Three non-fiction books everyone should read:
1. Confessions by St. Augustine - (I thought of putting the Bible, but that seemed too smart-ass somehow.)
2. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - A book calculated to bring mist (if not a tear) to the eyes of any book lover.
3. Euthyphro by Plato - There are deeper and longer dialogues, but that's the one that really made things "click" for me and was something of a watershed work.
Three books of fiction everyone should read
1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - The best Catholic novel, and one of my favorite novels of any sort.
2. The Divine Comedy by Dante - Though I do feel a little odd putting it under "fiction".
3. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - There is no funnier book.
Three authors everyone should read
1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (perhaps the world's most brilliant novelist)
2. Anthony Trollope (because what is life without charm -- that "great English blight")
3. J.R.R.Tolkien (who somehow answered the 20th century's questions by never writing about the 20th century)
Three books no one should read
I'm always hesitant to saying that no one should read something (I have a feeling it's good for my soul that The Index doesn't exist any more, as I'd be more inclined to read things because they were on it it.)
1.Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin - Having known some people who thought it was a wonderful book...
2. Anything by Danielle Steele (because if you want to kill brain cells there are better ways to do it)
3. Anything by L. Ron Hubbard (need one say more?)
And adding my own section because I didn't want to have to decide between them and prose authors:
Three Poets Everyone Should Read:
1. Homer
2. Milton
3. Shakespeare
(Okay, so my poetry reading is very conventional -- but at least it's good.)
Links of Note
7 hours ago
7 comments:
Poets, contd.
4. Chaucer
5. Dante
(They seemed to go with your list!)
Homer's at the very top of my list too! He's so profound and unpredictable. Here's one of his best:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Donuts are yummy
And beer is too
I'm not sure I'd put Milton in the top three poets everyone should read. I mean, what about Virgil? Donne? Eliot? Dante?
Well, I already had Dante in the top fiction, so I excluded him from consideration.
I figure you can read either Virgil or Homer (preferably both) but having both Virgil and Homer on a list of three seemed a bit much.
Donne... I dunno, I'd put Milton much higher on my list than Donne, though maybe that's partly due to old sentiment.
I seriously considered putting Eliot on instead of Shakespeare, since I don't think of the latter primarily as a poet.
Perhaps better I should have listed Eliot under poets and Shakespeare instead of Trollope.
Chaucer is certainly good, but I don't know that I'd say that everyone has to read him.
Eh. I realize that Milton is a master of the language, I've just never been able to forgive him for the story-level problems in Paradise Lost.
Meanwhile, I have googled "Fascinating Womanhood" and am now desperately trying to forget the stuff that came up.
Have you read "To Say Nothing But the Dog" by Connie Wills? It's a tribute to Jerome K. Jerome, Dorothy Sayers, and a wonderful book in it's own right.
Naxos audiobooks has Three Men On A Boat as a recording. It is a work of art, perfect.
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