Stephen -
Good points all. Most of us went off on a "my favorite reads" jag with
only a minor interest in whether it was "Literature" by any nominal or
not-so-nominal standard.
It doesn't surprise me that most of us have a collective
double-standard. In our own fields of study/expertise we take offense
when others don't consult or reference the studied origins of the field,
and yet when we wander out of our field, we think that we can make it up
as we go along. Like the NewAge (rhymes with SewAge) of the 80's where
everything was Laser this and Quantum that... with hardly a clue what
any of it meant.
Robert's request *did* suggest that he was interested in his "literary
education" and I think your response is much more ... "responsive" than
the rest of our interjections.
Though I do have to say I enjoy hearing the clamor of everyone's
favorites (not to mention shouting my own out and dissing others'
without regard to any semblance of decorum).
Carry on,
- Steve
Most of you are PhDs and respond to inquiries from the
non-science type to aspects of your field(s). So how about asking
a college in the English Lit or World Lit department?
Robert, you mentioned you are going to improve your literary
education, so the works will generally be older because those
have had an effect on the development of literature. The works
should provide some understanding of the development of the
field as well as being entertaining, insightful, etc.
To make a musical analogy, I thoroughly enjoy Bach Fugues but
if I wish to understand the musical form of the fugue, I also need to
listen to Medieval and Renaissance forms that lead up to it
(the ricercar, fantasy, etc)
Think of the field as having a core trunk and then many branches
at the top. It sounds like you are asking about the 'trunk' of the
field.
So maybe you need 10 books to represent the trunk of the literary
tree and then afterward pick 3-5 more works for each branch to
cover the last 150 - 200 hundred years.
Steph T
On 10/9/2010 3:44 AM, Saul Caganoff wrote:
All great suggestions and timely since my library book is due back
tomorrow. I'll add a couple of other suggestions:
The English Patient (Ondaatje)
Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Persig) (not sure if this
counts as fiction)
A Glass Darkly (Philip K Dick)
On the Road (Kerouac)
Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
and for the Illiad I strongly recommend the audio book with Derek
Jacobi reading the Fagles translation (abridged).
+1 for all Herman Hesse titles mentioned.
Regards,
Saul
On Saturday, October 9, 2010, Alison Jones<alison.jo...@redfish.com>
wrote:
After 10 years of lurking something I can finally comment on.
In no particlular order:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Sometime a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
There are so many more!
Alison
(Yeah, I know it is 11. And you are so right Robert (Holmes), I
should really say Pevear and Volokhonsky's Karenina ☺)
On Oct 8, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and
would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best
Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction and
available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time.
Google searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one
particular publisher. This is a good group to poll since you all
(most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I
know the suggestions will be good ones for me!
Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to vote
on them.
My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:
"Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac
McCarthy
Thanks!
Robert C.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
