one of my favorites because I'm big on anthologies, but kelby, mortalterror, and blackbird all had awesome selections too.

I'm going to go in a weird direction here (and try not to list anything that has already been listed too). Some of them are children's books, yes.

Le Petit Prince- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
King Arthur and His Knights- Sir Thomas Malory
The Once and Future King - White
Poetry, poetry, poetry. Get the Norton Anthology.
Beowulf
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There- Carroll
Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamozov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Canterbury Tales -Chaucer
Peter Pan - Barrie
Paradise Lost - Milton
The Divine Comedy - Alighieri
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Twain
The Art of Loving - Fromm
Art of War- Sun Tzu
All The King's Men- Warren
Wuthering Heights - Bronte
Great Expectations - Dickens
Shogun- Clavell
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure - Hardy
I like Virginia Woolf, but I don't own any individual copies of her work, they're mostly in my anthologies.
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Glass Menagerie- Tennessee Williams
The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) - Tolkien
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway- Hemingway
The Three Musketeers - Dumas
The Wind in the Willows - Grahame
Fairy Tale Anthologies - be they by Grimm, Anderson, be they of Russian origin, German, etc. - Fairy tales are so important.
Edith Hamilton's Mythology - Bulfinch is cool too.

And if you're feeling reeeally flexible - The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) and The Last Unicorn (Beagle) and any compilation of nursery rhymes.

Children's stories aren't always just children's stories, and sometimes hold as much wisdom as any weighty read, if one truly reads them. Strange list... but... yeah.


Edit: And the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid. ... Did anyone post that? *Goes to check*

[Chloe M]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Also, I second the previous poster's recommendations of
The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment.

[mayneverhave]

thankyou everyone, this is really helpfull, I am currently on amazon buying all your suggestions, please keep them coming :)

If you interested in a comprehensive list of "canonical works", there are plenty of lists online, compiled by various scholars. Either that or just search the table of contents in the various Norton Anthologies.

[k.brignell]

If you interested in a comprehensive list of "canonical works", there are plenty of lists online, compiled by various scholars. Either that or just search the table of contents in the various Norton Anthologies.

thankyou mayneverhave

[sixsmith]

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Lolita - Nabakov
Herzog - Saul Bellow
Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Independence Day - Richard Ford
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
Underworld - Don DeLillo
The Outsider - Camus
The Great Gatsby - Scott Fitzgerald
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Sabbath's Theatre - Philip Roth
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Collected Poem - WB Yeats
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
What we talk about when we talk about love - Carver
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

[stlukesguild]

Let's get real. The works of Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.M. Barrie, etc... don't come near to qualifying as essential bits of literature... books that every home library SHOULD have... in spite of how much I may actually like these writers. If you are seeking to construct a library of the central works of Western literature... specifically in the English language... then the canonical works would include books such as:

The Bible (King James Version)
The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Orestia- Aeschylus
The Oedipus Plays- Sophocles
The Collected Works of Plato
The Poems of Sapho
The Metamorphoses- Ovid
Collected Poems- Horace
The Divine Comedy- Dante
Collected Poems- Petrarch
Collected Essays- Michel de Montaigne
Plays- Moliere
Don Quixote- Cervantes
The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Canterbury Tales- Chaucer
Paradise Lost- Milton
The Faerie Queene- Spenser
The Collected Poems- John Donne
Tristam Shandy- Lawrence Sterne
Selected Poems by Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Blake
War and Peace- Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoevsky
Collected Stories- Checkoff
Madame Bovary- Flaubert
Flowers of Evil- Baudelaire
Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman
Collected Verse- Emily Dickinson
Faust- Goethe
Confessions- Rousseau
Les Miserables- Victor Hugo
Moby Dick- Melville
Collected Essays- Emerson
The Life of Johnson- Boswell
A Tale of Two Cities- Dickens
Collected Poems- T.S. Eliot
Collected Poems- Wallace Stevens
Collected Stories- Kafka
Illuminations/A Season in Hell- Rimbaud
In Search of Lost Time- Proust
As I Lay Dying- Faulkner
Collected Short Stories- Hemingway
End Game- Beckett
Ulysses- Joyce
Ficciones/Labyrinths- J.L. Borges
etc...

All this would be but scraping the surface and one could certainly go much deeper into any area... more French, more German, more Italian, etc... This would also ignore the brilliance and depth of non-Western literature (excepting the Arabian Nights) and here one might start with the Indian epics (Mahabharata, Ramayana), the Tao Te Ching, the poems of the great Chinese poets such as Li Po, Tu Fu, Wang Wei... the poetry of the great Japanese poets including Buson, Hitomaro, Akiko, Ladi Issa, etc... and the great Persian Epic, The Shahnameh... as well as the Persian poets such as Hafez, Rumi, Attar, and Omar Khayyam.

What it really comes down to is the reality that the works that are essential to you in your personal library are those books that you find indispensable. Personally I find such central canonical works as I listed above necessary because they continue to resonate through the whole of literature... beyond the fact that most of them are just damn good reading. But certainly there are any number of other books that I personally find indispensable... although they may not be truly central texts. Among these I'd include The poetry of Rilke, Verlaine, Garcia-Lorca, Holderlin, Montale, Cavalcanti, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, Thomas Traherne, Neruda, Robert Herrick, etc... as well as the prose writings of Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities!!), Zola, Voltaire, Hawthorne, Poe, Jane Austen, Thomas hardy, Walter Pater, etc...

Good luck on your shopping spree!:thumbs_up

[Saladin]

Let's get real. The works of Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.M. Barrie, etc... don't come near to qualifying as essential bits of literature... books that every home library SHOULD have... in spite of how much I may actually like these writers. If you are seeking to construct a library of the central works of Western literature... specifically in the English language... then the canonical works would include books such as:

The Bible (King James Version)
The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Orestia- Aeschylus
The Oedipus Plays- Sophocles
The Collected Works of Plato
The Poems of Sapho
The Metamorphoses- Ovid
Collected Poems- Horace
The Divine Comedy- Dante
Collected Poems- Petrarch
Collected Essays- Michel de Montaigne
Plays- Moliere
Don Quixote- Cervantes
The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Canterbury Tales- Chaucer
Paradise Lost- Milton
The Faerie Queene- Spenser
The Collected Poems- John Donne
Tristam Shandy- Lawrence Sterne
Selected Poems by Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Blake
War and Peace- Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoevsky
Collected Stories- Checkoff
Madame Bovary- Flaubert
Flowers of Evil- Baudelaire
Leaves of Grass- Walt Whitman
Collected Verse- Emily Dickinson
Faust- Goethe
Confessions- Rousseau
Les Miserables- Victor Hugo
Moby Dick- Melville
Collected Essays- Emerson
The Life of Johnson- Boswell
A Tale of Two Cities- Dickens
Collected Poems- T.S. Eliot
Collected Poems- Wallace Stevens
Collected Stories- Kafka
Illuminations/A Season in Hell- Rimbaud
In Search of Lost Time- Proust
As I Lay Dying- Faulkner
Collected Short Stories- Hemingway
End Game- Beckett
Ulysses- Joyce
Ficciones/Labyrinths- J.L. Borges
etc...

All this would be but scraping the surface and one could certainly go much deeper into any area... more French, more German, more Italian, etc... This would also ignore the brilliance and depth of non-Western literature (excepting the Arabian Nights) and here one might start with the Indian epics (Mahabharata, Ramayana), the Tao Te Ching, the poems of the great Chinese poets such as Li Po, Tu Fu, Wang Wei... the poetry of the great Japanese poets including Buson, Hitomaro, Akiko, Ladi Issa, etc... and the great Persian Epic, The Shahnameh... as well as the Persian poets such as Hafez, Rumi, Attar, and Omar Khayyam.

What it really comes down to is the reality that the works that are essential to you in your personal library are those books that you find indispensable. Personally I find such central canonical works as I listed above necessary because they continue to resonate through the whole of literature... beyond the fact that most of them are just damn good reading. But certainly there are any number of other books that I personally find indispensable... although they may not be truly central texts. Among these I'd include The poetry of Rilke, Verlaine, Garcia-Lorca, Holderlin, Montale, Cavalcanti, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, Thomas Traherne, Neruda, Robert Herrick, etc... as well as the prose writings of Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities!!), Zola, Voltaire, Hawthorne, Poe, Jane Austen, Thomas hardy, Walter Pater, etc...

Good luck on your shopping spree!:thumbs_up

Guess which books you forgot? Its actually remarkable that you did mention Rumi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam and so on when it comes to eastern literature.

But after the Bible it`s ok to mention the Quran (Koran) and the Lotus Sutra as must have (religious) books.

But your list is very good indeed!

[stlukesguild]

Yes... and I admitted that my list was but a beginning. The Qur'an and the Bhagavad Gita, The Rig-Veda, the Upanishads, Herdotus, the Icelandic Sagas, Aristophanes, Euripides, Lucretius, Catullus, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Sei Shonagon, Pessoa... on and on we go.:p

[JBI]

...Leopardi...

4 Confucian classics and a couple translations of 300 T'ang poems are a nice touch too.

Tao Te Ching is also a must have - but really there are about 500 must haves from the West-European+American tradition alone.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I was waiting for you to throw Leopardi in there (I left him out on purpose:D) but you're slipping, man: "there are about 500 must haves from the West-European+American tradition alone?" What!!?? No mention of a Canadian?:brow:

[mortalterror]

Let's get real. The works of Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.M. Barrie, etc... don't come near to qualifying as essential bits of literature...

I beg to disagree. I think that Catch-22 is as good as Don Quixote but since it came later it is judged by a different set of standards. I don't know why you feel so confident that you can dismiss it out of hand, as a strong contender for the best book of the twentieth century while still including Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time. I see that you grouped The Aeneid along with Paradise Lost, and I think that Catch-22 bears a corresponding relationship with Don Quixote.

Be that as it may, your list is wonderfully inclusive, almost stiflingly so. An all encompassing, dare I say encyclopedic list that leaves hardly anything out. This may be a virtue in a public library, but what gives the personal library it's character is as much what is left out, the pointed omissions, as what is left in. If we do not exclude certain books which are not to our taste then what remains will have no form of it's own. It will feel like a reference stack compiled from anthologies.

A home library should make a statement, should say something about the person who owns it. There should be an inordinate abundance of titles by a favorite author, the startling omission of some sacred cow, and a preponderance of works from a given period or language. You'll note that in my own list I include American and French works but snub the Russians and English novelists. This was a deliberate choice. I included nearly the complete Greek and Roman dramatic canon but there are gaps covering the entire middle ages and the three centuries from Racine to Beckett. The message of Plato's Republic standing almost alone representing philosophical works would be watered down by adding Rousseau, Locke, or Hegel. It also makes a different point than if I'd gone with Aristotle. Sometimes including a single work to stand for a whole epoch is a more potent statement than every title available. That's one way to build a library.

[JBI]

JBI... I was waiting for you to throw Leopardi in there (I left him out on purpose:D) but you're slipping, man: "there are about 500 must haves from the West-European+American tradition alone?" What!!?? No mention of a Canadian?:brow:

Canada is not part of the so called "Western" tradition. The reason, is firstly, Canada was rejected from it, and secondly, Canada developed a tradition completely away from it, which incorporates many elements completely outside of it.

[JBI]

I beg to disagree. I think that Catch-22 is as good as Don Quixote but since it came later it is judged by a different set of standards. I don't know why you feel so confident that you can dismiss it out of hand, as a strong contender for the best book of the twentieth century while still including Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time. I see that you grouped The Aeneid along with Paradise Lost, and I think that Catch-22 bears a corresponding relationship with Don Quixote.

Be that as it may, your list is wonderfully inclusive, almost stiflingly so. An all encompassing, dare I say encyclopedic list that leaves hardly anything out. This may be a virtue in a public library, but what gives the personal library it's character is as much what is left out, the pointed omissions, as what is left in. If we do not exclude certain books which are not to our taste then what remains will have no form of it's own. It will feel like a reference stack compiled from anthologies.

A home library should make a statement, should say something about the person who owns it. There should be an inordinate abundance of titles by a favorite author, the startling omission of some sacred cow, and a preponderance of works from a given period or language. You'll note that in my own list I include American and French works but snub the Russians and English novelists. This was a deliberate choice. I included nearly the complete Greek and Roman dramatic canon but there are gaps covering the entire middle ages and the three centuries from Racine to Beckett. The message of Plato's Republic standing almost alone representing philosophical works would be watered down by adding Rousseau, Locke, or Hegel. It also makes a different point than if I'd gone with Aristotle. Sometimes including a single work to stand for a whole epoch is a more potent statement than every title available. That's one way to build a library.

I disagree, if I were looking for the Great Book of the twentieth century (something which I dislike doing, as it is really too difficult a question), I wouldn't dwell much on Heller's Catch 22. Quite simply, when compared to Lu Xun (Hsun)'s Call to Arms, it doesn't even scrape the surface. Even Mann's The Magic Mountain doesn't seem compare to Lu Xun. That being said, one must also take into account every genre, not just novels. And when that happens, I would put something like Eliot's Complete Poems as far more valuable to me than any of the so mentioned names.

Either way though, I don't think much of Catch 22, but when considering the essentials, one must have a wider range than 4 countries.

[stlukesguild]

I beg to disagree. I think that Catch-22 is as good as Don Quixote but since it came later it is judged by a different set of standards. I don't know why you feel so confident that you can dismiss it out of hand, as a strong contender for the best book of the twentieth century while still including Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time. I see that you grouped The Aeneid along with Paradise Lost, and I think that Catch-22 bears a corresponding relationship with Don Quixote.

Catch-22 struck me as a good read but surely not near a central text of the 20th century, let alone of all time. It is certainly not a book that has drawn me back again and again and again. For me, such texts would include the writings of J.L Borges, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino... the poems of T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Rilke, and a few others.

Be that as it may, your list is wonderfully inclusive, almost stiflingly so. An all encompassing, dare I say encyclopedic list that leaves hardly anything out. This may be a virtue in a public library, but what gives the personal library it's character is as much what is left out, the pointed omissions, as what is left in. If we do not exclude certain books which are not to our taste then what remains will have no form of it's own. It will feel like a reference stack compiled from anthologies.

Undoubtedly the inclusiveness of my list is owed to the scale of my personal library. Had someone asked the same question when I was just out of high-school my list would probably have been heavy in the works of the Russians, French poets, and a few clearly iconic figures such as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Homer, and Dante. As my library now numbers some 3000 books it is necessarily more inclusive. Even so... as any library... it has its biases... if only owing to the fact that I am an English-speaking reader and am dependent upon the accessibility of certain works in English. Personally, I see no problem with reading and owning books that are in strict disagreement. I have argued with both Plato and Rousseau extensively in the margins... yet feel both are essential reads. With time, however, I have come much closer to Montaigne, Emerson, and others.

Looking at my shelves, the English-language writers dominate... and this is undoubtedly owed to the fact that I tend to be more enamored of poetry than the novel and poetry is perhaps the most difficult genre to translate. Thus I have all of the great English Romantics (Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth) as well as the secondary English Romantics (Robert Burns, Arthur Hugh Clough, John Clare, Emily Bronte...) as well as the Americans (Poe, Emerson, Whitman, Melville, Longfellow, Tuckerman, Dickenson, Whitman, etc...). Yet from the same period I have little in French poetry and am limited to Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Heine, and Morike among the Germans. Certain indisputably central figures such as Virgil, Homer, Dante, Sappho, Horace, Baudelaire, etc... have been quite ably translated. Others... not so much so. I've found Holderlin in translation by Micheal Hamburger and Rilke by Edward Snow has fared far better than Goethe in many instances... and Goethe has fared far better than Pierre Ronsard, Francisco de Quevedo, Gustavo Adolpho Becquer... and until just recently: Luis Gongora and Victor Hugo.

Certainly I acknowledge the strength of the Russians... but having a clear preference for poetry followed by shorter fiction and non-fiction prose... the Russians certainly lose out. I have studied the history of literature (and the accompanying history of art) enough to recognize that the Baroque-era was a golden age of literature and art in Spain... yet I have scant little to prove this is so... at least in terms of literature: Not a single volume by Becquer, a sole, but recently acquired volume on Gongora, a few poems by most of the other poets in slim anthologies, a few bits of theater by Rojas, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderon de la Barca. The most complete works I have beyond Cervantes (at least prior to the 20th century) are the romance Tirant lo Blanc by Martorell and De Galba praised by Cervates and ably translated by David Rosenthal, The Poem of the Cid marvelously translated by W.S. Merwin, and the poems of San Juan de la Cruz translated by Roy Campbell and John F. Nims.

I will also note that having owned and read a book and admitted to its merits is no where near the same as liking or loving it. I cannot help but recognize and admit to Joyce's centrality among Modernist prose... but I'll take Proust, Kafka, Borges... even Joyce's follower, Beckett over him by personal preference.

[mortalterror]

Catch-22 struck me as a good read but surely not near a central text of the 20th century, let alone of all time. It is certainly not a book that has drawn me back again and again and again.

Don Quixote struck me about the same way; but instead of low-rating it, I was reminded of how some people still fail to understand the exquisite beauty of Catch-22 and what a tragedy that can be. I consoled myself that at least I liked one of them and if I'd lost one treasure I'd found another.

I've noticed this funny trade off more than once in my readings where I'll have nothing but disdain for one artist and completely love another similar one who does all the things I think I dislike in his alternate. I can't stand Dickens for his plot contrivances and phony bologna characters, but I'm awe struck by the same things in Hugo.

If you do not think that Catch-22 is one of the best books of the twentieth century, allow me to offer the possibility that you undervalue comedy in your aesthetic appraisal. You routinely recommend Joyce and Borges but rarely mention Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Terence, Petronius, Rabelais, Farquhar, Wycherley, Etherege, Goldsmith, Swift, Gay, Congreve, Goldoni, Gozzi, Lesage, Wilmot, Marivaux, Fielding, Peacock, Wilde, Twain, or Wodehouse. Comedy has a hard time getting itself taken seriously, in the world as well as on these boards.

[Uberzensch]

thankyou everyone, this is really helpfull, I am currently on amazon buying all your suggestions, please keep them coming :)

First off, Wow! I wish I had enough money to do that!

Second, I think the best library is the one that you create on your own piece-by-piece. Tastes vary greatly and you may not like what others suggest. MortalTerror is right, here.

For example, my library would contain no Jane Austen, but that's just me

One more thing!

It's great to look at your old books and remember where you were when you first bought it. I actually keep the receipt in the book when I buy it. It makes a good bookmark, but more importantly, it timestamps the book. It's funny to look at a book you bought and say, "Wow, I bought this when I was doing X. I was so stupid back then!" Or something else like that.

Unless your goal is to just create a great library now, not necesarily to read, but to cover the important ground. If so, then proceed!

[stlukesguild]

...allow me to offer the possibility that you undervalue comedy in your aesthetic appraisal. You routinely recommend Joyce and Borges but rarely mention Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Terence, Petronius, Rabelais, Farquhar, Wycherley, Etherege, Goldsmith, Swift, Gay, Congreve, Goldoni, Gozzi, Lesage, Wilmot, Marivaux, Fielding, Peacock, Wilde, Twain, or Wodehouse. Comedy has a hard time getting itself taken seriously, in the world as well as on these boards.

I don't know that this is entirely valid. I have mentioned Wilde more than once and certainly would include Swift among the "must reads" (Haven't we already discussed A Modest Proposal?). To this I would add Sterne, Boccaccio, Marivaux, Moliere, surely Cervantes and Twain... but also Bulgakov, Landolfi, Gogol, etc... Of course my own sense of humor leans toward something darker and twisted so I would also add Kafka, Faulkner, O'Connor, Italo Calvino, Donald Barthleme, etc...

[The Comedian]

No home library should be without comics: Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Understanding Comics, A Contract With God, Starman Omibus. . . just to name a few.

[sixsmith]

Let's get real. The works of Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.M. Barrie, etc... don't come near to qualifying as essential bits of literature... books that every home library SHOULD have... in spite of how much I may actually like these writers. If you are seeking to construct a library of the central works of Western literature... specifically in the English language... then the canonical works would include ....

What it really comes down to is the reality that the works that are essential to you in your personal library are those books that you find indispensable. Personally I find such central canonical works as I listed above necessary because they continue to resonate through the whole of literature...

Good luck on your shopping spree!:thumbs_up

Yours is an impressive list (and a motivating one) St Lukes but as you recognise, a work does not have to be canonical to be essential. Judge time may not be kind to some of the books i've mentioned but they nevertheless loom large in my library and in my reading. So it's in with Heller and out with Cervantes .:) I think MortalTerror has the right idea in general here.

[andave_ya]

Let's get real. The works of Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.M. Barrie, etc... don't come near to qualifying as essential bits of literature.

whyever not?? Saint-Exupery's and Barrie's works have resounded in the hearts of children though the ages...would you actually say that disqualifies them from being considered classics? quintessential literature, even, especially to develop imaginations and to prepare them for the heavier reading you listed? Speaking as an eighteen-year-old, I can already understand how those books I read earlier in my reading experiences have strengthened my mental foundation for these works.

Furthermore, writing to both children AND adults (as Saint-Exupery undeniably does) is NOT an easy thing to do; at least, admire their artistry.



What it really comes down to is the reality that the works that are essential to you in your personal library are those books that you find indispensable. Personally I find such central canonical works as I listed above necessary because they continue to resonate through the whole of literature... beyond the fact that most of them are just damn good reading. But certainly there are any number of other books that I personally find indispensable... although they may not be truly central texts.

I find Barrie indispensible. And Dorothy L. Sayers. J.R.R. Tolkien. I mention these in particular because they're not held in very high "classical" esteem among some.

[crystalmoonshin]

No home library should be without comics: Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Understanding Comics, A Contract With God, Starman Omibus. . . just to name a few.

Why not throw in a couple of Japanese manga, too? There are decent ones out there like "Angel Sanctuary" or "Full Metal Alchemist". :)

Or how about The Redwall series by Brian Jacques if you happen to live with kids?

[Apocrypha75]

Not sure if these are mentioned, but here's a few anyway:

The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Diary Of Anne Frank
The Day Of The Triffids - John Wyndham
Call Of The Wild - Jack London
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Watership Down - Richard Adams
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K Le Guin
Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Dune - Frank Herbert

Sorry if the above are a little eclectic but I think the books above offer a mixture of longevity and interest, which means you (and others) are always guaranteed a good read. There's a few classics and some more contemporary fair; something for the oldies and the youngsters and some flights of imagination and some brain fodder too. :D

[juhuulian]

most essential books
Letters to a christian nation-sam hitchins (atheist book but should be read by anyone)
The god dellusion-richard dawkins (same as above)
The picture of dorian grey and other short storie-oscar wilde
The third policeman-Flann O'brien

And anything else that you like

[WICKES]

Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker (covers evolution by natural selection- how it works etc. No one has the right to call themselves a thoughtful Christian until they have carefully read this. If your faith survives it then it will survive anything)

Stephen Hawking: A Brief History Of Time (opened the minds of a whole generation to black holes, space-time and event horizons)

Bertrand Russell: History Of Western Philosophy (not only covers the flow of western thought from the Greeks to Bergson but sets it in its historical context)

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World and George Orwell: 1984- books to be lived with, meditated upon and discussed.

Shakespeare's plays, or at least Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest

E H Gombrich: The Story Of Art

[Scheherazade]

was just wondering what fiction and non-fiction is essential for my library, thanksThose ones you really, really, really like or would consider reading again and again!

[ShoutGrace]

Hey, we just brought a new house and I have been given the spare room to start my own library. I have quite a few books but was just wondering what fiction and non-fiction is essential for my library, thanks

I started to collect books just after joining LitNet, when I was compelled by interest (and something more) to obtain two books which were receiving scrutiny on the boards at the time. Another relatively thorough forum discussion of a Robert Frost poem had me getting a small used edition of his collected works so that, not only could I read that specific poem when I had the urge, but I could also see whether anything else he penned was as rich.

Since then I've purchased or collected more than 3,000 books. Searching for specific books and idly browsing used book stores has been a large part of my life for years now. I live in a relatively small town which is blessed with 3 used books stores and 4 thrift stores. The former tend to overprice books (and I don't hold this against them), whereas the latter typically sell paperbacks for $.50 and hardbacks for $1. Out of even this small environment I've found ample variety. What I am deprived of locally can be obtained via the Internet and travel.

The 1200 or so books which comprise my 8 floor to ceiling bookcases would be able participants in a decent liberal education, to my mind. I have bookcases devoted to American history and literature, Shakespeare and poetry, Science and autodidaction, Philosophy and anthologies, etc.

I did not begin my activities with any particular objective, unless it were to discover what was most pleasurable and profitable in the world of letters and ideas. Which act, I think, is a moving personal experience.

I should add that my views on what constitutes "great" literature largely coincide with those of stlukesguild (inasmuch as I've seen). I imagine that some would identify my views as "elitist." I think this description, in its best sense, is a just one.

[sixsmith]

I started to collect books just after joining LitNet, when I was compelled by interest (and something more) to obtain two books which were receiving scrutiny on the boards at the time. Another relatively thorough forum discussion of a Robert Frost poem had me getting a small used edition of his collected works so that, not only could I read that specific poem when I had the urge, but I could also see whether anything else he penned was as rich.

Since then I've purchased or collected more than 3,000 books. Searching for specific books and idly browsing used book stores has been a large part of my life for years now. I live in a relatively small town which is blessed with 3 used books stores and 4 thrift stores. The former tend to overprice books (and I don't hold this against them), whereas the latter typically sell paperbacks for $.50 and hardbacks for $1. Out of even this small environment I've found ample variety. What I am deprived of locally can be obtained via the Internet and travel.

The 1200 or so books which comprise my 8 floor to ceiling bookcases would be able participants in a decent liberal education, to my mind. I have bookcases devoted to American history and literature, Shakespeare and poetry, Science and autodidaction, Philosophy and anthologies, etc.

I did not begin my activities with any particular objective, unless it were to discover what was most pleasurable and profitable in the world of letters and ideas. Which act, I think, is a moving personal experience.

I should add that my views on what constitutes "great" literature largely coincide with those of stlukesguild (inasmuch as I've seen). I imagine that some would identify my views as "elitist." I think this description, in its best sense, is a just one.

Sounds like a great journey.

[WICKES]

Richard Dawkins: The Ancestor's Tale is an absolute must. Some people think 'The Blind Watchmaker' is the best introduction to evolution by natural selection and his best book, but I have a feeling this will be seen as his greatest work. It is the most complete and up to date account of, well, how we got here that I am aware of.

[Aluminum]

A nice variety of golden books. Even if you don't have children, it's nice to have a couple sitting on the lower shelf for little guests. Many of the stories are just so sweet, and I'll admit I'm a sucker for uniform books sitting on the shelf. I read them all the time. :redface:

For other books,

Anna Karenina
The Phantom of the Opera
Grapes of Wrath
Where the Red Fern Grows
No Promises in the Wind
The Princess Bride

[promtbr]

Sounds like a great journey.

I concur.

Stlukesguild's list got it ('bout time somebody mentioned Moliere)

But the previous holding up of Heller to Cervantes tho...*edits endless versions of satirical, cliched remarks, because they fail to convey*

[mortalterror]

Stlukesguild's list got it ('bout time somebody mentioned Moliere)

I don't think Moliere is funny. I just don't like his work. I'd put John Wilmot's The Farce of Sodom (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Farce_of_Sodom,_or_The_Quintessence_of_Debauch ery) up against Tartuffe any day of the week and twice on Sunday. After Lysistrata, that's the funniest play I've ever read and it seems to go unnoticed in the canon, unjustly so I believe. There's probably a lot of really great comedy that has been suppressed and lost to the ages, which led to the preservation of second rate works by genteel hacks. I wouldn't put Moliere in that company. His comedy is simply not to my taste; but I think the true history of comedy has yet to be fully written, and untold treasures lie unmined in the distant, forgotten past.


But the previous holding up of Heller to Cervantes tho...*edits endless versions of satirical, cliched remarks, because they fail to convey*

What is it you think Cervantes does that Heller doesn't?

[promtbr]

I don't think Moliere is funny. I just don't like his work. I'd put John Wilmot's The Farce of Sodom (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Farce_of_Sodom,_or_The_Quintessence_of_Debauch ery) up against Tartuffe any day of the week and twice on Sunday. After Lysistrata, that's the funniest play I've ever read and it seems to go unnoticed in the canon, unjustly so I believe. There's probably a lot of really great comedy that has been suppressed and lost to the ages, which led to the preservation of second rate works by genteel hacks. I wouldn't put Moliere in that company. His comedy is simply not to my taste; but I think the true history of comedy has yet to be fully written, and untold treasures lie unmined in the distant, forgotten past.



What is it you think Cervantes does that Heller doesn't?



Of Moliere's plays, Tartuffe is way behind The Miser and The Misanthrope. I wasn't aware how Moliere's humor translates to the twitter generation was the gauge for his place on current bookshelves. I personally don't read him for laughs...

Cervantes created the two most towering characters in Literature. Put the 'Don and Sancho in the ring with Yossarian and see what happens (insert emoticon). They have been bantering their way down a country road for 4 centuries and will be doing so for a few millenia yet..

(all my not always so humble opinion of course)

[mortalterror]

Of Moliere's plays, Tartuffe is way behind The Miser and The Misanthrope. I wasn't aware how Moliere's humor translates to the twitter generation was the gauge for his place on current bookshelves. I personally don't read him for laughs...

I did not say that I thought Moliere was dated. I said that I did not find his jokes funny. Tartuffe was written and performed in 1664, The Farce of Sodom was written a scant eight years later. My favorite comic play, Lysistrata, was first performed in 411 B.C.. I see no reason for comedy to date any more than other works of literature.


Cervantes created the two most towering characters in Literature. Put the 'Don and Sancho in the ring with Yossarian and see what happens (insert emoticon). They have been bantering their way down a country road for 4 centuries and will be doing so for a few millenia yet..

(all my not always so humble opinion of course)

I'm aware that the book has stood the test of time, but I would not slight Catch-22 for not yet having the chance to do likewise. I like Yossarian more than I liked Don Quixote or Sancho Panza, but I didn't care for them all that much in the first place, and I don't know that characters are necessarily the strengths of either book.

I can think of a hundred places where I laughed out loud and was charmed by Catch-22, but only two where I even chuckled during my read of Don Quixote. I thought the best part of the book was when Don Quixote fought the Basque in a mock duel. I believe he was riding a donkey with a pillow strapped to his arm for a shield. After that, the book was less and less interesting to me. It annoyed me how Cervantes kept going back to that that lousy blanket tossing gag, like he thought it was the height of hilarity and would not let it go. I also liked the night at the haunted inn where everyone's fighting and mistaking identities and bed hopping. But it hasn't given me the same kind of mirth as Yossarian's "I see everything twice!" or his date with Luciana, or the time Milo bombed the airfield, or Hungry Joe fought the cat.

Don Quixote isn't even my favorite Spanish comic novel. I thought Lazarillo de Tormes was pretty good, if a little short, and what I've read of Quevedo's The Swindler really hit the spot. They were both more my type of humor and Don Quixote felt like an extended Punch and Judy show. Also, I think you are misrepresenting the conflict by weighing a duo verses a single protagonist. The comedy has to function differently with Yossarian not having a foil, but I think his supporting characters serve his turn well enough. There are about two dozen unique and enjoyable characters in Catch-22 but none of the minor characters in Don Quixote are even worth remembering. Part of the problem I had with Don Quixote was how lopsided the writing was. If you didn't like Don Quixote or Sancho Panza you had nowhere to go. They were amusing enough for about a hundred pages, but not for a thousand.

There just wasn't any variety to the story. It's like Cervantes set out to write another of his exemplary novels about this funny knight, ran out of material, and so he gave him a sidekick; which made the gags work a little longer. A long novel needs lots of characters to fill it out, like War and Peace. Don Quixote doesn't have that. It lives and dies on what you think of those two characters and whether you think they can sustain the narrative. In Catch-22, there's so much variety of situation and character. Heller doesn't spread himself thin. Don Quixote has a repetitious feeling to it. Two buffoons run into trouble and get beat up, then two buffoons run into trouble and get beat up.

I don't think it's fair to pit Yossarian alone against Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but if you wanted to test them against Petronius' Encolpius and Ascyltus I'd have no qualms. They've stood the test of two millennia and by your reasoning would be worth five Quixotes, if that's how we're measuring things. They are likewise questers or pilgrims who run into frequent mishaps.

[JBI]

Moliere is hardly dated - I think he only gets funnier - certainly, something like Tartuffe may be a tad dated, but I think The Miser only got funnier with age.

[mortalterror]

Moliere is hardly dated - I think he only gets funnier - certainly, something like Tartuffe may be a tad dated, but I think The Miser only got funnier with age.

I don't recall if I've ever read The Miser, and it's been nearly ten years since I read The Misanthrope. But more recently, when I read The Imaginary Invalid and Don Juan I was underwhelmed once again. As you know, you and I don't exactly see eye to eye when it comes to humor. You find Jane Austen a stitch and I think The Taming of the Shrew is side slapping hilarious.

Maybe, there's a place we could both meet in the middle. (http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Classic-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241565562&sr=1-1)

[JBI]

I don't recall if I've ever read The Miser, and it's been nearly ten years since I read The Misanthrope. But more recently, when I read The Imaginary Invalid and Don Juan I was underwhelmed once again. As you know, you and I don't exactly see eye to eye when it comes to humor. You find Jane Austen a stitch and I think The Taming of the Shrew is side slapping hilarious.

Maybe, there's a place we could both meet in the middle. (http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Classic-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241565562&sr=1-1)

Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

I doubt my library has a copy, and quite honestly, I can't see myself forking over $7.77

Seriously though, comedy seems very relative to society, whereas I think tragedy has something stronger in it, because we all have to live with the fact that we will die, and that somehow connects us.

Though that being said, there are moments in something like Racine's Phedra, where I cannot help but laugh out loud. Something like a Ibsen ending I also cannot help but laughing at - especially Ghosts - and I didn't get that depressed desolate feel others got from Kafka's Metamorphosis, rather I think I found it quite comical too (and to this day, I think it intended as a comedy).

In that regard, perhaps tragedy and comedy are not so separate. Surely post-modern genre bending has made the tragic comical, and the comical tragic. Rousseau himself saw the Misanthrope as a tragedy, and took issue with the fact that society could laugh at such a sincere person.

I will say though, you should really read Robert Kroetsch's Studhorse Man. I think that's right up your alley.

[promtbr]

The 100 Most Meaningful Books of All Time as "Selected by 100 authors from 54 countries in a poll organized by the Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes received more votes than any other book"

Catch-22 does not appear on the list...

BTW..I did not like Moliere's Don Juan either. Loved Racine's Phaedre (JBI laughed?) my reading of them is from an amatuers eyes and ears (had no 'template' of highly trained criticial expectations the works had to meet for me to either appreciate or be indifferent to them)

You guys prolly know the latin phrase: "il Desputo somethin somthin.."
No accounting for tastes...:D

---

[mortalterror]

You guys prolly know the latin phrase: "il Desputo somethin somthin.."
No accounting for tastes...:D

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Just because something is not definitively knowable does not mean we should cease in the pursuit of understanding it better.

[beroq]

I would strongly suggest Knowledge and the Sacred by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, published in the USA. This book is a comprehensive study on the transcendental unity of knowledge and sacred on the level of Divine.

[sixsmith]

Testify Mortal Terror! Don Quixote is a lumbering prototype that is largely disagreeable to the sane reader.:D Good for a couple of laughs but god what a slog. The following from Martin Amis about says it.

"While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one serious flaw- that of outright unreadability. This reviewer should know, because he has just read it. The book bristles with beauty, charm and sublime comedy; it is also, for long stretches (approaching about 75% of the whole), inhumanly dull. Looming like one of the Don's chimerical adversaries, it is a giant 'with legs like lofty steeples, and arms resembling the masts of vast and warlike ships; while each eye, as large as a millwheel, beams and burns like a glass furnace'. But the giant has a giant weight problem, and is elderly, and soft brained. Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over and the old boy checks out (on page 846 - the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right: not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. you made it, despite all that Don Quixote could do".

[beroq]

Testify Mortal Terror! Don Quixote is a lumbering prototype that is largely disagreeable to the sane reader.:D Good for a couple of laughs but god what a slog. The following from Martin Amis about says it.

"While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one serious flaw- that of outright unreadability. This reviewer should know, because he has just read it. The book bristles with beauty, charm and sublime comedy; it is also, for long stretches (approaching about 75% of the whole), inhumanly dull. Looming like one of the Don's chimerical adversaries, it is a giant 'with legs like lofty steeples, and arms resembling the masts of vast and warlike ships; while each eye, as large as a millwheel, beams and burns like a glass furnace'. But the giant has a giant weight problem, and is elderly, and soft brained. Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over and the old boy checks out (on page 846 - the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right: not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. you made it, despite all that Don Quixote could do".

Agreed 100%. Don Quixote is totally unreadable to the contemporary reader. The second book, it might be said, is better crafted than the first one and, if masterfully abridged and updated, could be a fun for children to read.

[crystalmoonshin]

LOL! I tried reading Don Quixote, too but it's so boring for me. I ended up reading the super abridged version and I enjoyed it. :)

[Taliesin]

I would add some plays by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and The Poetic Edda, but that is just personal taste, can't claim them to be central or anything since I haven't studied literature.

[promtbr]

Martin Amis? = opposite opinion is probably true :D

u guys *shakes head*



Don Quixote is totally unreadable to the contemporary reader.

Interesting. That's just what was said when Tristram Shandy, Ulysses and Waiting For Godot first came out...

I have a strong suspicion that your 'contemporary readers' also would find Shakespeare, Dante, Sterne, Dickens etc 'unreadable'. They definitely should stick to twitter and blu ray for enlightment...they will be dust motes sitting on those dudes one zillionth reprinted editions in next millenia...(IF there be even be books then :))


----

[stlukesguild]

Martin Amis? = opposite opinion is probably true:D

Indeed. His comments strike me a bit as symptomatic of the usual artist's inferiority complex. I have to wonder how many of Mr. Amis' works will still be read 400 years from today... let alone stand as one of the towering works of fiction beloved (and a major source of inspiration) to writers far greater than he (ie. Lawrence Sterne, Flaubert, Kafka, J.L. Borges...). Need one even mention the influence and inspiration the work has had on artists outside the field of literature? Artists including Gustave Dore, Honore Daumier, and Picasso... composers including Manuel de Falla, Richard Strauss, and Maurice Ravel... Not bad for an unreadable author.

Personally, I find Don Quixote to be a magnificent, if flawed book. Certainly there are dull passages. Undoubtedly Cervantes' poetry is bad... not dull or mediocre... but BAD. But nearly every great masterwork has its flaws. They are simply overwhelmed by the wealth of brilliance. In spite of the passages of blandness or poetic insipidness there are multiple passages of marvelous fantasy, visionary splendor, unrivaled narrative invention, and depth... there are passages of absurd comic with... and passages that greatly move.

Don Quixote is often put forth as the first Western novel... and in many ways it stands as a precursor to the Post-Modern novel: a novel which deconstructs and plays with the very tradition that is establishes. Indeed, it plays with the very nature of the reader and reading. In this it is a direct precursor to Tristam Shandy and Madame Bovary... and later on... to Borges.

Criticism is often made of the fact that the Don's absurd adventures and his continual failings and sometimes brutal beatings amount to nothing more than an outdated for of humor... a 17th century Three Stooges in which the audience laughs at the imbecile, the retarded, the madman, or the dwarf. In this manner he is compared to his artistic peer, Velasquez portraits of court dwarfs and fools.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3322/3511996808_224b3dabec_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3542/3511185331_3ec0769dcf_o.jpg

In part the criticism is correct... but only in the manner in which Cervantes, like Velasquez, has the ability to see the nobility in these "outsiders" and "outcasts" and bring that forth. The is an endless array of epic poem and romances that put forth god-like heroes who achieve marvelously in deed after superhuman deed. Don Quixote fails absurdly time after time... and yet in the end becomes the greatest... or perhaps the most believable "hero". His "madness" is nothing less (as Unamuno suggests) than "an atonement for our drabness, our ungenerous dearth of imagination"... in other words it is a refusal to be bound by the drabness of everyday "reality"... an insistence upon the existence of magic and enchantment. His persistence mirrors the struggle of all mankind in (to quote Unamuno again) "the inextinguishable longing to survive" and the dream of "eternal name and fame."

Within the whole of Western literature I can think of almost no characters (even in Shakespeare) developed as largely as the Don and Sancho. Indeed, this pair stands at the very core of the novel as perhaps the greatest literary friendship in the whole of literature. Only Huck and Jim and Tristam's father and Uncle Toby seem an apt rival... and certainly both Sterne and Twain are deeply marked by Cervantes.

For a book that is unreadable today it is one of but a slight few that I have read repeatedly... and that have rewarded repeated readings.

[Jane's Nemesis]

50 Great Curries of India- a fabulous guide to good Indian food.

Any good recipe book for cakes as well. Plus a variety of cook books for various international cuisines.

It's hard to know what else to recommend- depends on your interests, as well as whether you subscribe to ideas about "canonical works" (because there are stacks of good books that of course don't belong to a canon of "must-reads").

If I were to merely suggest to you books I really enjoyed, I would say:
The Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger
Equus- Peter Schaffer
A Doll's House, or any other plays by Henrik Ibsen
Tom Jones- Henry Fielding
Disgrace- J.M. Coetzee
Where We Once Belonged- Sia Figiel
The Time Machine- H.G. Wells
Tipping the Velvet- Sarah Waters
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
The works of the Bronte Sisters (all three very different in style, but good in their own ways)
A Brief History of Misogyny- Jack Holland
The works of Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice are my favourites)
The Awakening-Kate Chopin
Women Who Did- collected short fiction of 1880-1914
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde- R.L. Stevenson
Alias Grace- Margaret Atwood
Anything by P.G. Wodehouse

[Jane's Nemesis]

Martin Amis? = opposite opinion is probably true :D

u guys *shakes head*




Interesting. That's just what was said when Tristram Shandy, Ulysses and Waiting For Godot first came out...

I have a strong suspicion that your 'contemporary readers' also would find Shakespeare, Dante, Sterne, Dickens etc 'unreadable'. They definitely should stick to twitter and blu ray for enlightment...they will be dust motes sitting on those dudes one zillionth reprinted editions in next millenia...(IF there be even be books then :))


----

Isn't that intellectual snobbery?

[beroq]

Don Quixote, no matter what speciality is attributed to it, is but a book that satires chivalry. As these books are hardly read by anyone but experts and even a hero like King Arthur is unable to inspire younger generations, anyone reading Cervantes might think that the author is whipping an already dead mule. But in the 16th century, this kind of books were very popular. Among them was Ariosto's Orlando Furiose, published in 1532.

From the most serious point of view, Don Quixote might be regarded a philosophical inquiry into the quality of reality and imagination. That we are still talking about a book written more than five hundred years ago makes it a great work of art but still Don Quixote is no longer a readable book by common people like me.

[Scheherazade]

Isn't that intellectual snobbery?Welcome to the Forum!

:D

[sixsmith]

Martin Amis? = opposite opinion is probably true:D

Indeed. His comments strike me a bit as symptomatic of the usual artist's inferiority complex. I have to wonder how many of Mr. Amis' works will still be read 400 years from today... let alone stand as one of the towering works of fiction beloved (and a major source of inspiration) to writers far greater than he (ie. Lawrence Sterne, Flaubert, Kafka, J.L. Borges...). Need one even mention the influence and inspiration the work has had on artists outside the field of literature? Artists including Gustave Dore, Honore Daumier, and Picasso... composers including Manuel de Falla, Richard Strauss, and Maurice Ravel... Not bad for an unreadable author.

.

I don't really think the longevity of Amis' work is relevant and nor do i deny that Don Quixote has had great influence on many artists over several centuries.


Martin Amis? = opposite opinion is probably true

u guys *shakes head*


Quote:
Originally Posted by beroq
Don Quixote is totally unreadable to the contemporary reader.
Interesting. That's just what was said when Tristram Shandy, Ulysses and Waiting For Godot first came out...

I have a strong suspicion that your 'contemporary readers' also would find Shakespeare, Dante, Sterne, Dickens etc 'unreadable'. They definitely should stick to twitter and blu ray for enlightment...they will be dust motes sitting on those dudes one zillionth reprinted editions in next millenia...(IF there be even be books then )

Even for the contemporary reader who enjoys challenging and difficult works, Don Q might be a bridge too far. Despite its strengths, its static 'narrative', its interminable digressions and its absurd length make it pretty exclusionary IMO. While this is not a bad thing in itself, the fact that the book is so rooted to its own time means that many people will not want,or be able, to break through that barrier. Obviously some will. Stlukes, Prombtr, Borges and the like:D Of course it's possible i could be a slack jawed philistine in denial.

[stlukesguild]

I don't really think the longevity of Amis' work is relevant...

Perhaps it is not a fair comparison considering Amis has not had 400+ years by which to be judged. On the other hand, when one artist passes judgment upon another it is not unfair to question why his or her opinion should be given any degree of weight... and what his or her motives (including, but not limited to, jealousy) might be. I assume Amis' quote was selected because it was believed that Amis was an author of some import whose opinions on literature must hold a degree of worth. I countered with the question of just how great a weight we should give to Amis' opinions in contrast to opposing opinions of far greater writers such as Borges, Kafka, Flaubert, and Sterne... to say nothing of Cervantes himself.

nor do i deny that Don Quixote has had great influence on many artists over several centuries.

Of course when offering up personal opinions we can only go our own responses. However there is always the recognition that our personal preferences do not always mirror those of history. The impact of an artist upon his or her predecessors is commonly one of the clearest measures of that artist's merit. The fact that a good number of artists, poets, novelists, playwrights, composers, etc... thought enough of Cervantes book to create a work of art in response to or dialog with it suggest that the work may just have more lasting merit than is suggested.

Even for the contemporary reader who enjoys challenging and difficult works, Don Q might be a bridge too far. Despite its strengths, its static 'narrative', its interminable digressions and its absurd length make it pretty exclusionary IMO.

Similar criticisms may be placed upon many older works of literature. Shakespeare and certainly Chaucer are laden with archaic language. War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Clarissa, The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, The Divine Comedy, Les Miserables, In Search of Lost Time, etc... are all marked by great length. They all engage in digressions... but these digressions, many would argue, are often among the strengths. Not every masterwork need to follow the compression and the single-minded focus of narrative as put forth by the Pléiade.

While this is not a bad thing in itself, the fact that the book is so rooted to its own time means that many people will not want,or be able, to break through that barrier.

Nearly every work of literature is rooted to its own time to one degree or another. The fully appreciate most poetry one needs to develop an understanding of poetic forms, use of language, metaphor, etc... and these vary greatly from era to era. One does not jump lightly into Dante or Dickinson or T.S. Eliot. They demand... but I would argue they also greatly reward... effort. Even the prose of Dickens or Henry James may be imagined as formidable. Personally, I never found Cervantes to be overly difficult (although this unquestionably is due, in part, to the fact that I am reading him in translation and as such the more archaic aspects of 16th century Spanish have been mitigated). One need know little more than a bit about the romances (Arthurian and those based upon Roland/Orlando and Charlemagne) to have a grasp of the literary context in which the book was written. Beyond that, the themes, to my mind, seem universal enough.

[mortalterror]

If longevity and fertility are the only measures of man's greatness, where does that leave Keats, Jesus, or Alexander? If we are agreed that such elements are not important in the composition of a good man, then how can we nod our heads and placidly pass such judgements on our favorite books? Truly, there must be more to excellence than long life and influence! Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and The Odyssey were each lost for millennia. Melville was twenty years dead and seventy years had passed before Moby Dick got it's due. The Sound and the Fury was out of print and remaindered for a decade before Faulkner won the Nobel Prize. Shakespeare lived in Ben Jonson's shadow and for a century afterward Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were more popular. A century and a half passed without a performance of Shakespeare's original King Lear text. Some plays rise and some fall, but rarely does a new age adopt the opinions of the old. When it came out, The Great Gatsby was panned by critics such as H.L. Mencken. Give me a list of famous men who've loved a book and I can furnish you with another list of famous notables who've hated it. That proves nothing. Seneca was almost as popular during the Renaissance as Shakespeare is now. These trends are not constant. They ebb and flow.

"For the cities which were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay."- Herodotus, Histories

Where now are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Where the Colossus of Rhodes? Should we rob the dead of their due share of glory because they no longer linger to plead their case? Sophocles wrote 123 plays of which 7 survive. The best 7? Who can say? There are 7 left to us. Shall two in a room speak ill of a third who is absent, and shall we burn again the Library of Alexandria by implying that all those who perished were justly interred?

Do you think the fairness fairy has a hand in this? Is the canon the first working meritocracy? Nobody get's stepped over? Nobody gets pushed to the back? I know for a fact that The Farce of Sodom deserves to be higher rated and it was suppressed while mediocre comic works flourished.

[JBI]

This the same Amis who is the well known Islamophobe, or are we talking about the Senior one here? As for rooted in time - he seems to have jumped on the xenophobic bandwagon that's building amongst neo-neo-cons well enough.

Either way, the length of Don Quixote is not a patch on the length of any of the 4 Great Classical Chinese novels - yet I challenge anyone to suggest that something like Romance of the Three Kingdoms should be forgotten because of its length - to me, it still seems the most dominant text in the Chinese Canon - certainly the most dominant prose work by my reckoning (though perhaps someone will correct me, and suggest another - I think we can agree it is way up there).

In truth, the length matters very little - I think Amis is unable to see anything but text - I think his mentality is so rooted in text that he ignores the background behind the narrative - that of a changing society, and a dying (or perhaps dead) sense of chivalry and romance, that Cervantes spins into a comic farce. How much more comical is the book burning scene at the beginning, when one knows the books that are being burnt? The jabs Cervantes takes at them are hilarious.

[Drkshadow03]

This the same Amis who is the well known Islamophobe, or are we talking about the Senior one here? As for rooted in time - he seems to have jumped on the xenophobic bandwagon that's building amongst neo-neo-cons well enough.

What does Amis being an alleged Islamophobe have anything to do with his judgements of Cervantes' works?

[JBI]

What does Amis being an alleged Islamophobe have anything to do with his judgements of Cervantes' works?

Everything. One's outlook on one issue tells volumes on another issue. Perhaps his inability to accept a difference of culture is behind the reason for his rejection of Cervantes - in truth, I merely wanted to throw the comment into the fire of the debate over cultural assumptions of specific periods to illustrate a dating in perspective of Amis too, and reveal a sense of hypocrisy.

[Dr. Hill]

I don't think any work can be unreadable to the contemporary reader, provided it is in said reader's native language.

[JBI]

I don't think any work can be unreadable to the contemporary reader, provided it is in said reader's native language.

Derrida in English is still to me virtually unreadable - though I make out bits here and there.

[stlukesguild]

If longevity and fertility are the only measures of man's greatness, where does that leave Keats, Jesus, or Alexander? If we are agreed that such elements are not important in the composition of a good man, then how can we nod our heads and placidly pass such judgements on our favorite books?

Strange analogy. Last I heard we were still reading of and discussing Keats, Jesus, and Alexander. Of course I would never suggest that "fertility" might be the sole measure of artistic merit.

Truly, there must be more to excellence than long life and influence! Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and The Odyssey were each lost for millennia. Melville was twenty years dead and seventy years had passed before Moby Dick got it's due. The Sound and the Fury was out of print and remaindered for a decade before Faulkner won the Nobel Prize. Shakespeare lived in Ben Jonson's shadow and for a century afterward Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were more popular. A century and a half passed without a performance of Shakespeare's original King Lear text. Some plays rise and some fall, but rarely does a new age adopt the opinions of the old.

It would seem you undermine your own argument by pointing out the instances in which a work of art is forgotten or ignored in its own time only to be afforded proper due after the passage of time. What might be more needed to bolster your argument are multiple examples of works of art broadly accepted as masterpieces not only in their own time but for subsequent centuries... works with a multitude of artistic heirs that are also greatly acclaimed that suddenly fall out of favor or are seen as "unreadable". Certainly reputations rise and fall... too a degree. Ovid's Metamorphoses was once the most read book after the Bible... such is no longer true... yet Ovid is certainly not "unreadable" or forgotten. Raphael was once lionized as the greatest painter of all time. Today we'd not think to place him at such a pinnacle... certainly not before Michelangelo... and yet he is not dismissed as irrelevant.

Seneca was almost as popular during the Renaissance as Shakespeare is now. These trends are not constant. They ebb and flow.

Certainly... and yet is Seneca unreadable? Ironically I have a copy of his On the Shortness of Life sitting on my desk as I type. One of a marvelous collection of beautifully produced paperbacks by Penguin Books.

"For the cities which were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay."- Herodotus, Histories

Again... I'm not certain that is a valid analogy. Certainly the history of cities change in response to external changing conditions... but the cities themselves are also ever changing internally. People come and go. Industries come and go. All remains in constant flux. There is no single moment that is Rome or London. Of course your quotes are impressive... but can easily offer opposing views:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Reality probably lies somewhere in between.

Where now are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Where the Colossus of Rhodes? Should we rob the dead of their due share of glory because they no longer linger to plead their case? Sophocles wrote 123 plays of which 7 survive. The best 7? Who can say? There are 7 left to us. Shall two in a room speak ill of a third who is absent, and shall we burn again the Library of Alexandria by implying that all those who perished were justly interred?

Do you think the fairness fairy has a hand in this? Is the canon the first working meritocracy? Nobody get's stepped over? Nobody gets pushed to the back? I know for a fact that The Farce of Sodom deserves to be higher rated and it was suppressed while mediocre comic works flourished.

To suggest that a work which has stood the test of time may just be a masterwork and not something unreadable is not the same as to suggest that it is the greatest work that has ever been produced or that there have not been works of real genius... perhaps even greater genius... that have been lost due to the workings of history. There are quite probably works of true brilliance that have not survived... that never attained a level of recognition because they were written in a language or created in a place that has left them inaccessible to the larger world. There have been works of real brilliance that have been destroyed... and continue to be destroyed even today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/arts/design/16blak.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Art/manuscript.htm

[mortalterror]

If longevity and fertility are the only measures of man's greatness, where does that leave Keats, Jesus, or Alexander? If we are agreed that such elements are not important in the composition of a good man, then how can we nod our heads and placidly pass such judgements on our favorite books?

Strange analogy. Last I heard we were still reading of and discussing Keats, Jesus, and Alexander. Of course I would never suggest that "fertility" might be the sole measure of artistic merit.

You have a strong belief in the value of artistic influence and I was analogizing it to the value men place on spawning many strong children; which reduces the value of merit in men and women to that of the common stud and brood mare. Keats, Jesus, Alexander, and Queen Elizabeth for that matter, had no living children when they died, yet their greatness was not of a quality to be passed on in their genes. That is what I was saying.


Truly, there must be more to excellence than long life and influence! Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and The Odyssey were each lost for millennia. Melville was twenty years dead and seventy years had passed before Moby Dick got it's due. The Sound and the Fury was out of print and remaindered for a decade before Faulkner won the Nobel Prize. Shakespeare lived in Ben Jonson's shadow and for a century afterward Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were more popular. A century and a half passed without a performance of Shakespeare's original King Lear text. Some plays rise and some fall, but rarely does a new age adopt the opinions of the old.

It would seem you undermine your own argument by pointing out the instances in which a work of art is forgotten or ignored in its own time only to be afforded proper due after the passage of time. What might be more needed to bolster your argument are multiple examples of works of art broadly accepted as masterpieces not only in their own time but for subsequent centuries... works with a multitude of artistic heirs that are also greatly acclaimed that suddenly fall out of favor or are seen as "unreadable". Certainly reputations rise and fall... too a degree. Ovid's Metamorphoses was once the most read book after the Bible... such is no longer true... yet Ovid is certainly not "unreadable" or forgotten. Raphael was once lionized as the greatest painter of all time. Today we'd not think to place him at such a pinnacle... certainly not before Michelangelo... and yet he is not dismissed as irrelevant.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."
-John Donne, The Sun Rising

My examples were all examples of reversals of fortune. You seem to believe that mechanism only works positively and that reputations can only grow. My intent was to show that these things are not constant. For instance, Tennyson was highly popular when he died. He went out of favor and came back. Tom Jones is not so popular as it once was though Ezra Pound seemed to think it the pinnacle of English prose. Just because Vivaldi and Caravaggio are back does not mean they are here to stay.

You seem to think that a good opinion can fluctuate for a few centuries and then it's carved in granite. But look at the critical history of any ancient work of art and you will see periods of enthusiasm and declines of interest. If it could happen to Aeschylus it can happen to Shakespeare who is still a teenager in the history of letters. He will go out of favor. Over a long enough time frame everyone does. That's part of what I meant by Beowulf, The Odyssey, and Gilgamesh. Even the most central important outstanding works fall upon the dust heap of history, fall victim to the arrow of time.

Believing that posterity has preserved these texts at the expense of lesser ones is an error. We have a great deal of lesser articles which have survived the ravages of floods, fire, moth. The oldest records of human writing are books of accounts and bills of sale. "Truly, a grocery list for the ages." The merit system is just not an accurate model of how preservation and longevity works.


Seneca was almost as popular during the Renaissance as Shakespeare is now. These trends are not constant. They ebb and flow.

Certainly... and yet is Seneca unreadable? Ironically I have a copy of his On the Shortness of Life sitting on my desk as I type. One of a marvelous collection of beautifully produced paperbacks by Penguin Books.

Certainly not. I think he's wonderful. I think he's spectacular. But contemporary dramatic theory is that his plays are too bombastic, too poetic, to play to a contemporary theater audience. I respectfully disagree, though it is often said. However, even you will concur that he is not so popular as he once was. He was once central to the canon and now he's an afterthought.


[COLOR="DarkRed"]"For the cities which were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay."- Herodotus, Histories

Again... I'm not certain that is a valid analogy. Certainly the history of cities change in response to external changing conditions... but the cities themselves are also ever changing internally. People come and go. Industries come and go. All remains in constant flux. There is no single moment that is Rome or London. Of course your quotes are impressive... but can easily offer opposing views:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Reality probably lies somewhere in between.

I see. You are saying that cities change but books are static and so the opinion about them should also remain static since their contents remain the same. But just consider Shakespeare: Hamlet, a common example. When it came out it was popular for it's plot elements. The ghost was big. Hamlet was either crazy or not. Then as literary opinion began to focus more on character that becomes the focus of the play. We get Hamlets with a greater sense of interiority, a new emphasis on ambiguity and delay which was never there before. The things we like about our favorite books have changed even if they haven't. The way we understand them is different, what they mean to us has changed, even if the words do not. Take the example of Shakespeare again. There are two Shakespeares. One is his reputation and tradition in the living theater. The other is the paper Shakespeare which academics enjoy. There is some overlap but the two traditions are seldom in harmony and praising the same plays at the same time. Shakespeare is a deck of thirty-seven cards getting shuffled over and over again for centuries. Just because the words don't change does not mean the value we infuse them with does not.

Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce.
-Luo Guan Zhong, Romance of the Seven Kingdoms

So much of life is a mutability, a changing, a metamorphosis. To trust in absolutes and forever is a folly. After much struggle, and interminable time, a man climbs a mountain. He sits at the top and says, "Now, that's done. I'm safe. Safe forever." Then he falls all the way back down. Croesus laughed at Solon and wailed when he learned the truth.


Where now are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Where the Colossus of Rhodes? Should we rob the dead of their due share of glory because they no longer linger to plead their case? Sophocles wrote 123 plays of which 7 survive. The best 7? Who can say? There are 7 left to us. Shall two in a room speak ill of a third who is absent, and shall we burn again the Library of Alexandria by implying that all those who perished were justly interred?

Do you think the fairness fairy has a hand in this? Is the canon the first working meritocracy? Nobody get's stepped over? Nobody gets pushed to the back? I know for a fact that The Farce of Sodom deserves to be higher rated and it was suppressed while mediocre comic works flourished.

To suggest that a work which has stood the test of time may just be a masterwork and not something unreadable is not the same as to suggest that it is the greatest work that has ever been produced or that there have not been works of real genius... perhaps even greater genius... that have been lost due to the workings of history. There are quite probably works of true brilliance that have not survived... that never attained a level of recognition because they were written in a language or created in a place that has left them inaccessible to the larger world. There have been works of real brilliance that have been destroyed... and continue to be destroyed even today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/arts/design/16blak.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Art/manuscript.htm

Yes, but you act as though the test were over, and it's pencils down. The test of time is an ongoing test, and one we all ultimately fail.

[Bastable]

Something i don't think has been mentioned is the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm

[Vota]

I've been working on developing a small, but formidable library of knowledge, but I have yet to read most of the works.

Books that I have read, that I really feel the need to own based off that criteria, and not what I plan to read and/or know to be valuable:

1. Altered Carbon, hard-boiled sci-fi. The Lead character Takeshi Kovacs, is probably my favorite character of all time.
2. The Forever War
3. Old Man's War
4. Armor
5. Dune
6. The Stars My destination
7. Conan-works

I used to have a solid sci-fi/fantasy collection, but sold it off during hard times. I've slowly been reacquiring the books I really feel the need to own alongside greats like Tolstoy and Shakespear

that my present library consists of.

[Eiseabhal]

I wonder if the young girl with all the dough who started the thread has read any of the worthy tomes mentioned or is the room for books now abandoned. Buying ones books all at once seems like a sure-fire way to end up with many unread. I have to confess that I go on book-buying splurges and have rows and stacks where only every third one has been read. Only problem I have with the lists is that they are so top-heavy "intellectual". I got the impression the blone was young and as she was reading "A Tale of Two Cities" she was probably a competent reader but that was no reason to give her a reading list that contained so little light relief. Cruel, too cruel.

[ladderandbucket]

The Dorling Kindersly book of the Human Body, or something similar. I think every human should own such a book.

[ennison]

"Blone"! That is a very Stornowegian word Eiseabhal! Shows what an army education does!

[Eiseabhal]

Well I first came across it from Stornoway boys in Glasgow shipyards but there were a couple of Lewismen with me in the army and they did use that word. I liked it and sometimes still use it as a kind of joke .

[cafolini]

It doesn't cease to amaze me that with a million books out there to choose from there are some people that select a few which every home library should have. If they were recommending a book they liked, it's okay. But "should have" is utterly stupid.

[hawthorns]

Hey, we just brought a new house and I have been given the spare room to start my own library. I have quite a few books but was just wondering what fiction and non-fiction is essential for my library, thanks

No such thing--whatever you're into.

I might argue my mom has a substandard library owing to the fact that there isn't a classic to found. But since she iced the SAT's verbal...well...LOL

Instead, she has three walls and 2-3 thousand mysteries.

[Fantods1]

I would say to keep latin american classics in mind... stuff by Marquez, Borges, Mario Vargas Llosas and so forth

[hannah_arendt]

I would say to keep latin american classics in mind... stuff by Marquez, Borges, Mario Vargas Llosas and so forth

Agreed:)

[ralfyman]

Library of America
Everyman
Great Books of the Western World
Oxford Library of Latin America series
Science Fiction Masterworks
various anthologies (Norton, etc.)

and more.

[mal4mac]

Don Quixote, no matter what speciality is attributed to it, is but a book that satires chivalry. As these books are hardly read by anyone but experts and even a hero like King Arthur is unable to inspire younger generations, anyone reading Cervantes might think that the author is whipping an already dead mule...


Well you could say that Monty Python's "Holy Grail" is just a film that satires chivalry, but it shows that chivalry, and its mockery, is far from a dead topic. And what kid doesn't like tales of knights of old? Given that the Python gang were clever clogs, they had no doubt read Cervantes, and realised a good thing when they saw it.

This is certainly one for the library, get the excellent Everyman hardback... it's a good, readable, translation. Note, I'm a common person, no literary titles to my name, and I found this book wonderful. That's why it's available in Everyman, Penguin, and all the main mass market publishers... it is indeed for ever man (& woman).

[Ecurb]

In the past I would suggest that every home library should have a good dictionary, a good atlas, and a good almanac. Now that everyone has computers and internet access, these are no longer necessary.

[chrisvia]

I know this doesn't list specific books, but I decided a while back (when trying to reduce the size of my library) that every great home library should include only those books that one will/should (the difference between will and should is where we keep getting tripped up on the subjective) reread.

[Eiseabhal]

The Glasgow cook book!

[Calidore]

In the past I would suggest that every home library should have a good dictionary, a good atlas, and a good almanac. Now that everyone has computers and internet access, these are no longer necessary.

Power can go out and the internet can be inaccessible. I think those are still good suggestions.

[Vota]

I agree with the line of thinking that says one should build a collection of books known to stand the test of time as great works of human thinking and imagination, and that a library should also reflect that person's specific interests.

I have many works that are near universally agreed to be some of the best western works in human history, but I also have books on Ninjutsu, strength training, and sci-fi/fantasy that I thoroughly enjoy, and are representative of some of my most personal passions and interests since childhood.

[ashulman]

Shakespeare
Bible
Divine Comedy
Canterbury Tales
Don Quixote
Persuasion
All major Dickens
Middlemarch
Wuthering heights
Jane Eyre
Checkov Stories
Kafka stories
Most Tolstoy
Most Dostoevsky
Moby Dick
Norton poetry anthology
The Waste Land
In Search of Lost Time
Ulysses
Magic Mountain and Mann stories
USA Trilogy - Dos Passos
The Sun Also Rises
Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
Blood Meridian
White Noise
Lolita
The Stranger
Catch 22
American Pastoral
Sabbath's Theater
Gravity's Rainbow
Crying of Lot 49

[PeaceLoveAndTea]

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Anything by Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

[Sorceress]

Potter series.

[lawpark]

Only buy what you will read - that probably helps the environment.