We live in a listomaniacal age (a sign, no doubt, of an exhausted culture), but really this one takes the biscuit. Coming across it, I was particularly struck by the 'Pre-1700' section - clearly classics are no longer required and the great Greeks and Romans laboured in vain. Required reading now is stuff like Chaireas and Kallihroe by Chariton (which I confess I'd never even heard of). To me this list looks more like 900-plus books not to waste your time with. Which brings me to my proposed list - 100 Books To Read After You Die. This is for all those 'critically acclaimed' or highly (and apparently reliably) recommended books you read and afterwards regretted wasting so much of your life on - books, in other words, that can safely be put off till after death, when there will, one trusts, be no reading (though a traditionally conceived Hell might involve forced reading of Tolkien...). So - books that might well be very good, even 'great', but really don't need to be read, at least not in full - or, indeed, books which are just wildly overrated. Keep your life for the books that really are worth the effort, save the rest till you're dead.
My proposal to kick things off - with a dozen and more titles at one stroke - A Dance To The Music Of Time...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I don't often dislike the books I read, but the last one I really hated was 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.'
ReplyDeleteThat and 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk.
Safest to ignore all books published in the past decade or so - a 90 percent risk of disappointment, in my experience. Anyway, I've calculated (not difficult) that reading yr way through that 1,001 list at the rate of a book a week (and some of them are real doorstops) would take 20 years out of your life (and probably leave you wishing you were dead).
ReplyDeleteI have an entire file devoted to books I ought to read after I have dropped dead. And my additional reason for wanting to read Jordan, Pushed to the Limits, was not that we have he same measurements, but because she’s been in the Times Top Ten for the past 14 weeks. I have no idea what she could have found to talk about, but can 182,655 readers be so grossly mistaken?
ReplyDeleteIf so, then why not shoot yourself?
In the end my good judgment conquered my curiosity and I settled for Moll Flanders.
Perfect. Katie Price, eat your heart out!
D.
There are so many good books to read that there doesn't seem much point in persevering with one that's not to your taste. Put it aside and take up one that does hit the spot.
ReplyDeleteMy list would include Iris Murdoch, Henry James, Thomas Pynchon (representing a whole class of writers whose work would be better if cut by two-thirds), a clutch of Victorians like Mrs Gaskell I was made to read at school, Terry Pratchett and his rivals, Harry Potter and - not to be left out - Lord Jeff. Also, Agatha Christie - there'll be all the time in the otherworld to work out who dun it, as if we cared. Give me Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke or Carl Hiaasen any day. At least they have good jokes.
I'm so glad someone has said that life is too short for Anthony Powell. And indeed for that whole dusty world of faded aristocrats and James Lees-Milne types.
'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence'
ReplyDeleteI was 16. Into bikes and going to live in Paris for three months. I thought it would get me girls and lots of inconsequential Bohemian sex. Instead, it froze my brain and ensured I remained virgo intacto.
I started reading "Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stegner as part of NPR's Book Club of the Air. Couldn't finish it. One of those dreary character studies of dysfunctional friendships. My own life is dreary enough, why waste it reading about someone else's dysfunction?
ReplyDeleteI would also add "Lolita" and "Ulysses".
ReplyDeleteMost definitely Henry James. I just finished "Turn of the Screw" recently and I regret having picked it up. If Henry James had never published a word, the world would be a better place.
ReplyDelete"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" falls into the category of narcissistic drivel. I wouldn't recommend it even to the dead. I would think that hell's library might contain only that book.
Anything by Dashiell Hammett. His books may have been turned into fine movies but reading them is pure suffering.
More recently, "The Dante Club". A book that is truly over-rated.
For what it's worth, the first book I had assigned for me to review for the Philadelphia Inquirer (where I ended up as book editor) was Hearing Secret Harmonies, Volume 12 of Powells A Dance to the Music of Time. Problem was I hadn't read the preceding 11 volumes. So I did a crash read. I remember almost nothing about any of them, except that they had for me - doubtless because I'm not English - a certain exotic charm, and also that Widmerpool struck me as having much in common with Richard Nixon.
ReplyDeleteI see that Edna O'Brien's in there, read her books and you do die, the Ikea catalogue's more absorbing. Wot, no Alastair Campbell or Lucrezia Blair ?
ReplyDeleteI only mention Campbell because at the forthcoming Melrose bookfest he and one Douglas Hurd are on the list of speakers, oh boy, no thanks, don't ring us, we'll ring you.
Just finished two books I read at the same time, no not both at once silly, in conjunction. Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction and Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom, both absorbing and very well written but the length of time it took to read them I could have read 1001 others.
On the incomparable Dance, haven't you found the radio adaptation incredibly disappointing?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't get the tone of it at all.
The radio adaptation terrible indeed - as were all previous adaptations, I think. Could be problem with the source material...
ReplyDeleteI didn't expect to uncover such ill feeling about Henry James - even The Turn of the Screw, as near as he got to a page turner (and short).
The curious selection of pre-1700 works can be explained by the full title of the book, which includes the subtitle: "A Comprehensive Reference Source, Chronicling the History of the Novel". It's meant to be a list of novels and their antecedents.
ReplyDeleteHenry James a page-turner? I found it virtually impossible to turn the page because I couldn't figure out what I just read. Here is an example that I think captures the charm of James in a short sentence. If ever a man was to write a sentence with more commas than words, it would have been James.
ReplyDelete"Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill that we vociferously denied we felt; and we had all three, with repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each time, to mark the close of the incident, almost automatically through the very same movements."
Before James Thin was taken over by you know who, they had a bookcase for their "favourites", a not very brief description handwritten in the same style as the gastro pubs chalked menu, I was duped by this once, serve me right.
ReplyDeleteA number of the books on the list became movies, from memory many were better than the books they were based upon (Death in Venice, The Third Man etc)
Himself, has mentioned that we have pulled the wings from his blogaflies, now and again. What does he expect, when it is exactly how we are trained. But 'tis hoped it is seen as gentle and an attempt at amusement.
ReplyDeleteAny list more than ten is a bit of an insult and there will be enough with the soil to keep you down (on the off chance) without a ton of jaded crap keeping you there on the off chance that you could ring a little bell.
Listen Nige, if I take my selection with me and I'm cremated (just to make sure the miserable sod's dead, no doubt), will that constitute a book burning, if so, the local council crem employees are a bunch of Nazis.
ReplyDeleteBryan,
ReplyDeleteYou and I are on opposite sides on A Dance to the Music of Time. If I could have one book (stretching the definition) with me on a desert island, the choice would come down to Proust, Anna Karenina, and Dance.
Dry wit, a keen eye for social distinctions and social change, a real love of art and understanding of how it fits in life, and an unparalleled appreciation of how friendships and acquaintanceships change over decades--what more could I want?
i found Anna Karenina oddly unrewarding. Easy to read but each time i put it down i felt no interest in taking it up again. By the time i realised it wasn't going to improve i'd already read 350 odd pages and thought i might as well continue...
ReplyDeletei find most supposed classics, if they're more than 50 years old, are genuinely good, even if not my cup of tea. Very different when you get to the recent stuff, though: mostly crap.
Surprising reaction to Anna K there, Elberry - rather the reverse with me, even the 2nd time. And Levi, this is Nige, not Bryan, who is somewhere Lost in America...
ReplyDeleteI'm about a third of the way through The Brothers Karamazov and really struggling. Should I persevere?
ReplyDeletei think my problem with Anna K was there seemed no plot after the initial seduction, so i had no real interest in finding out what happened next...
ReplyDeleteWith The Brothers Karamazov, i'd say if the first 1/3 doesn't interest you, the rest won't either. Probably a good rule for most books.
I'm coming to this late as I've actually had to -- gasp -- work for living lately.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts on James are detailed in the last Ode to Shirley Hazzard post Bryan sent in.
Do love Anna K. and I recently read "War and Peace," which was fantastic once you excerpted all of Tolstoy's musings on war and coincidence from the story itself.
A group of writers that I hate but that male professors I had in the '80s loved are: Pynchon, Barth, et al.
Wallace Stegner, btw, has some fantastic books: Try "Angle of Repose." Also Ivan Doig, lots of great books set in Montana; try "Whistling Season."
"Anna Karenina" was a big disappointment for me after loving "War and Peace" but it was still a decent read.
ReplyDeleteI find Dickens' "Hard Times" and "A Tale of Two Cities", Most of Henry James and Joseph Conrad after when writing about spies to be vastly over rated.
Nige - a useful tip for you originating from the great Brian O'Nolan, writing before and after the war in the Irish Times as Myles na Gopaleen and Flann O'Brian. Instead of investing your valuable time reading anything, or your money buying walls of book-spines to impress your friends, why not mimic his inspired and surreal idea of 'book handling' or 'buchhandlung'?
ReplyDeleteThis idea, particularly apposite for, say, a hugely wealthy individual who either cannot read or, if he can, has not the time nor the inclination to do so - and yet, does not want his friends to think of him as 'ill-read' or vulgar, something that they might otherwise imagine.
The 'service', is offered in four 'grades', starting with the 'Popular' at £1 7s 6d. Each volume is 'well and truly handled, four leaves in each dog-eared, and a tram-ticket, cloakroom docket or other comparable article inserted as a forgotten bookmark.
It then moves up through 'Premier' handling (8 leaves dog-eared, underlining in red-pencil etc) and 'De Luxe' handling (each mauled savagely, spines damaged, coffee/tea/whiskey stains introduced & Etc) to finish with 'Superb' or 'Le Traitment Superbe' as 'we lads who spent our honeymoon in Paris prefer to call it'. Here, the handling is done by a 'master handler, who has to his credit not less than 550 handling hours'. All this was available at just £32 7s 6d.
Just imagine the number of blights in the media that would form an orderly queue for this - and the fortune one could make by organizing such a service?
Mahlerman
That's brilliant Mahlerman - thanks!
ReplyDelete'buchhandlung', just means bookshop or bookseller, not book distresser. Good idea though, try it in front of Sugar.
ReplyDeleteThere's a local guy who sells "genuine antique French country furniture, made under a Peripehique arch at Clinancourt, last week.
Ah, lists!
ReplyDeleteTry this one:
http://littlefrigging.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/the-top-10-most-annoying-things-on-the-web/
The most worrying lists are those either to port or staboard, didn't do the Barham a lot of good.
ReplyDeleteHey Malty, ease off the gas - sounds like you need a dose of na Gopaleen, not Nige - when you get inside this Joyce-manque you will appreciate his erudition - his column often appeared in Irish, with chunks of Latin and Greek, and he little cared whether anybody understood him.
ReplyDelete'buchhandlung' he knew better than you or me was not the word he needed, literally - he just loved the look of it on the page, and for him it was 'right'. Relax
Mahlerman
Guess we cancerians bounce (21/07/42)
ReplyDeleteI guess a list like that is for someone studying novels, not a real reader. But why more than one book by an author?
ReplyDeletePretty sure I can cross off all of James Fenimore Cooper until I'm gone, and hope the book burns up from all the heat that I expect will be there.
I was glad to see Graham Greene. He can write sentences and paragraphs that stop me in my tracks with their beauty.
Nige, based on the high regard you and Bryan had for Shirley Hazzard, I am half way through "The Great Fire", and unfortunately I can't share the enthusiasm. I am in fact considering abandoning it.
ReplyDeleteI found it said in a couple of reviews that her prose can be "oblique" or even cryptic. I say that it is overworked and frequently opaque. The sentences are clearly carefully crafted, yet often I have to re-read them to get the point, and often still can't quite see it.
Thematically, it's pretty much Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited/ Sword of Honour territory (disillusioned middle aged men around war,) and her writing reminds me a little of his, except without the wit, readability or a plot of any interest.
Oddly, I have found a few reviews that point out the flaws (including characters that barely hold interest and talk to each other in far from realistic fashion,) yet the overall conclusion of the reviewer is still positive.
To "prove" my point about some of her writing, I would have to quote selected passages, which I won't do here, but it would be a fun evening in the pub to read them out loud and then have someone explain to me how it could be said to be good writing. Occasionally, I find some sentences almost laughably bad.
Sorry, this has come out harsher than I intended, but really I am mystified as to why the book has generally been so well received.
Or if I keep going, will all be redeemed by the last few sentences, which Bryan found overpowering? Somehow, I am very skeptical it will have the same effect on me.
Steve, I'm with you. But then, literature is always about what you bring to it. Perhaps there's some trembling chord in Bryan that really resonates when he reads Hazzard.
ReplyDeleteMoi-meme, I can agree with him on Marilynne Robinson -- at least, on "Housekeeping"; "Gilead" didn't have the same effect on me -- but there are reasons why the great writers are considered great by a majority of readers. They manage to draw a response from almost anyone who picks them up. For this reason, i can't put Henry James or Shirley Hazzard onto that list, though I admit that James, at least, has grown on me as I've gotten older ("The Aspern Papers" a delight).
Blathering on, when I really must write my review of David Guterson's forthcoming novel, "The Other." It's good, and I won't give anything away, except to say that he might be halfway to explaining what could create a guy like the Unabomber.