Reassessing the List

Sean,

per our conversation about the future of the List, I think you're right. I don't feel comfortable advocating books for inclusion in advance of having read them, even with the 'classics' (although those are usually a safe bet). From a practical standpoint, I think it is necessary to have A list, if only to have a guide of books to read each year, but that doesn't have to be synonymous with THE List. Hopefully, this will allow us to read potential List books, but I think I've found more books I want on the List from my random selections than those we had originally planned to include.

One such example of this is the book I'm currently reading, Reinventing Knowledge. I highly recommend we include it in the List, as it is essentially a history of the List; specifically, the making and preservation of the Western Canon. I'm only halfway through, but definitely imppressed; in addition to the subject matter, it's well-researched, and (to me) even more importantly, well-written. It's a thick little book - 275 pages with only six chapters and a conclusion, but I honestly have a hard time putting it down. If I wasn't stealing time to read right before bed (and losing sleep because of it), I'd have finished the book already.

I'll write a more through review of Reinventing Knowledge later, after I finish it, but it's the type of book I want us to include on the List. And I discovered it the way we probably will most List books - by trolling the history section of my library. I added it to my personal reading list only because I thought it would be interesting reading for a project on knowledge management I'm doing at work. At the time, I was looking for Boorstin's The Creators, another in his series with The Discoverers, which was recommended by many for the List. I think I've told you, but if not, The Discoverers bored me to tears. I could not make myself read it, and I am definitely a completionist when it comes to reading! The Creators is still tentatively on the List plan for this year, but I don't expect it to make the final cut.

I have to dig out my reading list from last year since it has my final notes, but I think that I'll continue this year much the same as I did the previous one - reading anything that catches my fancy, and trying to include as much of the List's planned entries as possible. At the end of this year, since it will mark the end of the first 'era' of the List, you and I should sit down and review 10-30 books for inclusion in years 1&2 (I am counting them as a unit, so averaging 15 books a year, not 60 total). In the mean time, this is what I'm reading:

Reading 2009

Non-Fiction
Trivium- Joseph
Royal Nonesuch- Phillips
Ideas that Conquered the World
Discover Your Inner Economist
Fifth Discipline- Peter M. Senge
Future and Its Enemies- Postrel
Cyberprotest- Dahlgren
Reckless Mind- Lilla
Living High and Letting Die
Always On – Baron
Future Imperfect – David Friedman
Distracted – Jackson
Cognitive Diversity – Scott Page
Inventing Human Rights - Lynn Hunt
Crowd-Sourcing
This Is Your Brain on Music
Reinventing Knowledge
Farewell to Alms
Bottom Billion
Hackers and Painters

Fiction
At Swim-Two-Birds
Bangkok 8
Evidence of Things Unseen- Wiggins
Devil Wears Prada
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Middlesex
Acts of Faith- Caputo
27th City- Franzen
Passage
Last Cavalier- Dumas, trans. Lauren Yoder (carry over from last year's reading)
Carry On, Jeeves

The List (potentially)
A Brief History of Time
A Little History of the World - Gombrich
A World History - McNeill
An Urchin in the Storm
Art of the Novel- Milan Kundera
Big History
Biography: A Brief History- Nigel Hamilton (carry over from last year)
But Is It Art? – Freeland
Clan of the Cave Bear
Critical Mass – Ball
Curtain: Essay in Seven Parts- Milan Kundera, trans. Linda Asher
Golden Bough
History of God
How to Read a Book - Adler
How to Read and Why - Bloom
I Have Landed Introducing Aesthetics – Kul-Want
Perennial Philosophy – Huxley
Power of MythReligions of Man
Six Great Ideas – Adler
Story of Us Humans
Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World
The Creators
The Overflowing Brain
The Rhetoric of Fiction
The Stuff of Thought
Varieties of Religious Experiences
Walking on Water- Jensen
What Good Are the Arts?- John Carey
Your Inner Fish

Other/Additional (as in, will/*should* be the last to be read)
One Economics, Many Recipes - Rodrik
Origins: A Memoir - Amin Maalouf
Ethical Shopping - Young and Welford
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism - Baumol
Not Buying It
Letters to a Young Activist
Bad Modernisms- Mao and Walkowitz
Peasants, Traders and WivesAnthropology, Development, and the Post-Modern Challenge- Gardner and Lewis
Plowshares and Pork Barrels- Pasour
I Write What I Like- Biko
Africa Unchained
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
When Things Fell Apart - Robert H. Bates
On Being Certain
After War
Love the Work, Hate the Job - David Kusnet
Enterprise 2.0
Momentum
Everything Is Miscellaneous
Groundswell
Fear and Trembling - Kirkegaard
Wikinomics

Book Lust; Sean's Version

So I long ago promised something resembling an introduction to my taste, and I suppose I need to offer some sort of frame of reference for my comments and contributions. I’ll update my Amazon Wishlist eventually, but for now, you’ll just have to be satisfied with a brief overview of my favorites and current reads.

Let me point out, first of all, that the best resource for my book current booklust can be found on my Facebook Visual Bookshelf, which is tracking every book I’ve read/am reading/want to read here in China, or rather, since June of 2007. The tracking includes books I’ve borrowed from friends or my cohort, Mike’s bookshelf. It also keeps you posted on the unread books on (only) my bookshelf, and the books I’m working on at any given moment. As of this entry, it shows me as currently reading Songbook by Nick Hornby (finished since I wrote this entry), A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths, Walking On Water by Madeleine L’Engle, and A Beginner’s Guide to the World Economy by Randy Charles Epping. I’m also registered as in the middle of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, but I haven’t so much as glanced at that book in months. As a matter of course and commitment, I’m also “currently reading” The Bible.

Seeing as how Mike has turned the Visual Bookshelf into a competition of sorts, I can guarantee you it will be updated frequently. The reads I’m most looking forward to this year are mostly from my bookshelf since I can’t count on getting home by 2009. I’m really excited to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and I’m thinking I’ll take on The Brothers Karamazov if I can fit it in. More generally off this list, my favorite authors in no particular order are Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I probably ought to add Leo Tolstoy to that list after falling completely in love with both War & Peace and, so many years ago, Anna Karenina.

Anyhow, soon I'll also post my Movie Lust and Music Lust, but I didn't want to flood the blog. Catch you later.

-S

History According to Tolstoy

I apologize for my absence, life has kept me quite…occupied. I'm going to strive to update one of my four blogs at least once a day,from soonish on out, I promise. For that kind of consistency, I'm going to need to make sure I can get ahead of myself, writing-wise.

Since I last posted, I've finished War & Peace, How to Read a Book by Adler, and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Foster and I've started A Sideways Look at Time by Griffiths. But first, let me talk about War & Peace. After finishing, War & Peace feels like an immense accomplishment. The last 100 pages are quite taxing but after finishing it, I absolutely believe it belongs on Year 1 of The List—more as a starter case than anything else, I think. You see,this first year is about "How to Use the List: Theories and Thought Exercises," and so M and I (by far mostly M) have struggled to look for books that will enlighten one on the meaning of reading and to a certain extent, life and time in general (aren't the two synonymous on some philosophical level?).

War & Peace is both. What is the meaning of reading for enrichment if not to accomplish a thorough reading of a masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War & Peace. Moreover, Tolstoy's historical theories are worth considering in the grand scheme of learning how to use The List. His idea is basically this—history as written by historians is fatally flawed because in his view, it generally fails to take account of the conditions of the general population. For Tolstoy the history that matters is that of the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs and every other myriad families fumbling their way through "history." Too often historians give account only of events or the personal conditions that lead historical leaders/"great men" to do whatever they do. Such accounts are insufficient, and we lose sight of the brave soldiers who brashly charge into action, the "historically" insignificant motivations of a man to be a mid-level government decision-maker, or the morbid interloper who ruins romances and lives out of revenge,spite, or hedonistic malevolence.

Is this true? I think the story makes a good case, if not an unnecessary argument altogether. But what an enjoyable way to read it—and what a great way to kick-off a 20+ year long examination of humanity's artistic history.

Read it already.


- S

The Case for Literature

To be honest, I’m not sure how to react to “The Case for Literature” (the essay, not the book). Perhaps it’s because it’s “conceit” is stated simply as a matter of course or fact, and argued so clearly that I find it hard, and/or pointless to argue with him. The only thing I really firmly disagree with him on is a pretty blatant hypocrisy in paragraph 35 (or around there). Gao makes the specific point that “The writer is also not a prophet.” Yet he spends much of the remainder of the essay prophesying (especially in paragraph 37). Perhaps he wasn’t speaking of “prophecy” in the context of public appearances (such as this Nobel Prize acceptance speeches) and only in their work—but I think that he ought to have been more careful or clear about what he meant by that.

I don’t disagree, I don’t think the writer is a prophet at all—as he seems to point out, his or her works are simply vehicles for personal views and emotions, and the audience digests it as it will, but if a man is a prophet, and that man is a writer (take the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby), then it doesn’t preclude the notion, only intention.

Anyhow, for me, the piece left little reaction room—and while we don’t really have the readership yet to vet a good public discussion of the relevant issues that arise from the essay, here were some of my lingering conceptual questions:

Why are literature, art, and music so often censored? What makes them so dangerous?

In paragraph 33, Gao says that "The writer cannot fill the role of the Creator so there is no need to inflate his ego by thinking that he is God." What about Tolkien? I’m not a fan of The Lord of the Rings or its universe, but Tolkien worked hard to developan entire mythology around his work, and in fact, that was his intention. In that sense, could Tolkien be considered God (or rather, A god?)?

In paragraph 58, Gao says that “it is actually not the challenge of the writer to society but rather the challenge of his works." This brings to mind the classic Gandhi quote, "we must be the change we wish to see in the world." Can’t a writer consciously challenge the world intrinsically in his works? Is it really an either/or proposition?

Anyhow, a dry piece, but accordingly essential. I can’t wait to come home in April and get a hold of the other readings for this year!

-S

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

I took a break from reading W&P to read Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Like a Professor (perhaps hoping that it would improve my reading of W&P - that remains to be seen).

I actually have very little to say about this book, other than I loved it. Of the books I've read so far, of the books that I will read for the List, this is definitely one of the most enjoyable.

The chapter list is fairly comprehensive. While, as he notes, the topics covered aren't exhaustive, they would give anyone a good start into the realm of literary understanding and criticism. Each is accessible, providing thought-provoking but recognizable examples to learn from and digest. I haven't read most of the books he discusses but he has made me look forward to reading them (although, really, it's not hard to do that).

The chapters are self-contained units, but Foster takes care to use the same sources through several chapters, and reference previous themes he has discussed to build a more complete picture of the work.

At the end of the book, he includes an exercise for practice (A Test Case), but participation is obviously optional, and since I read it at 11 last night, I didn't bother, and still learned a lot.

My one quibble is I don't agree with him at all about Song of Solomon. The imagery he discusses are there, but I think the novel's character development is sufficiently flawed to negate its potential.

Foster is engaging and helpful, and is definitely one of my favorite English professors I've never had. This book is the best of English class with none of the worst (like homework, or even really reading the numerous texts he references). I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone attempting a project like the List, or even just anyone wanting to get the most from their reading, and pop culture more broadly.


- M

Tapestry

I think that the thing I love most about War & Peace is probably the richness of variety in the characters. There is a VAST range of personalities, motivations, attitudes, desires, and needs on display. Consequently, relationships as they are portrayed in literature are taking on whole new meanings for me. Indeed, it will be hard to ever look at a typical fiction's relationship dynamics ever again without feeling some hollow ring of sadness that Tolstoy is not writing it. I think this comes from the characters seeming to be in such relief against a theater that most authors find inaccessible. I think in the end, Tolstoy just committed to his story and his characters in a way few authors do (dare I say, "can"?). One would have to commit to this level in order to lay out such a staggering array of people and such a sprawlingly lengthy work. Every time I pick it up, I think "this is what it takes to commit and this is what happens when you do." In the end, I suppose that's the real root of my love affair with War & Peace. I do love the characters and the stories, and I'll discuss them more at length--but Tolstoy's commitment is inspiring and rewarding.

So this entry was short and rambly. I'm a rambly kind of guy. But not short. So you can usually expect me to be rambly. But if you see me, I won't be short. It was written in a cab at 12am. What do you want?

-S

The Case for Literature

As noted, The List is definitely a work in progress.

First example: The Case for Literature, a truly excellent collection of essays by Gao Xianjian, translated by Mabel Lee. When I included The Case for Literature, I thought it was a book-length dissertation on why literature is important to read and understand. And while I was incorrect in this assumption, I wasn't disappointed. However, I have removed the book from The List, and instead listed selected essays ("The Case for Literature,"Author's Preface to "Without Isms," "Without Isms," and Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth").

All of Xianjiang's essays are beautifully written, and his explorations of the impact of the Chinese language on the possibilities of thought and story-telling make me wish I had the time (and gumption, frankly) to learn.

Of these essays, I have to say that Xingjian's Preface to "Without Isms" is actually my favorites. One of the difficulties of reading a collection of someone's speeches and essays is that they often have common themes and after a while, they all start to sound the same. The Preface is the second essay included (after the Introduction) so its subject matter (expanded in "Without Isms," the fifth essay) was still fresh and new.

This essay actually affected me pretty deeply, to the exclusion of the other essays - I honestly can't remember what the others say nearly as well, altho I do know they are excellent. In fact, I'm basing a post on my blog, the Everyday Idealist, on the Preface (and once I have the post up at the EI, I'll link it). So I think I'll keep this post short, and just wait for Sean's comments (which I'm sure he'll make even tho he doesn't the essays yet.

For now though, I'll say that this is definitely a collection to add to mine and I will definitely have to include Soul Mountain on my reading list in the future.



- M

War and Peace, Entry No. 1

This is going to take a while.

After I picked War and Peace up from the library, I let it sit on my shelf for a few days, just staring at me. It's an intimidating book - 1200 pages, one of the greatest books of all time, written by one of the greatest authors of all time (inspiring a philosopher no less than Isaiah Berlin to ponder his motivations,). It was precisely for these reasons that we included it in the beginning year of The List, rather than later on with his contemporaries - as Sean insisted, what better way to start off an exploration of human thought, history and literature than by reading W&P. So here we are. And this is going to take a while.

I'm intentionally taking my time with it, spreading it throughout the first year of this gedankenexperiment. Actually, as of this writing, I'm already off target, since my goal is to read 100 pages a month, and I'm only just now hitting that mark in February. It didn't help that it took me 60 (large, dense) pages to get into the story. Any book of this length, (including The Discoverers, which I love) is bound to be intimidating. But when it appears that the book will be nothing but reading reports of conversations (half in French, which, while I can read it without the translation, I'm still unsure of the point) between over-privileged Russian elites in their over-stuffed salons, even my interest flags (not that I would ever not finish the book - I am a completionist, and besides, this is The List, and War and freaking Peace!).

After the 60th page or so, something changed. I'm not sure if it was me, if it was Tolstoy, or what, but it captured me. Most of the *action* still takes place in drawing rooms and hallways, but each of the characters, however briefly noted, are complex actors. Each is fully human - not simply a caricature or type inserted for fill. Tolstoy is evidently fascinated by these individuals and their lives, the choices they make, the actions they take, the circumstances that shape them. After a while, it's infectious.

Some of that credit must be placed with the translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Being desperately out of practice with my own Russian language skills (and never having reached Tolstoy's level anyway), I really can't know for certain how true they are to the original text. The reader has to place tremendous faith in the work of the translators, the best of which rise to the level of interpreters - not merely transposing the original words, but actively reimagining the work - writing as the author would have, if s/he had written in the second language. While not a substitute for a reading in the native tongue, the best translations capture the spirit and render the thinking of the original. Given what I've heard about W&P from those who read it in Russian, Pevear and Volokhonsky have done a worthy job

So, this is going to take a while, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also hoping that by writing every 100 pages or so, and interspersing my reading of this with other selections from The List, I will be able to observe my own thinking grow and evolve over the course of the year. I'm also looking forward to the inevitable debates with Sean about these books (since we rarely agree on any interpretation). All in all, it should be a very interesting year.

- M

The List

The List is a shared reading list encompassing the entirety of human civilizations in 20 years. The idea of The List came developed over a year’s time (2007) after Mariel mentioned to Sean that as part of organizing her massive reading list (over 40 pages), she intended to compress 50 000 years of human history and literature into a 15-20 year reading project. Sean, being who he is, insisted she actually do it, and that she share. Eventually they (meaning Mariel) sorted through The List, which is posted by year. This year, 2008, is the first year of The List.

This is a work in progress. While The List is organized in a (mostly) logical manner, neither of us have read these books. Many are included simply because they were recommended, or looked interesting, and so were sorted into their respective years. With this in mind, expect that The List will grow and evolve over time, as we actually begin reading the books, and deciding if they are truly worthy of inclusion.

Enjoy.

The List
* italicized implies that a book is recommended, but optional


Year 1: How to Use the List: Theories and Thought Exercises

The Philosophical: The Broader Concepts
Apollo’s Fire- Michael Sims
The Discoverers- Boorstin
The Elegant Universe
A Sideways Look at Time
Study of History- Toynbee

The Philosophical: The Human Mind
I Am a Strange Loop- Douglas Hofstadter
The Head Trip- Jeff Warren

[added 2.13.08: History of a Disturbance - Steven Millhauser. Published in The New Yorker on 3.5.07]

The Practical Aspects: How to Use the List
Biography: A Brief History- Nigel Hamilton
The Well-Educated Mind- Bauer
How to Read a Book- Mortimer Adler
The Rhetoric of Fiction
How We Think- Dewey
How to Read and Why- Bloom
How to Read Literature Like a Professor- Foster

[edited 2.13.08: The Case for Literature, to:
‘The Case for Literature’
Author’s ‘Preface to Without Isms’
‘Without Isms’
‘Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth’
(all from The Case for Literature- Gao Xingjian, trans. Mabel Lee)]


. . . . . .
Year 2: Roots of Society, Culture and Faith
[tentative]

Evolution and Natural History
Man Makes Himself- Childe
The Blind Watchmaker
Story of Us Humans, from Atoms to Today’s Civilization- Robert Dalling
World History- McNeill

Human Society
Stuff of Thought- Steven Pinker
Guns Germs and Steel
Collapse
Wisdom of Crowds

Religion and Philosophy
The History of God- Armstrong
Perennial Philosophy- Huxley
Religions of Man- Smith
Varieties of Religious Experience- James
World as Will and Idea- Schopenhauer
Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World
The Golden Bough- Frazer

Welcome

Welcome to The List.

The List is both our shared reading list and a place to discuss the included books and essays. The idea of The List came developed over a year’s time (2007) after Mariel mentioned to Sean that as part of organizing her massive reading list (over 40 pages), she intended to compress 50 000 years of human history and literature into a 15-20 year reading project. Sean, being who he is, insisted she actually do it, and that she share. Eventually they (meaning Mariel) sorted through The List, which is posted by year. This year, 2008, is the first year of The List.

This is a work in progress. While The List is organized in a (mostly) logical manner, neither of us have read these books. Many are included simply because they were recommended, or looked interesting, and so were sorted into their respective years. With this in mind, expect that The List will grow and evolve over time, as we actually begin reading the books, and deciding if they are truly worthy of inclusion.

Additionally, The List is only one part of a much larger project to categorize everything we and our friends find interesting and important. This project is broken down into two smaller parts: Awesomeosity and Blogworthy. If The List is everything you need to know to be human, Awesomeosity is everything you need to know to be in the know, and Blogworthy is everything else worthwhile you might have missed in your daily life. Eventually, we’ll actually build a webpage and start sharing our knowledge and thoughts with the rest of the world.

Until then, enjoy.