Ten Great Books

[Bramblethorn]

suggestion for edit. I think The Story of O showed up 3 times.

There are a few duplicates there. LotR shows up twice, and Gideon the Ninth is part of the Locked Tomb series.

 

[yowser]

Thanks for sharp eyes. There was a fair amount of inconsistency in how authors listed their titles. I cleaned data to some degree, but hardly with a fine-tooth comb (and I have never been famous for my organizational skills.) I'm sure there are other glitches/omissions/manglements in the 'final' list.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for sharp eyes. There was a fair amount of inconsistency in how authors listed their titles. I cleaned data to some degree, but hardly with a fine-tooth comb (and I have never been famous for my organizational skills.) I'm sure there are other glitches/omissions/manglements in the 'final' list.

Thanks for going to the trouble of compiling it. It was interesting to check off what I've read on it and what I haven't. I've read 81 of them, depending on exactly what counts (i.e., does one have to have read the King James bible cover to cover for it to count?). But there's so much still to read. Time's a' wasting.

 

[CyranoJ]

Thanks for going to the trouble of compiling it. It was interesting to check off what I've read on it and what I haven't. I've read 81 of them, depending on exactly what counts (i.e., does one have to have read the King James bible cover to cover for it to count?). But there's so much still to read. Time's a' wasting.

I came out at 93. (Counting the KJV. Like, have I ever literally sat down and read it cover-to-cover? No. But I've come in contact with almost every book of it by one route or another, I think that counts.) Some books on there I had forgotten all about and some that I definitely need to check out, there's quite a bit of range there.

 

[AG31]

Fifty-one. Although I can't really remember much about some of them. There are others that feel like I read them, just because they're talked about so much.

What is it about Winnie the Pooh???

 

[CyranoJ]

Fifty-one. Although I can't really remember much about some of them. There are others that feel like I read them, just because they're talked about so much.

What is it about Winnie the Pooh???

Heh, I included Winnie the Pooh in my count at first and had to remove it when I realized that no, it was just that I saw the cartoons as a kid.

 

[SimonDoom]

Heh, I included Winnie the Pooh in my count at first and had to remove it when I realized that no, it was just that I saw the cartoons as a kid.

You're missing out. It's a good one, and it's on my list.

 

[SimonDoom]

Fifty-one. Although I can't really remember much about some of them. There are others that feel like I read them, just because they're talked about so much.

What is it about Winnie the Pooh???

Ever read The Tao of Pooh? It's good, but it doesn't get the point across as well as the stories themselves. My favorite Pooh story is the one where Pooh and Piglet both get presents for Eyeore's birthday, and things don't go quite as planned.

 

[CyranoJ]

Ever read The Tao of Pooh? It's good, but it doesn't get the point across as well as the stories themselves.

The funny thing is: that one I've read.

 

[AG31]

Ever read The Tao of Pooh? It's good, but it doesn't get the point across as well as the stories themselves. My favorite Pooh story is the one where Pooh and Piglet both get presents for Eyeore's birthday, and things don't go quite as planned.

I just put in a request for it at the library.

 

[StillStunned]

Winnie-the-Pooh, The House At Pooh Corner and Now We Are Six are all excellent, with very subtle humour and emotion, and very profound wisdom beneath the surface.

 

[AG31]

Winnie-the-Pooh, The House At Pooh Corner and Now We Are Six are all excellent, with very subtle humour and emotion, and very profound wisdom beneath the surface.

Yup, I know all about Winnie the Pooh. I was just wondering about the source of it's power, that it appears multiple times here. You forgot "When We Were Very Young."

 

[StillStunned]

You forgot "When We Were Very Young."

Didn't forget, I just didn't mention it. I don't think it has the same maturity as the other three.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If I counted right, 83.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Around 87, given there's several I've never finished, and lots of duplicates.

Merging authors might make trends clearer - Le Guin has the Earthsea trilogy, astrology and two of the individual books listed separately, the KJV and New Testament and Deuteronomy are separate, Calvin and Hobbes and Collected Calvin and Hobbes, and Heinlein gets about a dozen works mentioned plus the Collected Heinlein.

Would be interesting to see if Heinlein, Pratchett or Le Guin beat Orwell. Twain and Rand both have two works listed. too, possibly Vonnegut and Stephen King are up there. There's likely an Atlantic split of childhood books, too.

 

[outcastpib]

I am not an avid reader and I am not sure how many books have had an effect on my life except one. Early on in my life I remember reading over and over "Where the wild things are" The thought of escaping my room into the wild unknown, crossing oceans, and "Rumpusing" with Wild Things set in motion my desire to travel and seek adventures that is still with me today. The illustrations are amazing and portray such strong emotions. The book is ingrained in my memory and I still have it. It's covered in grubby handprints and markings of a adolescent boy that dreamed of exploration. Thank you Maurice Sendak for inspiring youth with your amazing imagination.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There's likely an Atlantic split of childhood books, too.

Definitely. There's a bunch of novels which must have been on the American school curricula that I've never read. Oz culture up until maybe the nineties, was always more aligned with the UK, which was reflected in the school curricula. For example, I don't think I've read Moby Dick, possibly not The Catcher in the Rye, and not much Mark Twain either. The Americans here nearly always mention those three as part of their foundation reading.

 

[Voboy]

I don't think I've read Moby Dick, possibly not The Catcher in the Rye, and not much Mark Twain either. The Americans here nearly always mention those three as part of their foundation reading.

I don't think you're missing much, personally.

US schools had their canon, and many ELA teachers weren't good at explaining why some books made it and some didn't. Blessedly, it's started to change now.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I don't think you're missing much, personally.

US schools had their canon, and many ELA teachers weren't good at explaining why some books made it and some didn't. Blessedly, it's started to change now.

I read a couple extracts of Tom Sawyer in primary school, the whole thing when I was about 13, and Huck Finn at 15 - that one took a while. I recall some writer saying don't overdo representing dialects when writing speech. Mark Twain could write 15 different dialects in one book, represented perfectly, and get away with it, but it was a close thing even for him... Read TKAM about the same time - it had been on the EngLit syllabus forever and the teachers were sick of it - not the story itself, but of trying to get kids whose first language wasn't any kind of English to understand it and then write essays that went any further than 'racism is bad'. So we were told to take a copy or at least watch the film.

I can't remember if Catcher in the Rye was compulsory - I think not, but all I recall of it is Holden being a whiny wanker. Had to read The Go-Between round the same time, which was a slightly less whiny English version...

There's books like the Red Badge of Courage which I've only heard of from Americans calling it a classic. I did have a copy but it looked tedious. I saw an am-dram version of Moby-Dick which was half an hour long and probably as much as I want of it. I read Willard Price's Whale Adventure, which is enough whaling.

 

[Voboy]

I read a couple extracts of Tom Sawyer in primary school, the whole thing when I was about 13, and Huck Finn at 15 - that one took a while. I recall some writer saying don't overdo representing dialects when writing speech. Mark Twain could write 15 different dialects in one book, represented perfectly, and get away with it, but it was a close thing even for him... Read TKAM about the same time - it had been on the EngLit syllabus forever and the teachers were sick of it - not the story itself, but of trying to get kids whose first language wasn't any kind of English to understand it and then write essays that went any further than 'racism is bad'. So we were told to take a copy or at least watch the film.

I can't remember if Catcher in the Rye was compulsory - I think not, but all I recall of it is Holden being a whiny wanker. Had to read The Go-Between round the same time, which was a slightly less whiny English version...

There's books like the Red Badge of Courage which I've only heard of from Americans calling it a classic. I did have a copy but it looked tedious. I saw an am-dram version of Moby-Dick which was half an hour long and probably as much as I want of it. I read Willard Price's Whale Adventure, which is enough whaling.

My AP English class had Moby-Dick assigned, and to this day I remain convinced I was the only student in the class who read it cover to cover. So I feel I'm qualified to say it's crap, at least as a compulsory examination of English-language composition.

They don't read it anymore, thank dog. I had the same reaction to Faulkner and Steinbeck, though I enjoy Hemingway. Lots of teachers are bad at explaining to their students why it's important for them to learn the material. That's a tendency I've noticed more in math teachers, though the ELA crowd is not immune.

 

[AG31]

What hempen homespuns have we swagg’ring here?

Deuteronomy

Could you tell us why Deuteronomy, in particular, out of all the available books?

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

There's books like the Red Badge of Courage which I've only heard of from Americans calling it a classic. I did have a copy but it looked tedious. I saw an am-dram version of Moby-Dick which was half an hour long and probably as much as I want of it. I read Willard Price's Whale Adventure, which is enough whaling.

It's unlikely that anybody who isn't American is going to care much about a book about the American Civil War. We're obsessed with the time period, for a variety of reasons, but it doesn't have the pull for those outside our experience. I love that book, read it to my kid when he was younger.

All you Moby Dick haters out there - to the last, I grapple with thee!

Melville is an acquired taste, and it helps if you've got some sea salt in your veins. When I first read Moby Dick, I thought it was tedious as well, the constant interludes about whales and whaling being super heavy info dumps. If you pare those back and focus on the story, it's a great one, and one of my favorites. Books like that, written in an era with no encyclopedias, no internet, nothing - they had to be heavy on the exposition or the average person wouldn't have any idea what was going on there. So I forgive Melville for his whale tale.

For a book that's been copied so many times in a variety of different ways, and where the first line is almost universally known, the main characters archetypes and the like, I think it's pretty clear why it was still being read until today, when most schools have shifted to modern, largely non-American (at least in my kid's experience) novels that are more contemporary.

I probably need to flog my kid to read Moby Dick.

 

[Voboy]

If you pare those back and focus on the story, it's a great one, and one of my favorites.

Lol. Translation: if you disregard 70% of the book, it's a really great book.

Nah. I'm mostly kidding, but the more caveats you need to tack onto a book recommendation, the more flaws that book has. I, for one, am glad the canon is evolving. We spent long enough inflicting Faulkner and Steinbeck on impressionable readers, trying to force them to become literature-lovers at the age of seventeen. Who can say how many budding readers got completely turned OFF of literature by being forced to slog through Moby-Dick?

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

See, I tend to view it more as a "how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat" kind of thing - read fun stuff for fun, read the literature for the educational value.

And hey, I LIKED THE WHALE STUFF. I thought it was interesting, lol.

 

[Voboy]

And hey, I LIKED THE WHALE STUFF. I thought it was interesting, lol.

I kinda did too, but I'm a weird guy. I will always remain convinced I was literally the sole person in my English class who actually read it cover-to-cover. And I didn't like it, and didn't appreciate; I thought it was a story that could be much better told in a different way, and I remain convinced of that too.

I loved reading before I hit high school, which I think is fortunate... because being forced to read books I didn't care about and couldn't fully understand was not a great way to inspire a love of literature.

I just know, from working for many years with students, that forcing them to be miserable is not a good way to encourage them to love whatever you're trying to get them to appreciate. I'm not saying we should replace Fitzgerald with manga, but there's such a thing as meeting people where they are.