read the classics

Wow! Just realised that I only have three books to finish, and I will have completed my ‘first set’ of ten books! (For those who don’t know, when I first added this goal I compiled a list of books and plays to read, divided into ten sets of ten—see my earlier entries.)

Now I only have Thucydides, Flaubert and Tolstoy to go. I think I’m going to allow myself to start a book from the second set as soon as I only have one book left :) (and that’s probably going to be Tolstoy as he’s so long.. :S)

Yay! Just been to Redruth Library and found a magnificent stack of classics—so happy! :) they even have a massive pictorial version of The Odyssey, and Ovid’s Love Poems. I also found a copy of Thoreau’s Walden, which is one of the books I’m reading at the moment, which is really good because it means I don’t have to strain my eyes reading it off a computer screen!

Gonna order in The History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides as well, as although it costs 50p it’s totally worth it, as it’s a really long work.

Woohoo! can’t wait!! lol :)

EDIT: just realised that most of the books on my current reading list are in translation. Tolstoy, Flaubert, Homer, Ibsen, Thucydides and Rousseau.. only four of the ten actually wrote in English!

At the moment, I’m reading sections 3-4 of Book II of Rousseau’s ‘The Social Contract’. In section 3, he seems to be saying that the formation of political parties is wrong, and that there should be no attempt to lead citizens away from their own individual thoughts on different matters:

“It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts…”

?? surely this can’t be right. Having a voting choice between different political parties is surely one of the bastions of democracy. Ideas anyone??

I have only 7 books of Homer’s The Iliad to go, and am completely caught up by the story, as well as bewildered by the speed with which Jove changes his mind as to whom he will lend his support! I found myself involuntarily grimacing as I read the many descriptions of heroes having spears thrust through their bellies spilling their entrails, or through their skulls smashing their brains up in their helmets..! Gruesome and gory stuff, and yet it’s stirring to read of their heroic bravery (which I suppose is the intended effect).

I have only just started Book 1 of the ten books of The Republic (432 BC) by the worthy Plato; so far this old chap called Cephalus is talking to Socrates about old age, and whether some old people are unhappy because of their old age or because of their general character and disposition.

I think, though, that I’m going to move The Republic into the next list, and read The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides first instead, as when I was reading a study guide to Plato’s book I noticed that the Peloponnesian War had already happened by his time. So it might be helpful to read things in chronological order, as it were.

Ps. Going back to Rousseau: I wonder if it is possible to have a state without different political parties, and if so how it would be run? Perhaps with a council made up of representatives from each area division of the country, who each take their voice from the people in their area.. this way of doing things would surely involve a lot of community consultation and voting, on all issues continually as they appeared.

The community would be much more involved in the running of the country, and their will would form part of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ or Sovereignty—but is this what most people would want?? or are most people (myself probably included) quite happy to let elected councillors take decisions for them, during the councillor’s term of office?

1. Moby-Dick—Melville
2. Tess of the D’Ubervilles—Hardy
3. The Wasteland—Eliot
4. The Grapes of Wrath—Steinbeck??
5. The Sound and the Fury—Faulkner
6. Metamorphoses—Ovid
7. poetry from Browning?
8. The Way of the World—Congreve
9. Lives of the Twelve Caesers—Suetonius
10. No Easy Walk to Freedom—Mandela

Fiction:
Drama:
Poetry:
History:
Philosophy:
Lives:
Science:

1. Les Miserables—Hugo
2. The Age of Innocence—Wharton
3. Lolita—Nabokov
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude—Marquez
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Kesey
6. The Cruel Sea—Montsarrat
7. Odes—Horace
8. Le Morte d’Arthur—Malory
9. I, Claudius—Graves
10. A Brief History of Time—Hawkins

Fiction:
Drama:
Poetry:
History:
Philosophy:
Lives:
Science:

1. Don Quixote—Cervantes
2. Catch-22—Heller
3. East of Eden—Steinbeck
4. Sherlock Holmes—Doyle
5. Wide Sargasso Sea—Rhys
6. Beowulf
7. The Histories—Herodotus
8. something from classics
9. biography of Franklin? Washington?
10. Essays—Emerson

Fiction:
Drama:
Poetry:
History:
Philosophy:
Lives:
Science:

1. The Great Gatsby—Fitzgerald
2. Night—Wiesel
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls—Hemingway
4. Rebecca—du Maurier
5. A Passage to India—Forster
6. The Birds—Aristophanes
7. Collected Poems—Hughes (or Yeats?)
8. The History of the Crusades—Runciman
9. On the Interpretation of Dreams—Freud
10. Goodbye To All That—Graves

Fiction: 5
Drama: 1
Poetry: 1
History: 1
Philosophy: 1
Lives: 1
Science: 0

1. The Three Musketeers—Dumas
2. To the Lighthouse—Woolf
3. The Sun Also Rises—Hemingway
4. Slaughterhouse-Five—Vonnegut
5. Henry V—Shakespeare
6. Poetics—Aristotle
7. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—Gibbon
8. Problems of Philosophy—Russell
9. Lives—Plutarch
10. On the Origin of Species—Darwin

Fiction: 4
Drama: 2
Poetry: 0
History: 1
Philosophy: 1
Lives: 1
Science: 1

1. The Brothers Karamazov—Dostoevsky
2. The Canterbury Tales—Chaucer
3. Gulliver’s Travles—Swift
4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame—Hugo
5. Richard III—Shakespeare
6. The Faerie Queene—Spenser
7. Medea—Euripides
8. A People’s Tragedy—Figes
9. The Rights of Man—Paine
10. Life of Doctor Johnson—Boswell

Fiction: 4
Drama: 1
Poetry: 2
History: 1
Philosophy: 1
Lives: 1
Science: 0

Then..

1. A Tale of Two Cities—Dickens
2. The Red Badge of Courage—Crane
3. Brave New World—Huxley
4. Romeo and Juliet—Shakespeare
5. something from classics
6. The Divine Comedy—Dante
7. Odes—Keats
8. The French Revolution—Carlyle
9. The Wealth of Nations—Smith
10. On The Road—Kerouac

Fiction: 3
Drama: 2
Poetry: 1
History: 1
Philosophy: 1
Lives: 1
Science: 1