The Happy Philistine

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.

The Happy Philistine

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.