Calling on my literary friends list

[velvetpage]

I have a lot of very literary people on my friends list, so surely we can manage this amongst us.

I want to rewrite that meme I posted this morning.  Not edit it, but completely rewrite it.  I don't want to go with bestsellers, or any other arbitrary appeal to authority when it comes to what books should be on it and what should be left off.  I also don't want to include a certain laundry list of the "best" books by certain authors, while leaving out books by other, equally good authors.  I'd like to, for example, ask people to give themselves one point for each book they've read by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Mark Twain.  I'd like to develop a sub-list for young adult literature.  In the interests of brevity, I'm limiting this to novels, which means many well-read people will not see themselves in it.  That's a cultural bias I'll acknowledge and address some other time.

So, if you were to make a list like that, what books or authors would you keep from the old list, and what ones would you add?

I'll start.

Under the authors category, I'd let people give themselves points for any book written by the following authors that were left out of the first list:
Madeleine L'Engle
Arthur C. Clarke
Carl Sagan
Mark Twain
Margaret Lawrence
Michael Ontdaatje
Robertson Davies

Your thoughts?

Comments

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

The first question I'd ask is: is this a list of must-read books or are you attempting to identify a literary canon? The two are, naturally enough, not equivalent sets.

I come to this question myself when I think what books would I have my children read. What books, I wonder, changed the way I viewed things or simply enriched my life. Those are the books that I would put on such a list.

For my money, not everything that I've read that is literature has had that effect on my and aren't necessarily well-remembered by me. As such, it becomes a very personal list of likes and dislikes, personal preference and bias.

My problem with assembling a list of the greatest literary works of all time and noting which ones I've read reduces to my holding out my brain-penis for subsequent measure against everyone else's comparison-- and the point gets lost on me as to why bother.

But I've given a lot of thought lately to compiling the list of books I'd put in front of different people for different reasons. Most specifically pulling together a reading list of books I'd most want to read and have read by my kids as they grow is of value to me.

And there are my thoughts. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Since I'm not sure I believe in the concept of a list of must-read books, for the very reasons you state, I suppose I'm suggesting a literary canon of sorts - one where a person with a good selection from it might consider themselves to have sampled a fair number of the literary offerings most likely to have an impact on their lives.

I just realized that I'm attempting to do exactly that which I decried about the first list. I'm attempting to set up an authority others could appeal to in deciding on their reading material.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the right idea is to provide a guided roadmap of quality literature that can help people choose how to expose themselves to the broadest array or to specialize within a given area?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I like that better. It fits in better with my teaching style overall.

[ruisseau.livejournal.com]

Some books I've either read or plan on reading so I can know what my *students* are likely to be reading, whether their literary value is high or not:

Speak by Laurie Halse Andersen (and her other books; Fever, 1793 is a bit of departure from her other books and more suitable for younger than 7th grade audience) is both a gripping tale of silence after a trauma and the realities of a suburban high school.

Walter Dean Myers is on my to-read list, especially Monster.

I suppose Sandra Cisneros might not make it onto this list, because The House on Mango Street is short stories.

Tell me To Kill a Mockingbird was on that list.

Then there's the books that kids read around The Diary of Anne Frank: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen.

I'm sure there are more, but my brain is writing lesson plans. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

To Kill a Mockingbird was on that list, yes.

I love Number the Stars and have taught it several times. I'm unfamiliar with The Devil's Arithmetic, but it sounds interesting.

*is too lazy to italicize*

[grrl-next-door.livejournal.com]

What about Go Ask Alice? That was a popular one when I was a youth and really impacted me...

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Regardless of the approach you take (see previous reply) I think there are some other categories that I'd throw out there for consideration:

Regionality:
-British Isles Literature
-American English Literature
-Canadian English Literature
-Other Primarily English-speaking countries I have not listed (Austrailian, New Zealand, India, etc)

Of course there are many sub-regions that bear consideration such as Canadian Prairie Fiction vs Canadian Maritime Fiction, New England Fiction vs Mid-West Fiction not to mention the important differences between Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Fiction one from each other.

I would consider great non-English works that have made their way into English Literature as well, Tolstoy, Hugo, Kuroshima.

Time period is also an important factor, having read a lot of Shakespeare is good but what about Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson? Have you read only modern or post-modern writers? What coverage has been given to Romantics, Victorian, Colonial and pre-WWII literature?

This is where I'd start.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

My thing is that there are books that are critical in some areas, and not in others. For instance, in certain groups, if you haven't read anything (and definitely all his science fiction) by Asimov, you're a dolt. In others, it's Asimov Who? What do you mean you haven't read Nabakov?!

I also don't like the "point" system because it's going for quantity. I've read all of Dickens, because I was required to write a report on one of his books, and I couldn't find one I liked. I think I've gained more from the Ursula K. Leguin or Susan Cooper I've read, however. Even if reading all of Dickens could get me "points." Similar with Shakespeare. Now, I happened to read all of Shakespeare because I went through a total Shakespeare fan girl phase. But isn't there a point at which some variety is a good thing and people should max out points on a particular author? :)

In any case, I think reading is good. Period. If my cousin reading the Piers Anthony got her started reading (and it did), the Piers Anthony should probably be on someone's list. If someone's going to hang out with some of my peer groups, they should really be able to quote Douglas Adams. In other groups, if they can't deal with Dostoevsky they're possibly going to get bored of the conversation.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

All good points. I've read vast quantities of Dickens and everything written by L'Engle and L.M. Montgomery. I learned a lot from all of them. But I learned a lot from a lot of authors that wouldn't make anyone's list.

It's amazing how many Dune, Douglas Adams, LOTR, and Shakespeare jokes my friends can squeeze into one gaming session. Amazing and quite fabulous. I think I scan as having read more of these than I've actually read, simply by dint of hearing so many references to them over the sixteen years I've been with Piet.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

My problem with these sorts of lists is I can't think of a single novel that I would recommend as a Must-Read to everyone. I have bunches of recommendations for individuals, and I'll even go so far as to say there are subcultures that really do have (unofficial) required reading/viewing/knowing lists. But nothing universal.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I have to look at the list again for books I'd keep, but I would add a whole mess of Andre Norton's novels. Starman's Son comes to mind most readily. I'd add the short stories of John Collier. Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels would wind up on my list, especially Crossing Thirty.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

The basic problem with that big list that goes around every few months is that it is not what it claims to be. The BBC did a list of most influential British books (or something) almost 10 years ago, and people keep messing with it and changing the content.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's the basic problem of subjectivity. All a list like this can ever be is a suggestion from a given point of view.

Haven't seen the first list or the comments yet, so apologies for redundancy

[amyura.livejournal.com]

Margaret Atwood
John Irving (okay, some of his stuff sucks, but Owen Meany is like the BEST BOOK EVER)
Patricia Highsmith
Barbara Kingsolver

I'll think of more later....

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Carl Sagan wrote novels? (scratches head) I guess he did with "Contact", but wasn't he more famous for his scientific and science popularizing non-fiction works?

This brings up another pet peeve of mine, that the only books on 'best books' lists these days are novels on the most part, with the Bible thrown in for whatever reason also. Non fiction works get rather short shift on most lists, ditto books that don't seem to fit in any clear category (such as "Gödel, Escher & Bach", "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and "Fate is the Hunter".

::B::