bobover3 (imported) wrote: Wed May 20, 2009 10:59 am Are these all so essential to our culture?

I think "essential" is going too far. Better say useful in getting a handle on what we are.

bobover3 (imported) wrote: Wed May 20, 2009 10:59 am Some of these make better movies than current reads.

That's true. Rent the DVD.

I think the easiest way to turn someone off exploring literature (or film) is to say one must read this or that. Better to find out for themselves what can be good and if they discover that they love Agatha Christie but never want to read another chapter of Dickens that's fine.

If one has to read the bible then one should also read other books of scripture like....

The Koran

Anton Levey's Satanic Bible

etc....

just to balance out.

The trouble with recommending books is that today we have so many.

Not that long ago, books were costly and hard to find. A rich and learned "gentleman" might distinguish himself by having 2,000 volumes in his library. Literacy was less common than it is today, and few people had more than 8-10 years of schooling. The leisure needed for reading was harder to find when most people worked 60 hour weeks. What's more, the mechanisms by which books are mass produced, distributed, and marketed did not yet exist.

The choice of books was a problem which would not have been relevant to most people. Those with the time and money to read books took what was available to them (which depended on where they lived - the rural majority faced special obstacles) and what was current. So those who recommended books had a relatively easy task.

Now, the conditions are opposite. We have an almost unlimited choice of affordable books. Through the web, almost any book can be conveniently located and purchased, no matter who or where you are. This makes the choice of books a matter of personal taste more than it has ever been. Beyond that, there's an element of chance - a suggestion from a friend, a good review, an eye-catching volume in a book store or library, etc., may prompt us to open a book we'd otherwise not have seen. This wealth of opportunity is overwhelming.

The best response may be a long list, such as Calmeilles or Bloomberg provides, or to talk about those few books which have excited real passion. Otherwise, it's hard to talk about without seeming to take a cup of water from an ocean.

I am re-reading "The Wisdom of the Ancient Greeks" by Steven Stavropoulas. I find more each time I read it. This one really stuck with me this time: "To win over your badself is the grandest and foremost of victories." Plato

FianceeUvBigGuy (imported) wrote: Thu May 21, 2009 1:43 am I'm sure you're correct on all counts. I got my erroneous info during my bright college days, and from a Lit prof at that!

Yoli

Trusting Lit. professors to give correct information about writers is like trusting politicians to tell the truth about society, not a wise idea. On page 6 of the Foreword of the 2nd ed. of LOTR, Tolkien wrote "these chapters ... were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the RAF," so you should have gotten that information by reading Tolkien. Tolkien is a tough read; he never really had a sense of audience and so his stories flounder around at the beginning until he finds his voice a bit later, and that puts many readers off. All of the arch nonsense about the invention of golf at the beginning of the Hobbit is a waste, and the story doesn't begin until Gandalf enters. Much of the beginning of LOTR is tedious until Frodo gets out of the shire and the story picks up, but the confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman in the Two Towers is splendid.

Herbert is a different matter altogether. It is really very easy to read Dune, what is difficult is to reread it because after you have read the damn thing, picked up all the homoerotic references to Paul and Feyd and gone to the comic opera finale with the overthrow of the Padishah Emperor, nothing much has happened to you. I, at least, can reread Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation again and again or reread the Earth Sea series by LeGuin or Card's Ender's Game and still be moved by it. I have even been tempted to reread The Worm Ouroboros, and discovered that I was right; it was a tedious pastiche by a remarkably unimaginative writer, but I have never been tempted to pick up Dune a second time and never even opened Son of Dune or Stock Options of Dune or whatever.

I was a little surprised that, here and elsewhere, when I made a post about books which should be read, the overwhelming majority of titles people named in response, were fiction. I guess that novels are the books most people really like, and therefore, they are the books which are most recommended. Also, because of the intro in my initial post, I guess people were thinking about summer reading, which tends to be novels read while lying on the beach or in a hammock. Was really rather surprising that nobody mentioned books like Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, or Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Self-help books have had enormous sales and readerships.

With regard to books recommended by professors who are considered to be experts, I looked over again the list by Harold Bloom, and also the list of Great Books of the Western World, which I guess was put together by Mortimer Adler. Some time ago, I considered buying a set of the Great Books, but decided against it because half or more of the set consisted of books written in the classical and medieval eras, and which were largely fiction or philosophy, the value of which I question, and which are little read any more. Bloom's list is even more heavily slanted toward literature. These books did have a role in the formation of the civilization in which we live. But hardly anybody reads them now, in the twenty-first century. Even for some of the most brilliant and educated authors of antiquity, and, really, up to the last century; the degree of their ignorance, in terms of what we know now, is striking. A lot of them (e.g. Plotinus) one would read only as a curiosity.

As to most fiction written before the 1920's, I can only repeat what one modern publisher observed: "It's a good thing the classics were published when they were, because they could not be published today if the public didn't know about them already." I personally question the value of literature which isn't interesting enough, that people would read it today without somebody telling them it was worthwhile. Some of the poetry from the past is quite good, and ought to be read. But if "literature" is not interesting enough for people to read it, I question whether it really has the level of quality ascribed to it by critics.

Anyway, here are a few titles which are by no means universal classics, but which I found interesting, and which happened to come to mind today.

Food in History by Tannahill. I thought it was highly interesting. I recommended it to one fellow who said it was good, but the really interesting book was another one by Tannahill, Sex in History. Well, I tried.

Disquisitiones Arithmeticae by Karl Friedrich Gauss. Gauss may have been the smartest man who ever lived, and I think this was his only book. If you aren't interested in mathematics, you won't have the patience to read it. I mention it only because it is one of the founding works of modern mathematics. Most libraries don't have it, and I think even the paperback edition would set you back more than a hundred dollars.

Across the Wide Missouri by DeVoto. The story of the American Fur Company, and one of the classics of early modern capitalism. Really, it's largely about the Rocky Mountain country before it was settled. The company eventually failed, and it's really a miracle it lasted as long as it did.

A Course in Pure Mathematics by G.H. Hardy. Hardy was one of the most prominent mathematicians of the twentieth century, and the book is a good background to a lot of higher mathematics. What it's really about is analysis as applied to number theory. Again, you wouldn't find it interesting unless you like mathematics.

The Nature of the Universe by Fred Hoyle. It turned out that Hoyle's steady state theory was wrong, but I read the book in childhood, and it got me thinking. Hoyle was an expansive writer.

The Weather Machine by Nigel Calder. This was written about thirty years ago, and has probably been somewhat superseded. I thought it was a good explanation of the way the atmosphere behaves.

The Georgian Gentleman by Brander. One of the best books I have read which recreates how people lived in England in the eighteenth century. It focuses on the upper classes, but actually describes life at all social levels at the time. Another good book which recreates a past era is A Distant Mirror, by Tuchman.

The White Nile by Alan Moorhead. This is about adventure on the grand scale.

Well, guess I'll get back to surfing the internet, which is where I do most of my reading today anyway. Calmeilles' list should be posted where more people would have access to it.

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Sun May 31, 2009 1:12 am Tolkien is a tough read; he never really had a sense of audience and so his stories flounder around at the beginning until he finds his voice a bit later, and that puts many readers off. All of the arch nonsense about the invention of golf at the beginning of the Hobbit is a waste, and the story doesn't begin until Gandalf enters. Much of the beginning of LOTR is tedious until Frodo gets out of the shire and the story picks up, but the confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman in the Two Towers is splendid.

The first time I read the Hobbit and LOTR was way back in high school, and I could not finish it fast enough. My only complaint was trying to keep track of everyone once they broke up.

Tolkien has been evergreen for me. I first read him with friends in college, and the spell has never entirely been broken. I re-read him every few years. His books are unreservedly serious in tone. Elegy and lament is always with him. For today's jittery generation, this may prove wearing, but I doubt that what has endured so long and so successfully will vanish. He lapses sometimes into stilted prose, but those lapses are brief.

To better understand Tolkien, you must remember his grounding in Old English literature, which he taught at Oxford. Read Beowulf, which Tolkien made popular, and the parallels to Tolkien are striking: the rings, the mead halls, the protocols of pre-Christian feudal kingdoms, the desperate defenses against overwhelming evils, the heroes, the sense of helplessness before the sweep of time and change, the doom and the struggle against doom. Tolkien brought that ancient culture whole into his own work, mixed with a sentimental fondness for the society of England's shires. It still stirs the blood.

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Sun May 31, 2009 1:41 pm I was a little surprised that, here and elsewhere, when I made a post about books which should be read, the overwhelming majority of titles people named in response, were fiction.

Well, given enough time, just about everything becomes fiction, but only the silly Mr. Spock would fail to see the value of fiction. It is in fiction, that we can truly explore possibilities. In the late forties Isaac Asimov explored the future of humanity and the economy, setting up a conflict between the feisty little Foundation and the decadent Galactic Empire. One of the advantages the Foundation had over its massive rival was an appreciation of parsimony. The resource-rich Empire industrialized on a massive scale, wastefully while the deprived Foundation minaturized and placed a priority on innovation. What we see in today's auto industry is Asimov's scenario played out for real. A Jurassic Detroit incapable of adapting to changing market conditions, still thinking at a non-viable scale.

...

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Sun May 31, 2009 1:41 pm I considered buying a set of the Great Books, but decided against it because half or more of the set consisted of books written in the classical and medieval eras, and which were largely fiction or philosophy, the value of which I question, and which are little read any more.

I don't think anyone has told a story better than the Odyssey, but certainly there is little reason today to read Plato unless you want to study in detail how to score debate points and how to make mediocre thoughts seem profound. On the other hand, Dionysius's Treatise on Divine Names is the most worthwhile book on religion ever written being even better than Bonaventure's Mind's Road to God, but certainly "religious" drivel of the sort that Billy Graham or Norman Vincent Peale wrote has a very short life span. It is true that like Barbara Cartland and Jacqueline Suzanne these things made the best seller lists, but just because McDonald's sells lots of hamburgers, you do not have to consider them gourmet chefs. Not only for it prose style and footnotes but for the grandeur of its conception The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is still worth reading, and I would add Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates to the list, but my main complaint of the great books is the deplorable format; the editions are usually scruffy things on cheap paper with the text squeezed into nasty little columns. Unless I can't find a better edition, my set just gathers dust because it is really unpleasant to read. A friend once scoffed at my spending $20 for Gurney's The Hittites in a Folio Society edition when she could get the Penguin paperback for less than a quarter of that price; I gave her a Folio Society copy and she realized what it is like to read a book on good paper with proper reproductions and plates.

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Sun May 31, 2009 1:41 pm As to most fiction written before the 1920's, I can only repeat what one modern publisher observed: "It's a good thing the classics were published when they were, because they could not be published today if the public didn't know about them already."

Some writers need a proper presentation to be enjoyed; they are not producing beach reading or airport literature, but in fact Sturgeon's Law applies to this as to all things. "90% of everything is shit." Some of the classics reflect the politcal interests of their times. The much anthologized "Devil and Daniel Webster" is mawkish crap, admired at a time when American literature capitalized American and left literature with a small l. There are tons of such classics which owe their place to the perceived political value rather than literary quality. Because I've never been even slightly tempted to heterosexual conduct, the sex scenes in 1984 leave me cold, and the political message "communism is bad" doesn't deserve a book length treatment. Frankly Animal Farm does the job better. I sincerely doubt that most of the "great" books of the past decade will endure or ought to. Perhaps A. S. Byatt's Possession will, but certainly the great economists of our time won't be in print next year. Literary critics like Derrida will fair even more poorly, and I think they are already passe. The amazing thing is the surprising vitality of Freud. The man had not a single good idea in his entire life and never wrote an honest sentence but is still in print. Ah well, it is not my lot to be Cato.

Karl Friedrich Gauss ..

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Sun May 31, 2009 1:41 pm . I mention it only because it is one of the founding works of modern mathematics.

Isn't Gauss rather like Plotinus? This work is principally of historical interest, and I think you overrate Gauss; most grad students of mathematics now know more than Gauss did. Kline says "Gauss was not so much an innovator as a transitional figure" (Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 3:871).

This isn't really a criticism of post #39, because this is, like most topics, one about which different opinions can be defended.

My point about Gauss would be, that the Disquisitiones was the first book in which modular mathematics, on which a whole lot of modern higher mathematics was founded, was explained and developed. In a number of respects, Gauss was an innovator because he saw some of the links between different areas of mathematics, which previous mathematicians hadn't seen. Any good biography of the man or book about his mathematical career, can give you some idea of the scope of his achievements. One which is accessible to the general reader is Devonshire's Prime Obsession.

You can actually make a case that the work of all mathematicians before the twentieth century can be considered somewhat trivial, because most of mathematics looks to be perfectly obvious once you see the proofs laid out. And something like calculus is second nature to a mathematician nowadays--yet it was well over a thousand years between the time Eudoxus got the basic idea for calculus, and the time that Leibnitz (and, in a more primitive form, Newton) produced theorems which could actually be applied.

I understand where you're coming from Gareth, I just look at things from a different perspective, and which of us has the more valid perception, is probably just a matter of opinion. no disputandem gustibus.