Post by Hec Scrivener on Jun 16, 2007 1:43:14 GMT -5
Mark: Why Mark? Mark's the short bland one. I'd go with John; it's got the least "This is a biography" and the most "This is the foundational text of a religion" in it.
Plato: Good call.
Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities is his best. But just glancing at the 19th Century, we have (in no particular order) the Romantic poets, Austen, Mary Shelley, Tennyson, Kipling, Twain, and Melville. I'd go with Huckleberry Finn, or a poetry compilation.
Newton: Darwin's Origins of Species is more influential and more accessible.
Shakespeare: But of course.
Confucius: You may disagree with me on this, but I think "Not a sleeping pill" is a virtue in a book. If you want to stick with philosophical maunderings, try the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. But we also need some sort of political work, so I recommend Leviathan, Democracy in America, or the Discourses of Machiavelli.
Gilgamesh: Gil was a loser. Besides, in a reading list of ten books, isn't two epics a bit much? Recommend The Thousand Nights and a Night (Burton translation, naturally).
Beowulf: Kicks Gilgamesh ass. But the Iliad and the Odyssey are hundreds of times more influential. And while Achilles is much more of a whiny douchebag than Beowulf, he does confront and wrangle with the problem of death in much the same way. Actually, there's an awful lot of death in this list... Hamlet, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, the Meditations if you take them...
Swift: Nice one.
Miller: You already have a Christian work, and Cantacle of Leibowitz, whatever its virtues (and they are great), is a rather atypical piece of science fiction. I'm going to go the same path I did with the poets and recommend some short story compilation.
De Eurocentrism: If the Europeans weren't the ones, y'know, writing all the books, you might have a point. Someone who wants a panoramic view of human cultures worldwide would do best assembling a separate reading list, with a lot more epics, but if you want to cover a broad range of human issues, you're going to be Eurocentric.
De ethics: You're asking for ten books to cover all the problems humanity confronts. You're not going to present a comprehensive overview of modern ethical positions; at best, you're going to say "There exists the problem of determining what is right" - and nothing poses this problem better than the Republic.
De satire: Well, if you want to kill two birds (politics and satire) with one stone, there's The Prince.
Things neither of our lists cover too well, and probably should: Feminism/the women's point of view (City of Ladies? Austen?). Race relations (Heart of Darkness? To Kill a Mockingbird? Huck Finn? Kim?). The coming-of-age story (Huck Finn or Kim again). Cosmology and eschatology (Genesis? Völuspá? Revelation? The Book of the Dead?). Love and romance (Shakespeare's sonnets? Catullus?).
Conclusion: Ten books just isn't enough.
Plato: Good call.
Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities is his best. But just glancing at the 19th Century, we have (in no particular order) the Romantic poets, Austen, Mary Shelley, Tennyson, Kipling, Twain, and Melville. I'd go with Huckleberry Finn, or a poetry compilation.
Newton: Darwin's Origins of Species is more influential and more accessible.
Shakespeare: But of course.
Confucius: You may disagree with me on this, but I think "Not a sleeping pill" is a virtue in a book. If you want to stick with philosophical maunderings, try the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. But we also need some sort of political work, so I recommend Leviathan, Democracy in America, or the Discourses of Machiavelli.
Gilgamesh: Gil was a loser. Besides, in a reading list of ten books, isn't two epics a bit much? Recommend The Thousand Nights and a Night (Burton translation, naturally).
Beowulf: Kicks Gilgamesh ass. But the Iliad and the Odyssey are hundreds of times more influential. And while Achilles is much more of a whiny douchebag than Beowulf, he does confront and wrangle with the problem of death in much the same way. Actually, there's an awful lot of death in this list... Hamlet, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, the Meditations if you take them...
Swift: Nice one.
Miller: You already have a Christian work, and Cantacle of Leibowitz, whatever its virtues (and they are great), is a rather atypical piece of science fiction. I'm going to go the same path I did with the poets and recommend some short story compilation.
De Eurocentrism: If the Europeans weren't the ones, y'know, writing all the books, you might have a point. Someone who wants a panoramic view of human cultures worldwide would do best assembling a separate reading list, with a lot more epics, but if you want to cover a broad range of human issues, you're going to be Eurocentric.
De ethics: You're asking for ten books to cover all the problems humanity confronts. You're not going to present a comprehensive overview of modern ethical positions; at best, you're going to say "There exists the problem of determining what is right" - and nothing poses this problem better than the Republic.
De satire: Well, if you want to kill two birds (politics and satire) with one stone, there's The Prince.
Things neither of our lists cover too well, and probably should: Feminism/the women's point of view (City of Ladies? Austen?). Race relations (Heart of Darkness? To Kill a Mockingbird? Huck Finn? Kim?). The coming-of-age story (Huck Finn or Kim again). Cosmology and eschatology (Genesis? Völuspá? Revelation? The Book of the Dead?). Love and romance (Shakespeare's sonnets? Catullus?).
Conclusion: Ten books just isn't enough.