Before you die lists
Gene Ward Smith
list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
First theirs:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Then mine:
The Republic
Paradise Lost
Candide
Tom Jones
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
The Three Musketeers
Eugene Onegin
Huckleberry Finn
War and Peace
The Brothers Kazamazov
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
The Time Machine
Lord Jim
Zuleika Dobson
Trent's Last Case
The Man Who was Thursday
Ulysses
Brave New World
The Grapes of Wrath
Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
Animal Farm
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
The Lord of the Rings
The Last of the Wine
Stranger in a Strange Land
A Case of Conscience
Pale Fire
In Cold Blood
Sheerluck
"Gene Ward Smith" <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote in message
news:Xns9A34208E16020ge...@207.115.33.102...
There are a few on the original list that would get my vote but on the
whole, I prefer your list .
Sheerluck
tphile
most of which say there is not afterlife, or a
really unpleasant afterlife or that there is one but
the reader is not invited
That would be rather depressingly twisted.
A hell of a devilish thing to read
tphile
Will in New Haven
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
> A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
>
think I know, enough about all the others to reject them.
> Then mine:
> The Three Musketeers
> Huckleberry Finn
> The Lord of the Rings
> The Last of the Wine
Four from your list, one overlapping. So that's six of my thirty. My
other twenty-four
Kim
A Shropshire Lad
Three Hearts and Three Lions
The Last Good Kiss
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
The Green Hills of Earth
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Pale Grey for Guilt
The Education of a Poker Player
The Last Hot Time
The Dark Border
A Deepness in the Sky
Bridge in the Menagerie
No Truce with Kings
The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate
Lonesome Dove
All the Pretty Horses
The Road to Serfdom
Look to Windward
The Glory of their Times
Killer Angels
The Dispossessed
Moby Dick
The Wizard Knight
But it could change tomorrow
Will in New Haven
--
Dorothy J Heydt
Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
>list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
>anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
>First theirs:
>
>To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
>The Bible
Read, most of it anyway.
>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
Ohhhhh yes.
>1984 by George Orwell
Read.
>A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Read.
>Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Read, though I can't remember many details now, but it was the
quintessential category romance with the unsympathetic hero and
the exaggeratedly poor pitiful put-upon heroine. Elizabeth
Peters said in one of her novels that the whole Bronte family
badly needed a shrink.
>Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Read.
>All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
Not read, and I think I can die peacefully without doing so.
>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Heard about it. Wouldn't read if you paid me.
>Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Never heard of.
>The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Read, mostly to see what Betty MacDonald's daughters meant about
"that absolutely disgusting ending." Not so disgusting.
>The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Read. Disliked.
>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
>Haddon
Never heard of.
>Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Read, out of pity for a friend who had to give a book report on
it and was not very verbal. Horrid book. The Prince of the
Immortals who tormented Tess was not God but Hardy.
>Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Well, of course.
>Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Read the first chapter three times, bounced off each time.
>The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
One of my childhood favorites. Try to get the edition with the
Arthur Rackham illustrations.
>Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I read about nine-tenths of this while sitting in someone else's
living room -- the people who were giving me a ride home from a
rehearsal stopped to visit relatives; they talked family for what
seemed like several hours, and GWTW was the only book in the
room. When we finally got up and left, I was down to the last
chapter. Never did get around to finishing it.
>Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Nope.
>The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Nope.
>The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Nope.
>The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
Yes, I read the silly thing, and cannot see what it's doing on
anybody's must-read list. Phony and plastic.
>David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Nope.
>The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Never heard of.
>The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
>Life of Pi by Yann Martel
>Middlemarch by George Eliot
>The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
>A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
No.
>
>Then mine:
>
>The Republic
I *think* so, or else I read someone else's summary of it.
>Paradise Lost
Read until Book was it Seven? then put it down in disgust. It's
the book where we discover that Milton's Eve is a simpering
idiot.
>Candide
No.
>Tom Jones
Read.
>Pride and Prejudice
Read.
>Emma
Read.
>The Three Musketeers
Read.
>Eugene Onegin
No.
>Huckleberry Finn
Of course. And Tom Sawyer too.
>War and Peace
No, but I recognize the first sentence. :)
>The Brothers Kazamazov
Yes, back when the movie came out.
>Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
Naturally.
>The Time Machine
Of course.
>Lord Jim
No.
>Zuleika Dobson
Funnily enough, I have read this (referenced in Willis's To Say
Nothing About the Dog). I didn't see the *point* Beerbohm was
trying to make, but I read it.
>Trent's Last Case
No.
>The Man Who was Thursday
Oh yes.
>Ulysses
I read this as a senior in high school. All I remember now is
the gender-chaning scene in the brothel. I found it very dull.
>Brave New World
Of course.
>The Grapes of Wrath
Yes; see note above.
>Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
Thurber, right? I haven't read the book (didn't know there was a
collection), but individual items have been republished
everywhere.
>Animal Farm
Yes.
>Perelandra
>That Hideous Strength
Well, yes ... but you don't include Out of the Silent Planet?
>The Lord of the Rings
Yup.
>The Last of the Wine
I've read it, wasn't impressed. I remember liking Renault's two
Theseus novels, but at this stage I'm not inclined to re-read
them.
>Stranger in a Strange Land
(Yawn) yes.
>A Case of Conscience
No, though I know what it's about ....
>Pale Fire
No.
>In Cold Blood
No.
So, as I approach the age where "before I die" has some
relevance, what would I like to read before I die? Well, I'd
like to see Girl Genius to its conclusion. And Connie Willis's
next time travel story, the one about Pearl Harbor. THough it
will probably make me cry, as a number of hers do.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Dorothy J Heydt
tphile <tph...@cableone.net> wrote:
>A Books To Read Before You Die list?
>most of which say there is not afterlife, or a
>really unpleasant afterlife or that there is one but
>the reader is not invited
Oh, I wouldn't say that. Other than the seriously antireligious
P. Pullman, most of the books on the list are either neutral on
the topic or take the tenets of the Christian faith as a given
(Jane Austen, e.g.).
PV
>Oh, I wouldn't say that. Other than the seriously antireligious
>P. Pullman,
"His dark materials" is not antireligious. Pullman himself is. *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.
Dorothy J Heydt
PV <pv+u...@pobox.com> wrote:
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>Oh, I wouldn't say that. Other than the seriously antireligious
>>P. Pullman,
>
>"His dark materials" is not antireligious. Pullman himself is. *
Based on reviews and interviews I've read, I would say they both
are.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> said
>In article <13pun9p...@news.supernews.com>,
>PV <pv+u...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>>Oh, I wouldn't say that. Other than the seriously antireligious
>>>P. Pullman,
>>
>>"His dark materials" is not antireligious. Pullman himself is. *
>
>Based on reviews and interviews I've read, I would say they both
>are.
Based on reading the book, I'd say that the book(s) could be
interpreted that way for some value of 'religion', where the value lies
in the range of 'organised, prescriptive, fundamentalist'.
There are Angels on both sides of the conflict after all, and Tbq (jub
riraghnyyl trgf xvyyrq) frrzf unccl gb or bhg bs vg, naq va ab jnl
nffbpvngrq jvgu gur anfgl fghss orvat qbar va uvf anzr.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
10,414 Km walked. 2,032 Km PROWs surveyed. 36.9% complete.
William Hyde
>
> >All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>
> Not read, and I think I can die peacefully without doing so.
I expect so. I couldn't put it down, though.
>
> >His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
>
> Heard about it. Wouldn't read if you paid me.
Have do admit I faded out before finishing, but many of
the reviews seem to be describing a different book
entirely.
> >Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
>
> Read, out of pity for a friend who had to give a book report on
> it and was not very verbal. Horrid book. The Prince of the
> Immortals who tormented Tess was not God but Hardy.
I would not be so sure. Hardy took a great deal from real
life. For example, the wife-selling incident at the beginning of
"The Mayor of Casterbridge". That one he had to footnote as people
found it unbelievable.
> >Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
One of he books I was forced to read at school. Much to
my surprise I liked it.
> >David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Read this one voluntarily, after reading Orwell's essay on
Dickens.
> >Middlemarch by George Eliot
Finished chapter one, and then ... A friend swears by it, so I hope
to get back to it one day.
> >A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
I would prefer the Enderby books.
William Hyde
Chris Thompson
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <13pun9p...@news.supernews.com>,
>PV <pv+u...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>>Oh, I wouldn't say that. Other than the seriously antireligious
>>>P. Pullman,
>>
>>"His dark materials" is not antireligious. Pullman himself is. *
>
>Based on reviews and interviews I've read, I would say they both
>are.
Well, you could try reading the books to see whether you agree.
I would say that they are anti-clerical rather than anti-religious
qua se. Unless you think being "of the Devil's party" [*] must
make them so.
What they certainly aren't is rationalist. None the worse for that,
of course.
[*] "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God,
and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet,
and of the Devil's party without knowing it."
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
--
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1 [at] cam.ac.uk
Dorothy J Heydt
Chris Thompson <ce...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>[*] "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God,
> and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet,
> and of the Devil's party without knowing it."
>
> William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Dante had no such problem.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>First theirs:
>
>The Bible
Hardly anyone reads all of it. I tried, but bogged down somewhere in
the prophets -- Jeremiah, I think.
>To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
>1984 by George Orwell
>A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
>Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
>Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
>The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
I'm not sure Jane Eyre belongs on that list; I read it, but wasn't
impressed. The others, sure.
>All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
I really ought to read that sometime.
>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
I can't bring myself to want to read it, especially given how many
people say the first book's great and then it goes to hell.
>Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
>Haddon
>The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
>The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
What? What are _these_ doing here?
>The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
I saw the movie. Don't suppose that counts.
>Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
I couldn't get past the first page. Maybe I should try again someday.
>Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
>Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
>The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
>Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
>Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
All read and enjoyed.
>The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Really?
>The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
>David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
>The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
>Life of Pi by Yann Martel
>Middlemarch by George Eliot
>The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
>A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
I haven't read these yet.
>Then mine:
>
>The Republic
>Paradise Lost
>Candide
>Pride and Prejudice
>Emma
>The Three Musketeers
>Huckleberry Finn
>Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
>The Time Machine
>Brave New World
>Animal Farm
>The Lord of the Rings
So far, so good.
>Tom Jones
I read an abridged version; I should probably find the complete one.
>Eugene Onegin
>Zuleika Dobson
What are these? I don't recognize them.
>War and Peace
>The Brothers Kazamazov
You like Russian authors more than I do.
>Lord Jim
>Trent's Last Case
>Ulysses
>The Grapes of Wrath
>Pale Fire
>In Cold Blood
Never read them. Ought to.
>The Man Who was Thursday
I like it, but it seems an eccentric choice for a "30 must reads"
list.
>Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
Another eccentric choice -- and are you really counting it as one
book? I have them as separate (very slim) volumes.
>Perelandra
>That Hideous Strength
Really?
>The Last of the Wine
I can't place this.
>Stranger in a Strange Land
>A Case of Conscience
I'm sorry, but these seem pretty minor to me.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
The seventh issue of Helix is now at http://www.helixsf.com
Lawrence Watt-Evans
So let's see if I can come up with my own thirty:
The Odyssey
The Once and Future King
Pride and Prejudice
Dracula
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Scaramouche
The Hobbit
The Circus of Dr. Lao
A Study in Scarlet
Tarzan of the Apes
The Stand (original version)
Interview with the Vampire
War of the Worlds
Decameron
Stand on Zanzibar
The Princess and the Goblin
The Painted Bird
Watership Down
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Silver Stallion
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wallet of Kai Lung
A Christmas Carol
The Jungle
The Princess Bride
The Throne of Bones
Chris Thompson
Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
[...]
>
>>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
>
>I can't bring myself to want to read it, especially given how many
>people say the first book's great and then it goes to hell.
Well, I disagree with that. The first two books are great and *then*
it goes to hell[*]. (That's an exaggeration: even the third book has
its moments, but it's got far too much packed in and the various
resolutions mostly don't work for me,)
[*] Literally, actually, but that wasn't what I meant :-)
Anyway, I would defy anyone to read the first chapter ("The Cat and
the Hornbeam Trees") of the second book and not want to go on reading.
Dorothy J Heydt
>>Zuleika Dobson
>
>What are these? I don't recognize them.
opera by Tschaikowsky, said to be very good.
Zuleika: spoof novel by Max Beerbohm, about a woman who comes to
visit Oxford and is so transcendently beautiful that (quite
independently of anything she wishes) *all* the undergraduates in
Oxford simultaneously commit suicide for love of her. Mentioned
in _To Say Nothing of the Dog_, else I never would have heard of
it either.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Chris Thompson <ce...@cus.cam.ac.uk> said
>In article <6stup356q1ok5lbdh...@news.rcn.com>,
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
>>
>>I can't bring myself to want to read it, especially given how many
>>people say the first book's great and then it goes to hell.
>
>Well, I disagree with that. The first two books are great and *then*
>it goes to hell[*]. (That's an exaggeration: even the third book has
>its moments, but it's got far too much packed in and the various
>resolutions mostly don't work for me,)
On the gripping hand, I thought the first book was actually the weakest,
and liked the second (or even third) rather better.
Mike Schilling
"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
news:6stup356q1ok5lbdh...@news.rcn.com...
>
>>All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>
> I really ought to read that sometime.
And watch the film. Considering how early a talkie it was (1930 or so),
it's astonishingly powerful and well-made.
>
> I read an abridged version; I should probably find the complete one.
>
>>Eugene Onegin
>>Zuleika Dobson
The latter is a silly trifle by Max Beerbohm about the most beautiful girl
in the world. Fun, but hardly essential.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
>news:6stup356q1ok5lbdh...@news.rcn.com...
>>
>>>All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>>
>> I really ought to read that sometime.
>
>And watch the film. Considering how early a talkie it was (1930 or so),
>it's astonishingly powerful and well-made.
I've seen the film, and yes, it's superb.
(I've also seen the made-for-TV remake -- from the 1980s, I think.)
Wayne Throop
: Hardly anyone reads all of it. I tried, but bogged down somewhere in
: the prophets -- Jeremiah, I think.
I got through it, but with very, very poor retention.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Gene Ward Smith
66c8-4497-aec...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> On Jan 29, 11:23 am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:
>>
>> >All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>>
>> Not read, and I think I can die peacefully without doing
so.
>
> I expect so. I couldn't put it down, though.
It's OK, but I don't see much in the way of greatness.
>> >His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
>>
>> Heard about it. Wouldn't read if you paid me.
>
> Have do admit I faded out before finishing, but many of
> the reviews seem to be describing a different book
> entirely.
It bogs down into a snore fest as far as I can tell--anyway, I
bailed.
>> >Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
>>
>> Read, out of pity for a friend who had to give a book
report on
>> it and was not very verbal. Horrid book. The Prince of
the
>> Immortals who tormented Tess was not God but Hardy.
>
> I would not be so sure. Hardy took a great deal from real
> life. For example, the wife-selling incident at the
beginning of
> "The Mayor of Casterbridge". That one he had to footnote as
people
> found it unbelievable.
Trying to read Tess was like dental work with bad anesthesia.
I had to bail.
>> >Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
>
> One of he books I was forced to read at school. Much to
> my surprise I liked it.
>
>> >David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
>
> Read this one voluntarily, after reading Orwell's essay on
> Dickens.
Dickens is OK, but way, way overrepresented on the librarians
list.
>> >Middlemarch by George Eliot
>
> Finished chapter one, and then ... A friend swears by it,
so I hope
> to get back to it one day.
Didn't finish it, but The Mill on the Floss is a lot eadier to
get down, I think.
Gene Ward Smith
>>Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
>>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
>>Haddon
>>The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
>>The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
>
> What? What are _these_ doing here?
>
A question you don't ask about The Prophet, for some reason.
As to what they are doing there, recent stuff is way
overrepresented on the librarian's list.
Gene Ward Smith
>>Eugene Onegin
>>Zuleika Dobson
>
> What are these? I don't recognize them.
Eugene Onegin holds a unique and central place in Russian
literature. It's a novel in verse, so you miss the fun some
with a translation (I don't read Russian), but it's so
remarkably clever and multilayered in how it tells a simple,
ironic story.
Zuleika Dobson is an (I think) amazingly funny comic novel,
and completely unique in style and viewpoint.
>>The Man Who was Thursday
>
> I like it, but it seems an eccentric choice for a "30 must
reads"
> list.
It's an absolute classic IMHO.
>>Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
>
> Another eccentric choice -- and are you really counting it
as one
> book? I have them as separate (very slim) volumes.
It was first published that way.
>>The Last of the Wine
>
> I can't place this.
One of Mary Renault's historical novels.
Gene Ward Smith
> The Count of Monte Cristo
In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
> The Hobbit
In place of LOTR? Rank heresy!!
Dorothy J Heydt
>66c8-4497-aec...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>
>> On Jan 29, 11:23 am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>wrote:
>>>
>>> >All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>>>
>>> Not read, and I think I can die peacefully without doing
>so.
>>
>> I expect so. I couldn't put it down, though.
>
>It's OK, but I don't see much in the way of greatness.
Probably great in the context of when it was written, which was
shortly *after* WWI, and spoke for the great disillusionment felt
by those who had thought that (a) war was a great and noble thing
or that (b) that particular war was going to end wars.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>
>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>
>In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
I do. It's a better novel.
>> The Hobbit
>
>In place of LOTR? Rank heresy!!
So I'm a heretic.
Will in New Haven
> In article <Xns9A3482008756genewardsmithsbcg...@207.115.33.102>,> >William Hyde <wthyde1...@gmail.com> wrote in news:5df080ff-
> >66c8-4497-aec4-5a25626e3...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>
> >> On Jan 29, 11:23 am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> >wrote:
>
> >>> >All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>
> >>> Not read, and I think I can die peacefully without doing
> >so.
>
> >> I expect so. I couldn't put it down, though.
>
> >It's OK, but I don't see much in the way of greatness.
>
> Probably great in the context of when it was written, which was
> shortly *after* WWI, and spoke for the great disillusionment felt
> by those who had thought that (a) war was a great and noble thing
> or that (b) that particular war was going to end wars.
I have a hard time with that "innocence lost" stuff, whether it is
Remarque or "Born on the Fourth of July." I never met anyone that
naive.
Will in New Haven
--
>
> Dorothy J. Heydt
> Albany, California
Mike Schilling
"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
news:s07vp39ifdqncbevi...@news.rcn.com...
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org>
> wrote:
>
>>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>>news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>>
>>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>>
>>In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>
> I do. It's a better novel.
Have you read it unabridged? It wanders so much that sometimes you wonder
if he'll ever get back to the main story. And I think it's a far smaller
accomplishment than the Musketeers trilogy.
Kurt Busiek
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>> news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>>
>>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>>
>> In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>
> I do. It's a better novel.
>
>>> The Hobbit
>>
>> In place of LOTR? Rank heresy!!
>
> So I'm a heretic.
And rank, to boot.
kdb
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
>news:s07vp39ifdqncbevi...@news.rcn.com...
>> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>>>news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>>>
>>>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>>>
>>>In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>>
>> I do. It's a better novel.
>
>Have you read it unabridged?
Yes.
> It wanders so much that sometimes you wonder
>if he'll ever get back to the main story.
I consider that a feature, not a bug.
> And I think it's a far smaller
>accomplishment than the Musketeers trilogy.
Trilogy? What are you counting?
Dave Hansen
> In article <Xns9A34208E16020genewardsmithsbcg...@207.115.33.102>,
> Gene Ward Smith <g...@chewbacca.org> wrote:>Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
[...]
> >The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
>
> anybody's must-read list. Phony and plastic.
I preferred The Profit by Kehlog Albran.
Regards,
-=Dave
Gene Ward Smith
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith
<ge...@chewbacca.org>
> wrote:
>
>>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>>news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>>
>>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>>
>>In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>
> I do. It's a better novel.
Musketeers is much, much better craftsmanship, which you ought
to appreciate. Cristo is wordy and out of control, Musketeers
doesn't have any flab on a story which moves right along,
creating a ruffles and rapiers novel which has never been
surpassed. Actually, I thought of putting The Stars My
Destination on my list; I think it is a better revenge story.
>>> The Hobbit
>>
>>In place of LOTR? Rank heresy!!
>
> So I'm a heretic.
No doubt, but the question is whether you are also a lunatic.
Mike Schilling
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:55:24 GMT, "Mike Schilling"
> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
>>news:s07vp39ifdqncbevi...@news.rcn.com...
>>> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>>>>news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>>>>
>>>>> The Count of Monte Cristo
>>>>
>>>>In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>>>
>>> I do. It's a better novel.
>>
>>Have you read it unabridged?
>
> Yes.
>
>> It wanders so much that sometimes you wonder
>>if he'll ever get back to the main story.
>
> I consider that a feature, not a bug.
>
>> And I think it's a far smaller
>>accomplishment than the Musketeers trilogy.
>
> Trilogy? What are you counting?
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years After
The Vicomte de Bragelonne (one book, for all that it's published in multiple
volumes.)
Dorothy J Heydt
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Lawrence Watt-Evans" <l...@sff.net> wrote in message
>news:9e9vp3pucfl5f64i7...@news.rcn.com...
>> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:55:24 GMT, "Mike Schilling"
>> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> And I think it's a far smaller
>>>accomplishment than the Musketeers trilogy.
>>
>> Trilogy? What are you counting?
>
>The Three Musketeers
>Twenty Years After
>The Vicomte de Bragelonne (one book, for all that it's published in multiple
>volumes.)
Compare Brust's Paarfi novels,
The Phoenix Guard
Five Hundred Years After
The Viscount of Adrilankha (also in multiple volumes)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
tphile
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:03:51 GMT, Gene Ward Smith <g...@chewbacca.org>
> wrote:
>
> >Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
> >news:thuup352etv3htf7r...@news.rcn.com:
>
> >> The Count of Monte Cristo
>
> >In place of The Three Musketeers? I don't think so.
>
> I do. It's a better novel.
>
The trouble with these kinds of books is that action
like swordplay and kung fu work better on stage and screen
than on the printed page
> >> The Hobbit
>
> >In place of LOTR? Rank heresy!!
>
> So I'm a heretic.
>
The Hobbit and LoTR should be regarded as a complete
set. The Baggins Family Saga. One includes the other
tphile
Jim Henry
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
I've read 16 books from their list, and 17 books from yours;
I enjoyed almost all of the ones I've read (except _1984_
and _Wuthering Heights_, and parts of _Stranger in a
Strange Land_), but not many from either list would
be on my top 30.
> The Bible
I read all the Protestant canon when I was in high school,
and finally finished the deuterocanon last year.
Not sure I would put the Bible as a whole on a list like
this; the Gospels, sure, and Job, and probably several
other books, but I wouldn't insist that everyone read Leviticus...
These would be on my list:
> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
These I've read and enjoyed but probably wouldn't rank in my
top 30:
> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Her _Mansfield Park_ might be in my top 30.
> All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
> Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
> Middlemarch by George Eliot
> A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
> The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
> The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
>David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Bleak House would be in my top 30, and *maybe*
David Copperfield. I enjoyed all of his novels I've
read (even _The Old Curiosity Shop_), and many
of them would be in my top 100.
Read but not much enjoyed:
> 1984 by George Orwell
Important, but not enjoyable; I wouldn't read it again.
I prefer _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_ and his essays.
> Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Was obliged to read it in high school. Couldn't stand it.
Once in a while I think about trying it again; maybe I
just wasn't mature enough to appreciate it... but life is
short.
> Then mine:
> The Republic
Read. Not Plato at his best, I think, but then most
of Plato is more thought-provoking than enlightening
IMO.
> Candide
Enjoyed it, but I liked _Zadig_ better.
His "Le Taureau Blanc" might be on my top 30 short
stories.
> Pride and Prejudice
> Emma
Both very good.
> Eugene Onegin
I've been meaning to read this since I read
Douglas Hofstadter's discussion of it in
_Le Ton Beau de Marot_.
> Huckleberry Finn
That would be on my list, along with _Life on the Mississippi_ and
maybe _The Innocents Abroad_
or _Joan of Arc_. A lot of Twain would be on my
top 100.
> The Brothers Kazamazov
Enjoyed it, but not in my top 100.
> Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
That would be on my list, sure.
> The Time Machine
Good, but not on my list.
> Trent's Last Case
Probably on my list. One of the best mystery
novels ever.
> The Man Who was Thursday
Amazingly good, but I would rank _Manalive_
and _The Everlasting Man_ and _Orthodoxy_
even higher.
> Ulysses
Bounced off of it once; planning to give it another
try before I trade it in.
> Brave New World
Like _1984_, it's important but not much fun.
> Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
Who edited these?
If I were pressed to put a particular poetry anthology
on my list, I might hesitantly name _The Best Loved Poems
of the American People_, knowing that people are going
to laugh at me if I do. There's probably no single poet whose
complete poems I would put on my list; if I were
going to list one long poem it would be "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner".
> Animal Farm
Good, but not on my list. (You can tell I'm not fond
of dystopias.)
> Perelandra
> That Hideous Strength
Perelandra, maybe, but not THS.
> The Lord of the Rings
Agreed.
> Stranger in a Strange Land
I would have The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
in my top 30, and several of his juveniles in the top 100.
But *definitely* not _Stranger_.
> A Case of Conscience
Good, maybe top 100, but not top 30, I reckon.
I've read 23 of LWE's list, and agree with his list
more than either of the above.
Let's see, I've listed 14 so far (counting "a subset of the
books of the Bible" as one).
What else would I add?
- Little, Big by John Crowley
- Declare by Tim Powers
- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
- Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell [though The Silver Stallion
from LWE's list is also very good]
- any collection of the Silver John stories by Manly Wade Wellman (Who
Fears the Devil?, John the Balladeer, or Owls Hoot in the Daytime; the
latter two are identical, the first is a subset of the earlier and
better stories)
- The Dying Earth by Jack Vance [and probably lots of
other Vance but I'm trying to limit myself to one per
author here, except Twain and Chesterton]
- The Phoenix and the Mirror by Avram Davidson
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
- The Scar by China Mieville
- The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock
- The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
- Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
- Herodotus's Histories
- The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G Finney
- Stardust by Neil Gaiman
- Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
There are favorite authors who aren't listed here because
they're best at short stories and I can't pick out a specific
collection - e.g. Lord Dunsany, Theodore Sturgeon, or Howard Waldrop.
Or because their oeuvre as a whole is important to me but I
can't rank any specific book as high as the 30 above - Hilaire Belloc
or Kim Stanley Robinson or Steven Brust. And I would put
my favorites by Shakespeare or Moliere or Shaw on a
list of favorite short fiction rather than favorite books;
most plays seem to be novelette to novella length.
As for Dorothy's question,
> So, as I approach the age where "before I die" has some
> relevance, what would I like to read before I die? Well, I'd
> like to see Girl Genius to its conclusion. And Connie Willis's
> next time travel story, the one about Pearl Harbor. Though it
> will probably make me cry, as a number of hers do.
I would also very much like to read Connie Willis' _All Clear_
before I die; and the remainder of Brust's Vlad Taltos books,
and Latro's adventures in Phoenicia or wherever he
went after he left Egypt.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
Mike Schilling
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:JvFHz...@kithrup.com...
Sure. And the volume names are in similar styles:
The Paths of the Dead
The Lord of Castle Black
Sethra Lavode
vs (the usual names for the 3-volume editions)
The Vicomte de Bragelonne
Lousie de Lavalliere
The Man in the Iron Mask
I told Brust to make "Sethra Lavode" the second volume and call the third
one "The Lyorn in the Bronze Vambraces", but does he listen?
Dorothy J Heydt
Jim Henry <jimhen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
>
>Who edited these?
"Illustrated" is the relevant term. James Thurber. OK, he wrote
the _Fables_ too. I bet you've seen "The Unicorn in the Garden;"
that's one of them.
Bill Snyder
Oh, most of the Victorians and Edwardians definitely had a very
different attitude toward it from the modern one. Brit junior
officers used to toast "A bloody war and a sickly season" -- i.e.,
let's have plenty of gaps in the ranks to be promoted into. That's
partly a reflection of the fact that for most of a century the usual
war wasn't very bloody by our standards.
The Franco-Prussian thing should have provided some clues about what
was coming, but most Europeans managed to dodge them, and probably
hadn't even heard of Pickett's Charge. Kipling's autobiography makes
it clear that the Second Boer War, at the turn of the century,
actually gave the up-and-coming generation of British officers the
notion that future wars would be prosecuted by mounted infantry,
exchanging carefully-aimed rifle shots at 500 yards or so.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote in
>news:6stup356q1ok5lbdh...@news.rcn.com:
>
>>>Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
>>>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
>>>Haddon
>>>The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
>>>The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
>>
>> What? What are _these_ doing here?
>>
>
>A question you don't ask about The Prophet, for some reason.
Ok, what *is* the Rod McKuen of philosophy doing in there?
Dorothy J Heydt
As I understand it, he wanted to use "The Sorceress of Dzur
Mountain" but the publishers convinced him that neither the
readers asking for the book, nor the booksellers trying to find
it, would be able to spell "Dzur."
Gene Ward Smith
801e-4116-83c...@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
>
> These I've read and enjoyed but probably wouldn't rank in my
> top 30:
>
>> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
>
> Her _Mansfield Park_ might be in my top 30.
Arrg. Jane Eyre rated over Jane Austen!
>> The Republic
>
> Read. Not Plato at his best, I think, but then most
> of Plato is more thought-provoking than enlightening
> IMO.
How evil would Ayn Rand have been if she had been a real
genius instead of a wannabe? But there's much more, and
better, things in it than his somewhat looney ideas about
political and social policy. An amazing experience to read it,
though it's stronger on dialog than plot.
>> Candide
>
> Enjoyed it, but I liked _Zadig_ better.
Huh. Interesting choice.
>> Eugene Onegin
>
> I've been meaning to read this since I read
> Douglas Hofstadter's discussion of it in
> _Le Ton Beau de Marot_.
Hofstadter is one of Pushkin's translators, but how good I
don't know. I do know some others out there are good.
>> The Brothers Kazamazov
>
> Enjoyed it, but not in my top 100.
I'm just a sucker for these moral/philsopical explorations.
>> Trent's Last Case
>
> Probably on my list. One of the best mystery
> novels ever.
Along with being the ultimate sendup of the genre before most
of it was written.
>> The Man Who was Thursday
>
> Amazingly good, but I would rank _Manalive_
> and _The Everlasting Man_ and _Orthodoxy_
> even higher.
I was sticking to fiction. Manalive better? Really?
>> Ulysses
>
> Bounced off of it once; planning to give it another
> try before I trade it in.
It's not what happens, it's how it gets described. Quite
amazing.
>> Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
>
> Who edited these?
It's Thurber, and really two different books under one cover.
Fables for Our Time is the one I was aiming for.
> - Declare by Tim Powers
Huh. I thought about Anubis Gates.
> - The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock
I may be warped, but what about The Elfin Ship?
> - Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
You must be kidding.
> - Herodotus's Histories
Probably these don't count as fiction.
> Or because their oeuvre as a whole is important to me but I
> can't rank any specific book as high as the 30 above -
Hilaire Belloc
For Belloc I'd go for Bad Child's Book of Beasts/More Beasts
for Worse Children.
> or Kim Stanley Robinson or Steven Brust.
I'd pick To Reign in Hell for Brust and leave Robinson off.
Michael S. Schiffer
news:JvFnq...@kithrup.com:
> In article <4XPnj.1088$R84...@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net>,
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>...
>>I told Brust to make "Sethra Lavode" the second volume and call
>>the third one "The Lyorn in the Bronze Vambraces", but does he
>>listen?
> As I understand it, he wanted to use "The Sorceress of Dzur
> Mountain" but the publishers convinced him that neither the
> readers asking for the book, nor the booksellers trying to find
> it, would be able to spell "Dzur."
Of course, two years later, _Dzur_ came out from the same publisher,
so go figure. Different editor, maybe? Or maybe they figured that
the main audience of _Dzur_ were existing fans of the Vlad Taltos
series, while _Sethra Lavode_ was expected to bring in new readers.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Gene Ward Smith
news:l6jvp3pbhfgjav3sn...@4ax.com:
> The Franco-Prussian thing should have provided some clues
about what
> was coming, but most Europeans managed to dodge them, and
probably
> hadn't even heard of Pickett's Charge.
The US Civil War was a huge clue already, and European
military observers noted it with interest. But the lesson
didn't seem to penetrate.
Gene Ward Smith
>>A question you don't ask about The Prophet, for some reason.
>
> Ok, what *is* the Rod McKuen of philosophy doing in there?
It annoyed me into starting this thread.
Andrew Wheeler
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
>
> To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I'd put this on the "read before you turn 20" list, with _A Separate
Peace_ and all of Vonnegut and Hesse. If you don't read it by then, you
can die without it quite happily.
> The Bible
If the *King James* Bible was specified, I might agree.
> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
It's not a trilogy. And, as much as I like it, I'm not sure it's one of
the thirty best of all time.
> 1984 by George Orwell
Yes. Absolutely.
> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Why? Because it's short, and has been made into many films of varying
worth? There are at least five better Dickens books than this.
> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I was forced to read it three times for classes. I've never warmed to
it, and I doubt I ever will.
> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I can never remember if I've read it. (Which says something, either
about the book or about the culture.)
> All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
I suppose so. It's another one for the "before 20" list, though.
> His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
This may be good, but it doesn't belong on such a list.
> Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Not a clue.
> The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Reasonable.
> The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Makes sense.
> The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
> Haddon
This is a wonderful novel -- one of the best of the past several decades
-- but it's hubris to put anything this new (especially by a writer who
hasn't done anything else at that level) on a life-list.
> Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
The ending seemed to me as if the 20th century, and modernity in
general, was faintly dawning, somewhere not too far away -- and if that
meant all of these people would have their lives utterly changed, that
was fine with me, since the good people were useless and the bad were
hideous.
> Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
I'm a fan, but it doesn't belong here.
> Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I've managed to escape it thus far.
> The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
If they can't even spell the author's last name correctly, why should we
believe them? (It's "Grahame.") Too lightweight.
> Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Oh god no.
> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
OK, but I'd add _Bleak House_, too. And if I had only one Dickens, it
wouldn't be this.
> The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
> The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Someone has too close an eye on the bestseller lists of last Tuesday.
> The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
I'd say it's the opposite -- anyone who has enjoyed _The Prophet_ should
not be allowed to die, but be tortured eternally. But that would be
excessive.
> David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ah, more of the *popular* Dickens books. Also good.
> The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
See _The Prophet_, above.
> The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Absolutely.
> Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Too new, too minor, too sucky.
> Middlemarch by George Eliot
I don't love it, but it is big and importanrt.
> The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Too new.
> A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Only if it has the final chapter.
> A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Yes
> Then mine:
>
> The Republic
> Paradise Lost
> Candide
> Tom Jones
> Pride and Prejudice
> Emma
> The Three Musketeers
> Eugene Onegin
> Huckleberry Finn
> War and Peace
> The Brothers Kazamazov
> Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
> The Time Machine
> Lord Jim
> Zuleika Dobson
> Trent's Last Case
> The Man Who was Thursday
> Ulysses
> Brave New World
> The Grapes of Wrath
> Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
> Animal Farm
> Perelandra
> That Hideous Strength
> The Lord of the Rings
> The Last of the Wine
> Stranger in a Strange Land
> A Case of Conscience
> Pale Fire
> In Cold Blood
A generally better list, though you've got some major fluff too -- it's
just that your fluff is *old* fluff, possibly because you haven't read
the new stuff.
--
Andrew Wheeler
reader of stuff
Gene Ward Smith
news:1ibhpjx.21kqjv1xrgecmN%acwh...@optonline.net:
> A generally better list, though you've got some major fluff too -- it's
> just that your fluff is *old* fluff, possibly because you haven't read
> the new stuff.
>
So what was the major fluff? Zuleika Dobson? Stranger?
Taki Kogoma
allegedly proclaimed to rec.arts.sf.written:
That thing in America? Fought by amateurs and militia, not *real*
(i.e. european professional) soldiers.
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
Mike Schilling
That sounds like a difficult thing of which to convince the author of
_Jhereg_, _Yendi_, and _Teckla_ (whose latest book is called _Dzur_.)
Mike Schilling
>
>> The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
> I'd say it's the opposite -- anyone who has enjoyed _The Prophet_
> should not be allowed to die, but be tortured eternally. But that
> would be excessive.
Where I'd say that anyone who's read it has suffered enough.
Gene Ward Smith
news:slrnfpvpc9...@chishio.swcp.com:
>> The US Civil War was a huge clue already, and European
>> military observers noted it with interest. But the lesson
>> didn't seem to penetrate.
>
> That thing in America? Fought by amateurs and militia, not *real*
> (i.e. european professional) soldiers.
>
As I said, a clue.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Ah, okay.
I had to ask because originally what we now call "The Three
Musketeers" was two volumes, _The Three Musketeers_ and _The Four
Musketeers_, so I wasn't sure which sequel(s) you were including.
tkma...@yahoo.co.uk
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
>
lose respect for literature nobel prize, back when I was in teens.
Haven't since cared to pick up a book just because cover said author is
a nobel laureate - though I've read several & liked too, it's never
because of nobel stamp.
> The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
Once I shared a room with someone who liked to keep it - I think for
show, that he has great taste - I never saw him reading it but it was
always at a prominent place visible to visitors. I tried reading - could
never go beyond first few pages.
> The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
> Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I liked both these, but on an all time list? No way.
> A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Wasn't this about a political prisoner in Soviet Union days - sent to a
labor camp in Siberia?
> The Republic
OK - I am not very learned in Greek classics - tried only a few Platos &
Aristotles. But if I have to put something from that era - at least for
non-western audiences, I would go for Apology; at least it was fun to
read, & demystified Socrates.
> War and Peace
I assume you are familiar with period history of Russia. I found it way
too tedious. And any book so thick should probably be disqualified from
all time lists :)
> Stranger in a Strange Land
Huh - on an all time list?
I know there tend to be varying opinions about Ayn Rand, but Atlas
Shrugged is probably among the, if not the, fastest moving western books
in Bombay book shops. And among the most bootlegged - according to some,
the ultimate test of a book's popularity. Even the urchins that can
afford to stock may be just a dozen books every morning & must clear the
entire stock by afternoon selling them a signal tend to stock it - it
moves that fast. And that for an author who is way too critical of
India, & ignorant too! If that is not a test for a classic, I don't know
what is. I will unhesitatingly put it on the list. And yes, I'm a fan.
Jon Schild
Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
>
> To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
> The Bible
> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
> 1984 by George Orwell
> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
> All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
> His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
> Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
> The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
> The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
> The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
> Haddon
> Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
> Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
> Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
> The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
> Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
> The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
> The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
> The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
> David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
> The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
> The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
> Life of Pi by Yann Martel
> Middlemarch by George Eliot
> The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
> A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
> A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
>
> Stranger in a Strange Land
> A Case of Conscience
> Pale Fire
> In Cold Blood
>
I've read more of their list than yours
Theirs
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
yours
Candide
The Time Machine
Brave New World
Animal Farm
The Lord of the Rings
Stranger in a Strange Land
I found Life of Pi to be incredibly slow, but the ending made it
worthwhile. The Curious Incident was fascinating. Candide was boring and
stupid. I really liked all the others.
--
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
Michael S. Schiffer
>...
> I know there tend to be varying opinions about Ayn Rand, but
> Atlas Shrugged is probably among the, if not the, fastest moving
> western books in Bombay book shops. And among the most
> bootlegged - according to some, the ultimate test of a book's
> popularity. Even the urchins that can afford to stock may be
> just a dozen books every morning & must clear the entire stock
> by afternoon selling them a signal tend to stock it - it moves
> that fast. And that for an author who is way too critical of
> India, & ignorant too! If that is not a test for a classic, I
> don't know what is. I will unhesitatingly put it on the list.
> And yes, I'm a fan.
Out of curiosity: given its popularity, has Bollywood made an
adaptation of the novel?
Mike
Gene Ward Smith
>> The Republic
> OK - I am not very learned in Greek classics - tried only a few Platos
&
> Aristotles. But if I have to put something from that era - at least for
> non-western audiences, I would go for Apology; at least it was fun to
> read, & demystified Socrates.
The best one purely as literature, and hence the most fun to read, is
Symposium. I didn't think it was long enough to count as a book.
> I know there tend to be varying opinions about Ayn Rand, but Atlas
> Shrugged is probably among the, if not the, fastest moving western
books
> in Bombay book shops.
One problem with it is that it's a novel of ideas where the ideas are
looney tunes.
Gene Ward Smith
> Candide was boring and
> stupid.
I can think of various ways of criticizing Voltaire, but "stupid" does not
spring to mind. What did you think of Gulliver's Travel's, by the way,
another ironic novel of ideas by an 18th century intellectual? Or did you
ever happen to read Tristram Shandy, by Sterne? I would say intelligence
seems more in evidence in these examples of 18th century literature than
almost anything written these days; those were different times, but not
stupider ones. These days, of course, Ayn Rand is an intelletual.
Kurt Busiek
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
What I've read:
> To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Good book.
> The Bible
Foo.
> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
Great opening act.
> 1984 by George Orwell
Middling good.
> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Powerful.
> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
One of my all-time favorite novels
> His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
First book's real good, second's pretty good, third's ehh.
> The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Powerful.
> Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Return of the Native beats it.
> Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Fun.
> The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Demented fun.
> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Ehh. Dickens could write potboilers, but I prefer Trollope.
> The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Wonderful book
> Middlemarch by George Eliot
Not bad.
There's a lot I wouldn't put on such a list, but then, I don't think I
can name a single book I think everyone should read, so that kind of
defeats the purpose.
> Then mine:
>
> Paradise Lost
Powerful imagery.
> Tom Jones
Fun.
> Pride and Prejudice
As above, great.
> Emma
Betwen the two, I'm a P&Per; I like Sense & Sensibility more than Emma.
But it's good.
> The Three Musketeers
Great fun
> Huckleberry Finn
Great work
> Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
Delightful
> The Time Machine
Functional, but I didn't read it until I'd read so much else that I
didn't get the full effect, I'm sure.
> Lord Jim
I may not have read this; I'm read some Conrad, but can't remember
anything about them.
> Brave New World
Didn't do much for me
> The Grapes of Wrath
Powerful, well-delivered stuff
> Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
Anything Thurber is worthwhile
> Animal Farm
Good
> Perelandra
> That Hideous Strength
Didn't do a whole lot for me, but I remember some hallucinatory writing
that worked very well.
> The Lord of the Rings
As above.
> Stranger in a Strange Land
Foo. Read it once, hated it. Read it later to find out what I must
have missed the first time, hated it. Tried to read the uncut version,
couldn't finish it. And I like Heinlein a lot; I just can't stand this
one.
***
So let's see, what would be on my list, if I had a list, which I
wouldn't. Avoiding most of what's been on other people's lists, except
for those I'm too attached to to relinquish...
The Thirteen Clocks, Thurber
Trustee from the Toolroom, Nevil Shute
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis
The Great Santini, Pat Conroy
Half Magic, Edward Eager
Citizen of the Galaxy, Heinlein
The Maltese Falcon, Hammett
The Last Good Kiss, Crumley
The Stand (the uncut version), King
The Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander
The Dark is Rising (the novel, not the whole series), Susan Cooper
Pride and Prejudice, Austen
Eight Million Ways to Die, Lawrence Block
The Three Musketeers, Dumas
The Stars My Destination, Bester
Superfolks, Robert Mayer
...
Nah, that's as far as I can go. The classics feel so dutiful, anything
else seems like an "I liked it" list. I can list hundreds of books I'm
glad I read before I died; I can't make acase that anyone else has to
read any of 'em, and that just tangles me up...
kdb
tkma...@yahoo.co.uk
> tkma...@yahoo.co.uk wrote in news:fnoukb$rku$1...@aioe.org:
>
>>> The Republic
>> OK - I am not very learned in Greek classics - tried only a few Platos
> &
>> Aristotles. But if I have to put something from that era - at least for
>> non-western audiences, I would go for Apology; at least it was fun to
>> read, & demystified Socrates.
>
> The best one purely as literature, and hence the most fun to read, is
> Symposium. I didn't think it was long enough to count as a book.
I'd not read that one - picked up Gutenberg version just now
<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1600>
Thanks.
>> I know there tend to be varying opinions about Ayn Rand, but Atlas
>> Shrugged is probably among the, if not the, fastest moving western
> books
>> in Bombay book shops.
>
> One problem with it is that it's a novel of ideas where the ideas are
> looney tunes.
Depends on what stage of life you are & where you grew up. I didn't
realize just how often the society wanted me to feel guilty for
something that should not have been my guilt - till I read it. At the
very least, it made me question a lot of social assumptions.
Yes - it makes a different impact as you grow older, & I no longer see
as many things in it as I did when I was younger. But it saved me so
much pain growing up, & for that I will always be indebted to Rand.
Incidentally, & without realizing it, she was actually describing (or
rather, forecasting) the Indira Gandhi's India rather than an American
dystopia - ok, dramatized, but still not so unreal. That was the first
thing that hit me when I first read it. We are still throwing out
vestiges of that era - bit by small bit.
On another note - everyone doesn't like this book even here. My brother,
for one, cannot stand it. But either way, the response is intense.
tkma...@yahoo.co.uk
None that I'm aware of.
But there is at least one that appears to be an adaptation of
Fountainhead - "Naach" (literally, "Dance"). But Roark is replaced with
a woman protagonist, & she is a dancer - not an architect. And some of
the intensity of book is gone - may be to better conform with director's
tastes, or to make it more palatable to local audiences - don't know.
Not my favorite movie, but some parts are very good. Uncredited to Rand,
if IMDB entry is to be believed:
<http://imdb.com/title/tt0433605/>
I don't recall actual credits, though. My comment is based on movie's
contents.
Gene Ward Smith
>> One problem with it is that it's a novel of ideas where the ideas are
>> looney tunes.
>
> Depends on what stage of life you are & where you grew up.
No, it's quite simply Kook City. It ignores how economies produce goods in
the real world. In fact, you can ask the same questions as to how they
lived in Galt's Gulch as we were recently doing for Tolkien's elves, and
it's even more of a mystery. And like the elves, Randian supermen do not
reproduce. There is no room for children in her theories or in her books.
tphile
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>
> First theirs:
> The Bible
I kinda wonder why this one is on so many lists
If there is an Afterlife, you can read it then (all eternity even)
If not then why bother?
I should also think even Hell is stocked with Gideon Bibles.
;-)
but seriously why not the Koran, I Ching, Torah and other
faiths instead?
If you are a christian then the bible is a given, so why not
see what the others have to say.
I would look forward to an afterlife if it also means all my favorite
authors
are still writing new stuff.
Like getting Zelazny to finish the Amber series.
and as for the "Books to read before you die" list
what about the ones that won't be allowed on the Heavenly Library
Shelves.
That would make for a more interesting list
Read Now or Never Afterlife
tphile
Gene Ward Smith
f10147...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> but seriously why not the Koran, I Ching, Torah and other
> faiths instead?
Torah is a part of the Bible, and I Ching is a weird divination tool. Maybe
you mean the Tao Te Ching? The Koran is poetic, if you like poetry about
people being tortured for being Unbelievers.
The Bible is a mixed bag, but there are a lot of things of literary
interest in it. Zhuangzi, or Chuang Tzu, or however you want to spell it is
absolutely wonderful, and I thought about putting it on my list, but I
wanted to avoid anything which is thought of as scripture. The Mahabharata
and Ramayana are a little out of control, but have a lot of interesting
stuff in them, which you may know about. The Book of Mormon has a problem
in that a pastiche of the Bible is a boring way to present its story.
Michael S. Schiffer
> Michael S. Schiffer wrote:
...
(Re _Atlas Shrugged_)
>> Out of curiosity: given its popularity, has Bollywood made an
>> adaptation of the novel?
> None that I'm aware of.
> But there is at least one that appears to be an adaptation of
> Fountainhead - "Naach" (literally, "Dance"). But Roark is
> replaced with a woman protagonist, & she is a dancer - not an
> architect. And some of the intensity of book is gone - may be to
> better conform with director's tastes, or to make it more
> palatable to local audiences - don't know. Not my favorite
> movie, but some parts are very good. Uncredited to Rand, if IMDB
> entry is to be believed:
><http://imdb.com/title/tt0433605/>
> I don't recall actual credits, though. My comment is based on
> movie's contents.
Thanks! (It would be interesting to see that and compare it to the
1949 Hollywood version.)
Mike
T Guy
> The Three Musketeers
> Twenty Years After
> The Vicomte de Bragelonne (one book, for all that it's published in multiple
> volumes.)
(T Guy):
I was going to say that I thought it was _Twenty Years On_ and _Thirty
Years On_, then cooled mine jets and checked on the wibbly-wobbly web.
Even more complicated than I thought, but I'd recommend that anyone
thinking of reading this trilogy or series glance here:
http://www.wjduquette.com/authors/adumas.html
before reading or even purchase.
T Guy
Will in New Haven
> tphile <tph...@cableone.net> wrote in news:914a862d-86f3-45eb-98f8-
The Bhagavad Ghita (sp) is one of the good parts of the Mahabharata
and makes an excellent stand-alone read.* And then you can argue
endlessly about whether god is really saying it is ok to kill people.
By the way, he was.
*Sort of like "The Tale of the Adopted Daugher" out of Time Enough for
Love.
Will in New Haven
--
Joseph Nebus
> Or did you ever happen to read Tristram Shandy, by Sterne?
I've been meaning to get around to that one, but somehow never do.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This fact may make reading it redundant.
Mike Schilling
It's pretty accurate, though Will implies that the Collier edition is
peculiar in being four volumes rather than three, whereas AFAICT the
two configurations are equally common.
>
> before reading or even purchase.
If you want to purchase, go with the Oxford Classic edition.
Brett Paul Dunbar
Ward Smith <ge...@chewbacca.org> writes
>Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
>list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
>anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
I'm commenting on all the ones I have read.
>
>First theirs:
>
>To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Suburb, I wish she wanted to write more. BBC big read 6.
>The Bible
Some interesting bits, lots of crap, could do with editing.
>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
Great, topped the BBC big read 100 to no one's surprise, the big high
street bookies had stopped taking bets on it winning months before the
deadline.
>1984 by George Orwell
Bleak but great. Big read 8.
>A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Dickens actually doing good characterisation, something I find very
important so normally don't like Dickens. Big read 47.
>Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
>Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Number 2 in the BBC big read 100. A perfectly constructed romantic
comedy, excellent.
>All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Really enjoyed. Big read 3.
>Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
First World War novel, OK I suppose. Big read 13.
>The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
>The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark
>Haddon
Really gets Asperger's. Excellent. I have tried his next novel, didn't
care much for the characters.
>Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
>Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Fun. Big read 7
>Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
>The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
When I finally read it a few years ago I wasn't impressed. Totally
inconsistency ruining my suspension of disbelief. For example he has
Toad imprisoned for stealing a car, so clearly human sized, then he
escapes from hidden in an apron pocket, so clearly toad sized. I don't
even mind size changes but it needs an in-story explanation. Big read
16.
>Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
>Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Better than most Dickens. Big read 17.
>The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
>The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
>The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
>David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Thought it was a bit dull. Pacing problems too few plot arcs end in the
earlier part of the story and too much wraps up at the end. Big read 34.
>The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Pure wish fulfillment. Most Mary Sues have more conflict. where's the
plot? Big read 94.
>The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
>Life of Pi by Yann Martel
>Middlemarch by George Eliot
>The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
>A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Bleak, interesting, good.
>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
>
>Then mine:
>
>The Republic
>Paradise Lost
>Candide
>Tom Jones
>Pride and Prejudice
Commented above.
>Emma
Not quite as good, still excellent. Big read 40.
>The Three Musketeers
>Eugene Onegin
>Huckleberry Finn
>War and Peace
>The Brothers Kazamazov
>Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
Excellent, annotated version very enlightening. Big read 30.
>The Time Machine
>Lord Jim
>Zuleika Dobson
>Trent's Last Case
>The Man Who was Thursday
>Ulysses
>Brave New World
Good bleak, not as good as the Orwells. Big read 87.
>The Grapes of Wrath
>Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated
>Animal Farm
Good, bleak. Big read 46.
>Perelandra
>That Hideous Strength
>The Lord of the Rings
Commented above.
>The Last of the Wine
>Stranger in a Strange Land
>A Case of Conscience
>Pale Fire
>In Cold Blood
One book per author.
Wealth Of Nations Adam Smith
Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkein
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon
Wyrd Sisters Terry Pratchett
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
1984 George Orwell
Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
Curse of Chalion Lois McMaster Bujold
His Dark Materials Phillip Pullman
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban JK Rowling
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stephenson
Gerald's Game Stephen King
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
One for the Money Janet Evanovich
The Witches Roald Dahl
Ash Mary Gentle
Stardust Neil Gaiman
1984 George Orwell
The Godfather Mario Puzo
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge
2001: A Space Odyssey Sir Arthur C Clarke
Complete Robot Isaac Asimov
Accelerando Charles Stross
--
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/
Brett Paul Dunbar
To email me, use reply-to address
Michael S. Schiffer
> Incidentally, & without realizing it, she was actually
> describing (or rather, forecasting) the Indira Gandhi's India
> rather than an American dystopia - ok, dramatized, but still not
> so unreal. That was the first thing that hit me when I first
> read it. We are still throwing out vestiges of that era - bit by
> small bit.
That does jibe with my impression of some of the older Bollywood
movies I've seen. Notably "Mother India" and "Do Bigha Zameen"/"Two
Acres of Land", where any attempt to better oneself by migrating or
starting a business is pretty much doomed, anyone engaged in
moneylending or larger scale entrepreneurship is a villain, and the
moral ideal seems to be to be a subsistence farmer-- and to for
goodness sake stay in the village in which you were born!
(A friend tells me that there was a movie last year, "Guru" with
Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, which featured a heroic captain
of industry. Though she notes that there's so little attention paid
to what he actually does in the business that when he's hauled before
a judge for violations of business law, the audience has no idea of
whether he's really guilty, or whether the laws in question are
reasonable or abusive.)
Mike
Dorothy J Heydt
tphile <tph...@cableone.net> wrote:
>On Jan 29, 5:13=A0am, Gene Ward Smith <g...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
>> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
>> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
>>
>> First theirs:
>
>> The Bible
>
>I kinda wonder why this one is on so many lists
Because the Bible in general, and the KJV in particular, have had
an immense influence on Western culture and English literature
respectively.
>but seriously why not the Koran, I Ching, Torah and other
>faiths instead?
How about 'in addition to'?
Though note that the I Ching is a fortunetelling document, and
the Torah is the first five books of the Bible.
I was brought up by atheists, and never read any of the Bible
till I encountered a chunk of the KJV Exodus in a collection of
assorted literature in seventh grade. (No, it wasn't a class
assignment: it was sitting in the bookshelf.) My first
impression was that every sentence began with "And".
A little later, in eleventh grade, I had an English teacher who
kept a collection of the world's religious books in a bookcase in
his room. I read the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran, something on
Taoism, more chunks of the Bible, and I forget what all else. It
was very educational.
A little later than that, at twenty-one, I became a Catholic. My
atheist parents were annoyed.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Rather than reading that, read tnh's "God and I," which gives a
quick summary.
http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html
Chris Thompson
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>>>Zuleika Dobson
>
>The latter is a silly trifle by Max Beerbohm about the most beautiful girl
>in the world. Fun, but hardly essential.
Well, I see that someone had _The Princess Bride_ on their list. I think
this belongs in the same category. More than a "trifle", but no, not really
reasonable to think of as "essential".
--
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1 [at] cam.ac.uk
Dorothy J Heydt
Brett Paul Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
>
Au contraire: to the great surprise and dismay of a lot of lit'ry
critics, whose major objection to it seems to be that it was Not
Invented Here, that it wasn't written by one of their little
inbred circle.
T. A. Shippey describes their reaction in terms of an old music
hall sketch. The comedian comes out before the closed curtain,
in a single spotlight, and starts crawling around the floor as if
searching for something. The stooge comes out and asks, "What
are you doing?"
"I'm looking for a sixpence I dropped."
"Oh. Let me help."
They both crawl around for a while, finding nothing. Finally the
stooge says, "Where did you drop it?"
The comedian gets up, walks to the other end of the stage, and
says, "Around here somewhere."
"Well, then, WHY ARE YOU SEARCHING OVER HERE?"
The comedian answers, walking back to the spotlight, "Because
that's where the light is."
Shippey summarizes: "The light is the small, closed circle of
the literary writers of the twentieth century, all reading each
other and writing for each other. I'm not sure what the sixpence
is, but whatever it is, Tolkien was out there in the dark,
looking for it."
Will in New Haven
> In article <HxLnj.871$0o7....@newssvr13.news.prodigy.net>,
> Mike Schilling <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>
> >>>Zuleika Dobson
>
> >The latter is a silly trifle by Max Beerbohm about the most beautiful girl
> >in the world. Fun, but hardly essential.
>
> Well, I see that someone had _The Princess Bride_ on their list. I think
> this belongs in the same category. More than a "trifle", but no, not really
> reasonable to think of as "essential".
What's essential in this context? Doing these lists, in fact, is fun
but not essential. Many of the books on all these lists are books that
make me wish I had never wasted the time to read them. While _The
Princess Bride_ didn't make my list, the time I took to read it was a
good part of my life. I didn't learn anything from it, I guess, but
what do people think they learn from most of these books?
Fun is good. I would gladly have missed reading four or five of the
books on that first list, of the ones that I read, rather than not
have read the "interview" between Brust and Paarfi at the end of _Five
Hundred Years After_
Will in New Haven
--
>
William Hyde
> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote innews:l6jvp3pbhfgjav3sn...@4ax.com:
>
>
>
> > The Franco-Prussian thing should have provided some clues
> about what
> > was coming, but most Europeans managed to dodge them, and
> probably
> > hadn't even heard of Pickett's Charge.
>
> The US Civil War was a huge clue already, and European
> military observers noted it with interest. But the lesson
> didn't seem to penetrate.
I think it did, with some. While everyone else was saying
they'd be in the opposing capital by Christmas, Kitchener
stunned the British cabinet by saying they should prepare for
a war of at least three years.
William Hyde
William Hyde
> In article <6stup356q1ok5lbdhqh65q39d57l9kp...@news.rcn.com>,
> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>
> >>Eugene Onegin
> >>Zuleika Dobson
>
> >What are these? I don't recognize them.
>
> Onegin: a novel in verse by Alexandr Pushkin, turned into an
> opera by Tschaikowsky, said to be very good.
> Zuleika: [...]
Mentioned
> in _To Say Nothing of the Dog_, else I never would have heard of
> it either.
I found out about this when reading David' Cecil's biography
of Beerbohm. I had no particular interest in Max, but Cecil's
biography of Melbourne was so amazingly good that I decided I'd read
any of his books. And I didn't regret it. The
Beerbohm biography was very fine.
I think I liked Zuleika Dobson more than you did, but not
a huge amount more.
William Hyde
Brett Paul Dunbar
<djh...@kithrup.com> writes
>In article <m4CWpMau...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk>,
>Brett Paul Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
>>
>>Great, topped the BBC big read 100 to no one's surprise...
>
>Au contraire: to the great surprise and dismay of a lot of lit'ry
>critics, whose major objection to it seems to be that it was Not
>Invented Here, that it wasn't written by one of their little
>inbred circle.
Dismay and a fair quantity of complaints and occasional claims that it
was all due to the films [1], there was no real surprise. The bookies
had made it an overwhelming favourite to the point that they stopped
taking votes months before the voting closed. The fact that it had
easily won the earlier poll conducted by Waterstones was a bit of a clue
that it was likely to win. Indeed only Pride and Prejudice was even
remotely close almost matching LOTR with women while losing badly with
men.
[1] Notably from Aussie rentagob Germaine Greer, who has never read
it and mostly seems to object on the grounds that some of the
fandom was a bit silly.
Dorothy J Heydt
William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I think I liked Zuleika Dobson more than you did, but not
>a huge amount more.
Well, it's a farce. "Beautiful woman, without giving anybody any
encouragement whatever, just by standing there being beautiful,
causes every undergraduate in Oxford to commit simultaneous
suicide. Then she goes home again." I mean, really.....
David Tate
> Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote
>
> >> The Man Who was Thursday
> > Amazingly good, but I would rank _Manalive_
> > and _The Everlasting Man_ and _Orthodoxy_
> > even higher.
> I was sticking to fiction. Manalive better? Really?
I think so too. I'm a huge Chesterton fan, fiction and nonfiction
both, and _Manalive_ is my favorite of his long works for sure, and
better than all but the best two or three of his short works. IMHO.
And, hands down, it's the most underappreciated of his works. I was
delighted by Jim's comment, since I'm practically the only person I
know who has ever read _Manalive_.
David Tate
Dorothy J Heydt
Brett Paul Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <JvGsJ...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
><djh...@kithrup.com> writes
>>In article <m4CWpMau...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk>,
>>Brett Paul Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
>>>
>>>Great, topped the BBC big read 100 to no one's surprise...
>>
>>Au contraire: to the great surprise and dismay of a lot of lit'ry
>>critics, whose major objection to it seems to be that it was Not
>>Invented Here, that it wasn't written by one of their little
>>inbred circle.
>
>Dismay and a fair quantity of complaints and occasional claims that it
>was all due to the films [1], there was no real surprise. The bookies
>had made it an overwhelming favourite to the point that they stopped
>taking votes months before the voting closed. The fact that it had
>easily won the earlier poll conducted by Waterstones was a bit of a clue
>that it was likely to win. Indeed only Pride and Prejudice was even
>remotely close almost matching LOTR with women while losing badly with
>men.
>
>[1] Notably from Aussie rentagob Germaine Greer, who has never read
> it and mostly seems to object on the grounds that some of the
> fandom was a bit silly.
Well, Shippey quotes Greer as saying "It has been my nightmare that
Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the
twentieth century. The bad dream has come true ... The books
that come in Tolkien's train are more or less what you would
expect; flight from reality is their dominating characteristic."
But it was not Greer but someone else (quoted by Susan Jeffreys
of the Sunday Times) who on learning of the BBC/Waterstone poll
said, "Oh hell! Has it? Oh my God. Dear oh dear. Dear oh dear
oh dear."
Now, then, what's a gob in the context of your note above?
(I only know it as archaic US slang for a sailor.)
Mike Schilling
> In article
> <0f71250d-af98-4497...@e32g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think I liked Zuleika Dobson more than you did, but not
>> a huge amount more.
>
> Well, it's a farce. "Beautiful woman, without giving anybody any
> encouragement whatever, just by standing there being beautiful,
> causes every undergraduate in Oxford to commit simultaneous
> suicide. Then she goes home again." I mean, really.....
Home? I thought she went on to Cambridge.
Kurt Busiek
> In article <I7itpsdu...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk>,
> Brett Paul Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> [1] Notably from Aussie rentagob Germaine Greer, who has never read
>
> Now, then, what's a gob in the context of your note above?
>
> (I only know it as archaic US slang for a sailor.)
It's possible you've heard or seen the term "gobstopper" as well,
particularly if you've read CHARLIE AND THECHOCOLATE FACTORY.
In this context, "gob" means "mouth," and a rentagob is resumably
someone you can easily get to say something quippy or controversial on
TV.
kdb
lal_truckee
ever die? OK
1. Collect, recondition, learn original languages, and read the Library
of Alexandria.
2. Now I'm tired, so I'll read the Library of Congress sitting by a warm
fire with a single malt at hand.
3. By this time the Library of Trantor should be ready for my third good
read...
Gene Ward Smith
97581b...@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
> http://www.wjduquette.com/authors/adumas.html
Wow, this explains the problems I had with Iron Mask!
Gene Ward Smith
@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk:
> Dismay and a fair quantity of complaints and occasional claims that it
> was all due to the films [1], there was no real surprise.
Of course, why someone should even care seeing that Feist for instance is
on the list is a question. It has a lot of the same flaws as the libraians
list, such as an overemphasis on recently pubished stuff. Pullman just aint
that good, but baby, he's recent. So #3 he he is. Then again, the German
version has Dan Brown's Angels and Demons as #19, so why even bother
complaining?
The good news is, no Khalil Gibran anywhere.
David Tate
> Having complained so bitterly about the British librarians
> list, I suppose I should give my own version, and invite
> anyone else to join in the Tp 30 fun.
OK. I'll define mine as "top 30 I'm glad I didn't die without having
read". Perhaps subtly different; perhaps not. (And the list of
"haven't gotten to them yet, but really ought to" is probably much
longer.) Also, restricting myself to fiction or dramatic works of
significant length; there are short stories, poetry, essays,
nonfiction, and short plays that would push things off this list.
In no particular order:
1. Watership Down
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. Huckleberry Finn
4. The Grapes of Wrath
5. Ecclesiastes (KJV) (yes, it's a cheat given my rules above)
6. Little, Big
7. Manalive
8. Book of the New Sun
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. Moby-Dick
11. The Lathe of Heaven
12. Bridge of Birds
13. Roadshow (in lieu of the series)
14. Lolita
15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
16. The Three Musketeers
17. The Name of the Rose
18. Dandelion Wine
19. The Real Inspector Hound
20. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
21. Shogun
22. Gulliver's Travels
23. The Demolished Man
24. Gaudy Night (in lieu of the Peter/Harriet subseries)
25. Lyonesse
26. The Wallet of Kai Lung
27. If on a winter's night a traveler...
28. Aubrey/Maturin (another cheat, but I can't leave it off, and one
could argue it's a single work)
29. The Importance of Being Earnest
30. Hamlet
Pretty light on classics, and heavy on SF. There's no one Rex Stout
or John D. MacDonald or Terry Pratchett book that stands out for me,
but their best-known series would go on the list if that were
allowed. Also short fiction from Borges, O. Henry, Saki, Chesterton,
Shirley Jackson, and others; poetry from Donne, Dickinson, Wallace
Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and others; essays by E.B. White, Chesterton,
Lewis Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Hooker, Neal Stephenson, and
others; short plays by Beckett, David Ives, Tom Stoppard, and others;
etc.
David Tate
Will in New Haven
Or Carlos Castaneda, although some of his prose, as read to me by
someone I couldn't just tell to shut up and get out of my room, was
rather good.
PV
>>"His dark materials" is not antireligious. Pullman himself is. *
>
>Based on reviews and interviews I've read, I would say they both
>are.
Maybe you should actually read the book before making that claim? *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.
PV
>>The Bible
>
>Hardly anyone reads all of it. I tried, but bogged down somewhere in
>the prophets -- Jeremiah, I think.
Plenty of people read all of it, and some actually get something out of the
experience (personally, I think reading the bible once is vital to
understanding our civilization). What's fascinating is that fundamentalists
often appear to have no actual familiarity with the book when asked
detailed questions.
>>His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
>
>I can't bring myself to want to read it, especially given how many
>people say the first book's great and then it goes to hell.
The thing you can't forget is that it is ultimately a children's book. That
said, I thought it was good throughout, and the ending was very satisfying,
if more than a little sad. Most of the criticism of this series has
absolutely nothing at all to do with the content, but with Pullman's
philosophy. "His Dark Materials" is not at all the kind of book that people
would like to think that atheists write (whatever that means).
>>The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
>
>I saw the movie. Don't suppose that counts.
Not really, no. Steinbeck has got to be read. *
Jim Henry
> Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote in news:134afc20-
> 801e-4116-83c4-a3593a1bc...@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
>
> >> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
>
> > top 30:
>
> >> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
>
>
> Arrg. Jane Eyre rated over Jane Austen!
Jane Austen is a better writer overall, but I don't think any single
one of her novels is quite as good as _Jane Eyre_. But they're
apples and oranges, stylistically. And maybe I'll change my mind
when I get around to rereading _Jane Eyre_; I read it for the first
time three or four years ago, and it blew me away.
_Villette_ has parts that annoy me greatly, but I still think it might
be in my top 100 (certainly most or all of Jane Austen's novels would
be).
I could barely finish _The Professor_.
> >> Candide
>
> > Enjoyed it, but I liked _Zadig_ better.
>
> Huh. Interesting choice.
Again, maybe I will change my mind when I reread them;
I've only read them once each.
> >> The Man Who was Thursday
>
> > Amazingly good, but I would rank _Manalive_
> > and _The Everlasting Man_ and _Orthodoxy_
> > even higher.
>
> I was sticking to fiction. Manalive better? Really?
Maybe just a little better, but yeah, I think so.
> > - Declare by Tim Powers
>
> Huh. I thought about Anubis Gates.
Most of his work is excellent. I thought about listing
_Last Call_ in my top 30 instead of _Declare_; it came
down to the fact that I've reread Declare more recently.
> > - The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock
>
> I may be warped, but what about The Elfin Ship?
Great fun, but not as good as his California novels IMO.
> > - Herodotus's Histories
>
> Probably these don't count as fiction.
Though there's a lot of fiction in it.
> > Or because their oeuvre as a whole is important to me but I
> > can't rank any specific book as high as the 30 above -
>
> > Hilaire Belloc
>
> For Belloc I'd go for Bad Child's Book of Beasts/More Beasts
> for Worse Children.
His comic poetry is fun, but if I were listing one comic poet's works
in my top 30 or so I would probably go for Lewis Carroll or Shel
Silverstein.
I was thinking mainly of Belloc's histories and biographies. His
novels
I've read (_The Haunted House_ and _The Emerald of Catherine the
Great_) are fun, but slight.
> > or Kim Stanley Robinson or Steven Brust.
>
> I'd pick To Reign in Hell for Brust and leave Robinson off.
I would pick _The Sun, the Moon and the Stars_ as my favorite
stand-alone Brust, but some of the Vlad and Khaavren books are
better. For Robinson, probably _The Years of Rice and Salt_
or _The Memory of Whiteness_ or the Mars trilogy. All in the
top 100, but not in the top 30.
In the hours after I wrote yesterday's top-30 post I kept thinking of
important stuff I'd left off. Jack Finney's _Time and Again_,
the Gormenghast trilogy, Diaspora by Greg Egan, Bridge of Birds
by Barry Hughart... but I'm not going to go back over the list and
figure out what if anything to leave off so those can go in.
Jim Henry
> On Jan 29, 8:33 pm, Gene Ward Smith <g...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>
> > Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote
>
> > >> The Man Who was Thursday
> > > Amazingly good, but I would rank _Manalive_
> > > and _The Everlasting Man_ and _Orthodoxy_
> > > even higher.
> > I was sticking to fiction. Manalive better? Really?
>
> I think so too. I'm a huge Chesterton fan, fiction and nonfiction
> both, and _Manalive_ is my favorite of his long works for sure, and
It's available as an etext from various sources, including
Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1718
Note the contact information for the transcriber is more than
a decade out of date. I asked Martin Ward to delete it from the
copy on his site, but there are lots of copies out there.
Gene Ward Smith
5e1e-4a4c-9c9...@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
>> The good news is, no Khalil Gibran anywhere.
>
> Or Carlos Castaneda, although some of his prose, as read to me by
> someone I couldn't just tell to shut up and get out of my room, was
> rather good.
>
Probably even better on drugs, which is I suspect how he wrote them.
T Guy
> If you want to purchase, go with the Oxford Classic edition.
(T Guy):
Odd you should say that - I was going to follow up with a request that
you opine re the best translation (and ask the same question of my
other pet Dumas expert in another forum). ISTR from that link that I
provide that the Oxford Classic edition goes for the 1846, de-sexed
translation.
T Guy
Mike Schilling
Yeah, I meant the sequels, in particular. The more modern TTM is
best, but I'm unaware of any improved translations of the others.
Gene Ward Smith
db4257...@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
Comparing with my choices:
> 7. Manalive
In place of The Man Who Was Thursday.
> 14. Lolita
In place of Pale Fire.
> 15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
In place of Stranger in a Strange Land.
> 24. Gaudy Night (in lieu of the Peter/Harriet subseries)
Really? Why Gaudy Night out of all of them?
I guess I can claim this is in place of Trent's Last Case.
> 28. Aubrey/Maturin (another cheat, but I can't leave it off, and one
> could argue it's a single work)
Cheat!
> 29. The Importance of Being Earnest
> 30. Hamlet
These are plays, of course.
> Pretty light on classics, and heavy on SF. There's no one Rex Stout
> or John D. MacDonald or Terry Pratchett book that stands out for me,
> but their best-known series would go on the list if that were
> allowed.
I might be inclined to pick Too Many Cooks for Stout. It's arguably his
most serious Nero Wolfe, tackling the issue of racism head-on in the
Thirties. And despite the claim the dialog is hetter in later books, here
it is authentic-sounding, not mealy-mouthed.
"Pettigrew had stepped forward with a mean eye. 'We don't mister niggers
here in West Virginia, and we don't need anybody coming down here to tell
us'"
We get the point. I also liked Cramer in Over My Dead Body: "You know what
I mean. I don't care if the background is wop or mick or kike or dago or
yankee or square-head or dutch colonial, so long as it's American". Of
course, The Doorbell Rang where Stout takes on the FBI is a lot of fun too.
William December Starr
pv+u...@pobox.com (PV) said:
> Plenty of people read all of it, and some actually get something
> out of the experience (personally, I think reading the bible once
> is vital to understanding our civilization). What's fascinating
> is that fundamentalists often appear to have no actual familiarity
> with the book when asked detailed questions.
"This is not to say that the fanboy state of mind is always
constructive. There are Jesus fanboys who memorize short quotes
from the Bible, including chapter and verse references, without
seeming to have any understanding of what's actually in the book.
They often knock at my door early on Sunday mornings."
-- Andrew Rilstone, <http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/eyefanboy.htm>
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
William December Starr
l...@sff.net said:
> So let's see if I can come up with my own thirty:
...
> Interview with the Vampire
?????
William Hyde
> In article <0f71250d-af98-4497-9a05-2124091ee...@e32g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
> William Hyde <wthyde1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >I think I liked Zuleika Dobson more than you did, but not
> >a huge amount more.
>
> Well, it's a farce. "Beautiful woman, without giving anybody any
> encouragement whatever, just by standing there being beautiful,
> causes every undergraduate in Oxford to commit simultaneous
> suicide. Then she goes home again." I mean, really.....
Beerbohm was, I am told, a master of detail. Zuleika is studded with
hundreds of amusing points which I will never get absent hours of
study. Which, sadly, I will not do.
The author is a more fascinating character than any of his creations,
I think. Despite being (a) conspicuously unattached and (b) a very
definite dandy, he was the only one of Wilde's friends from that
circle with the guts to attend the trial. He left the UK in the very
early 1900s, but returned for both world wars.
William Hyde
Gene Ward Smith
bf7964...@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
> The author is a more fascinating character than any of his creations,
> I think.
How could anyone be more fascinating that Enoch Soames?