Some months ago I mentioned "reading group" and I only recently realized that I got a reply from mella that got lost in my spam filter. Sorry mella!
Does anyone like to read what I call the hard stuff?
Or would you like to read it with a weekly group?
Anyone ever had a yen to read Ulysses or Finnegans Wake?
I've read them both multiple times and can teach them both.
Shakespeare? Virginia Woolf? Bronte sisters? Milton? Chaucer in the original?
Beowulf? Virgil? Ovid? Homer? Wordsworth? Blake? Dante?
Folklore? Freud?
Lewis Carroll?
Brian O Nolan?
Oscar Wilde? (not difficult, delightful)
Nabokov?
Pynchon?
Umberto Eco?
Tolkien (seriously)
Or even Harry Potter?
Some of the above I've read, and some I haven't (like all of Pynchon and Nabokov)
I'd be interested to hear what books you all would pick for a book club.
I'm fully aware that my taste is not for everyone, which is why I never really put out the effort to recreate here what I did in Berkeley. But hey, you never know.
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Got to say, Gravity's Rainbow is just about as smart a book as could be written, and makes most of James Joyce seem foolish, really.
mm, don't want to fight, but there's nothing foolish about Joyce. Not when you really go all the way into what Joyce created. There's a reason that they have at least one international symposium on Joyce a year ... the brilliance is inexhaustible and the insights just keep coming, plus he's funny as hell.
I would like to read Gravity's Rainbow though. So far I've only read Crying of Lot 49.
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OH! Kathy, are you selling any of your Eco? I enjoyed Baudolino & just picked up Queen Loana at the Seaview swap meet. I'll gladly give your Umberto books a loving home.
* I'd rather fail at happiness than succeed at misery *
hooligal, thanks, what little I have (Foucault's Pendulum and Serendipities), is on the "keep" list. I'm planning to keep the books I want to use for research or to read again. I've not read either of the two you mentioned ... I may get a good reading list out of this if nothing else!
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Ah yes, in no way do I intend to imply Joyce as foolish, simply that Gravity's Rainbow is SUCH a good book, one of a handful a century, that simply outclasses everything else.
My background was in lit before I discovered philosophy, and philosophy made a lot of lit pretty un-interesting. That's the price you pay, but to my mind often well crafted works only represent mediocre ideas, they simply represent them very very well. There are exceptions.
To the lifetime reading list here I'd recommend Schopenhauer s "World as Will and Representation" VOL 1. Weighty, but read-able, and the only sensible assault ever mounted on material hedonism. Very important in this day of wavering religiousity in general, as hedonism is the obvious next step.
Hedonism would say, quality of life is determined by the relative ratio of pain vs. pleasure. A powerful powerful argument indeed.
Schopenhauer disagrees: "Pleasure is the transitory state between pain and the cessation of pain, and is the precursor of boredom."
Chew on that!
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Pleasure is finding a five dollar bill while doing laundry- Greg
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Not if you're Aliester Crowley. LOL. Speaking of difficult authors!
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Tom wolfe anyone? (old wolf not vanities' wolf).
Need clarification on what constitutes "serious".....
(I know - no beach novels).
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I am definitely interested, Kathy. I love Milton, but would like to read authors I haven't yet read. I would be up for Pynchon, especially after Jay's glowing recommendation.
No Harry Potter, please. While imaginative, to me, poorly written and too dark and violent, especially as they progress. I would give my child the Black Stallion and Stevenson instead.
I'll read anything (well, NOT badly written or uninteresting stuff), though, and right now am on an Alexander McCall Smith kick. I usually will pick an author and, if entranced, read everything they have ever written and then move on to someone new. Is this a habit I acquired in college? Possibly.
april
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