The Happy Philistine

[caddyman]

This list of books that’s going around proves to me yet again just how poorly read I am when it comes to the ‘worthy’ titles available to me. Actually there’s two lists: one published by the BBC and one that seems to be a bowdlerised version of it, with the claim - provenance unknown – that most people will only have read six books from the hundred listed.

Well, I am somewhere between twice and three times as well-read as the average person if you take the lists as a measure. I have read twelve from the one list and fourteen from the other and because of the variance in choice it suggests I have read about sixteen from a selection of about one hundred-and-twenty across the two lists.

As I have mentioned before, and I might add to the professed horror of many of the people on my friends list, I am no fan of nineteenth century literature – or more particularly Victorian literature. Good-bye then, Charles Dickens, all things Brontë, Hardy and co. That’s most of the giants dismissed out of hand. Is it any coincidence that while these people were publishing, Britain was building a huge empire? I think not. No radio, no telly and just these plums to read? I’d go out and oppress someone too.

Dostoyevsky? Chekov? Tolstoy? Well, the Russians are a depressed, depressing and generally drunken lot and now you know why. Half the year it’s cold enough to freeze mercury and all they had to read were these chaps? I’d have revolted, too.

The exception is Alexandre Dumas. The Musketeer books are absolutely marvellous, but oh my, it depends upon the translation. I haven’t found a readable translation of the Count of Monte Cristo yet, or of La Reine Margot, though I have copies of both that I try to plough through from time to time.

I see that Umberto Eco doesn’t make the list. There’s an over rated writer and I fully understand his exclusion. I tried reading the Name of the Rose, I gave Foucault’s Pendulum and Baudelino fair trials but really, you shouldn’t have to keep putting a book down to look for razor blades.

Ignore lists of the great and the good and just read something that entertains and informs you, not what other people think you should read. That’s what school is for.

Comments

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

You loathed Catch 22 ? I do actually understand how someone could come to that opinion but it doesn't change the fact that they are WRONG ; )

(it's my favourite book)

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

*angrily flicks her fan open and closed the bones clicking together then sliding apart with irritating regularity, as she strives to master her annoyance*

*cackles* Ah Mr Caddy, tha' does mek mi laff.

I read most of the Worthies doing a degree in literature, but I confess, I do loves mi 19th century novels. This possibly relates to the important part the novel form played in giving women a modicum of independence (at least in the west) An inky revolution; quiet, and studied in minute detail, but a revolution nonetheless.

Although I am rather fond of Turganev, Zola, James, Conrad and of course, Mr Stoker's novel.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

Just the other day (pre this list doing the rounds again) Myself and Miss Hall were remarking on the fact that we seem barely capable of getting through a day without alluding to Heart of Darkness : )

Dostoyevsky is fine when he's being nasty but annoying when he's lecturing about Christianity. I *love* Wuthering Heights.

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

When are you going to have little Conan and Bathsheba?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I realise that I am very much in the minority (or at least in a minority of people who will admit their dislike) and I also realise that much of Dickens' works served to highlight the horrors of poverty, crime and such in Victorian society.

Any positive aspects they may have had is always welcome, of course, but by and large, my brane cannot cope with the sheer worthiness of the stuff.

Oddly, if you go back to Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen, who were active in the immediate pre-Victorian period, their writings are eminently readable.

I guess it's 'Victorian Values' that I find so hard going.

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

It was a time of great change I spose, prolly reflected in the literature of the day. I do like Dickens, I love the wordiness, but he isn't the be all and end all faw shor.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

I used to be able to read fantasy but could never get beyond chapter three of the hobbit because the style of writing was soooooo long winded I got bored waiting for plot. I haven't been able to read fantasy since my bout of post parental depression (parents moved in I lost my marbles parents moved out taking marbles with them). I can read light stuff that have no threat in them I can read biographies and non fiction as long as I already know the outcome. I could never read Dickens because he too is long-winded, as is Orwell. Oh and Iris Murdoch irritates me and there is another author that gets me so mad at his main character that I fling the book away in disgust but my senile brain won't give me the name.
At the moment my reading is confined to girly type books that almost but not quite 'chic-lit' having slightly more substance and not being about twenty year-olds with well paying jobs who can fly across the world at a moment's notice. I intend writing one of those real soon

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I don't really find these lists particularly worthwhile because there are so many good books, why narrow it down to 100. But I do read some books you have sneered at above and I have enjoyed them. I don't pretend to like books I don't like. I'll openly admitt to finding Hardy unreadable. I like some Dickens novels and not others. I probably prefer the 20th century to any other period of literature. But I think that sometimes it's worth working at a book, even if it's hard to read, because you might get more out of it. Same with pomes. And sometimes it's worth reading something because it's massively influential and it helps you understand your own culture and other books/films/songs etc. I like variety in my reading, I like both challenge and escapism. And I like Umberto Eco, particularly The Name of the Rose. It's one of my favourite books because I enjoyed reading it so much, not because I am trying to prove something.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I thought I was being rather more tongue in cheek than sneering, which has a rather nastier connotation, but there you go.

You are clearly not alone in liking Umberto. But I don't like him.