The Great Books Corner discussion

Tell us which books you have read?

How long do you have?! I'm still trying to list them all on Goodreads! Ha! But for starters, I'll go back to the Greeks and Romans. The Holy Bible (of course!), The Republic, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, some Herodotus, Plutarch and Aristotle, many of the Greek myths, Aesop, Saint Augustine's Confessions and City of God and the complete Divine Comedy.

Just looking at the first of the lists, and starting from the bottom, I've read:

136. Nausea
115. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
114. War and Peace (Only partially, in school - and I bluffed through the essay question based on the talk of my teacher. It was interesting but too long...)
112. Madame Bovary
111. The Brothers Karamazov
105. I've read a bunch of Dickens, including David Copperfield, but I couldn't get into Pickwick's Papers and didn't try Hard Times yet.
93. The Red and the Black
91. Both Pride and Prejudice and Emma (and a few other Jane Austin books that aren't mentioned there)
86. Faust
68. Gulliver's Travels
60. Maybe, partially? Pensees
59. At least one comedy by Moliere, more likely two.
52. Some Shakespeare. King Lear is a favorite.
49. Don Quixote
38. The Canterbury Tales
37. The Divine Comedy. Read most of it, although I don't think I got through the whole Paradise part.

Wow! I'm impressed so far with what you have read. :)I like your War and Peace mehod of reading. LOL. I wish I could come up with a way to list a ton of books with a checkloist so people could just check off what they read. That would be cool a function to add these groups.

I read gthe Brothers Karamazov a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it.

From the second list a few more:
The Decameron (good stuff!)
Les Misérables
Frankenstein
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Vanity Fair
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Treasure Island
Grimm's Fairy Tales

Since I'm Russian, you can bet that the Russian authors on that list are pretty well covered. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov, Ostrovsky, Chenyshevsky, Blok, Chekhov - read a bit of everything.

Little Women
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
H.G. Wells science fiction
Brave New World
1984

Russian stuff again, same thing as above. I've read a bunch. One of my favorite poets is in this list :)

Solaris - at least partially. I remember I didn't like it, so I might not have finished it.

Katherine Mansfield's stories.

The Catcher in the Rye

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Wow this second list was huuuge. It seems like there's no way anyone can read the whole of it in a lifetime.

Oh, how I wish I was not a slow reader!!!!

I love Little Women. One of my favorite books. My aunt gave it to me when I was about 11.

Mary Alice wrote: "I wish I could come up with a way to list a ton of books with a checkloist so people could jus..."

Yeah, that would be great. I'm seeing more books I've read from the lists you are putting up here in the group. The fact that everyone lists various books makes it hard to keep track of ...

I have to ask my friend's daughter for the reading list from her college. She starts at a college in the fall that is based on the Great Books. I bet they have one main list.

From the 100 Greatest Novels list

I've read: 1, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31, 33, 38, 53, 59, 61, 63, 64, 67, 73

I'd like to read: 2, 3 (?), 27, 32, 40.

Mary Alice wrote: "Oh, how I wish I was not a slow reader!!!!

I love Little Women. One of my favorite books. My aunt gave it to me when I was about 11. "

Mary Alice,

Sometimes I wish I was a faster reader too, but then I ask myself why am I reading. Is it just to compile lists or impress others, myself or achieve some magical goal?! No! I'm reading to form my mind, heart and soul to prepare myself for Him and Eternity. When I remember that, I'm very content to slow down, take a deep breath and know that whatever I read is a gift. I enjoy my books more when I read slowly and contemplatively; they go deeper and stay with me longer. Remember Maria in 'The Sound of Music, 'Enough is as good as a feast.' It is!

I read all of War and Peace, read it and listened to the book on CD one June. I got the maps off Wikipedia so that I could actually follow the battle. I read and reread it, then I watched the movie in Russian with English subtitles. It was great. I LOVED it! I like to totally emerse myself in a Great Book or author. One summer I did a Dickens' feast--read a whole bunch of his novels, one right after another. Read and listened to them. I really believe in LISTENING to the old books. It helps to get good recordings. One summer I did Dostoevsky Feodor. I love the Russian authors, Karina.

From the list 100 Greatest Novels of All Time List (United Kingdom) I've read:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
Little Women, by Louisa Alcott
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
1984, by George Orwell
Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

I love these lists, Mary Alice! I used to think I was pretty well-read, but there are many "great" books I've never opened. I'd best get busy!

Kay,

How were The Woman in White and The Wind in the Willows? I have not read those.

Thanks for joining the group!

I'm curious about Lord of the Flies... I haven't read that.

Mary Alice: The Woman in White is pretty good - I think I even read it twice, but I really don't remember much of it anymore. It's rather sad that I forget the stuff I read. But on the positive side, if I forget I can enjoy the book all over again! There are a few books I re-read multiple times.

The Lord of the Flies is very good--yet disturbing. I read it for the first time about 4 years ago. There was also a classic movie made of the book which is very good.

I also tend to forget what I read. And since I started my PhD work I have very few functioning brain cells left.

You want to the 1963 version of the movie.

Here is a link--

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/...

PS Karina, you gave me a great idea for a topic in this group. Movies. :)

Mary Alice wrote: "Kay,

How were The Woman in White and The Wind in the Willows? I have not read those.

Thanks for joining the group!"

Mary Alice, I loved "The Woman in White"! The person who recommended it to me said that it was great reading during cold, bleak weather and I kind of agree with that. You'll want to read it when you have the time and the attitude to savor the slower, Victorian pace. As for "The Wind in the Willows", it has been many a decade since I read that, as I was quite young so I don't remember it in detail. I do remember that I was totally engrossed in it while I was reading.

By posting the two new topics on Plato and Aristotle, Mary Alice, you've reminded me of my Intro to Philosophy class, so I guess I read some of those authors... Hehe. I still have the essays I wrote for the exams on morality. Questions were:

1. How exactly does Socrates' views about the justice differ from the views of the majority? How does Glaucon argue that no one is volutarily just? Finally, why does it appear as though it is better to live an unjust life rather than one that is just?

2. What, for Aristotle, is Human good? What is the connection between happiness, virtue, and reason? Why must ethical virtues be acquired through habit rather than teaching? Finally, explain what Aristotle means when he describes ethical virtue as a mean disposition with respect to both actions and feelings?

Let's see if I can mentally remember the list in my head. I've read:
Wuthereing heights
Jane Eyre
David Copperfield
The Brothers Karamazov
Little Women
To Kill a Mockingbird
Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde
1984
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

...and I think a few more that I can not recollect at the moment.

The woman in White sounds really good. I will have to add that to my "to read," list. By the way, this is a great group. A wealth of reading information!!!!!

Mary Alice wrote: "Kay,

How were The Woman in White and The Wind in the Willows? I have not read those.

Thanks for joining the group!"

Hi! I'm new to this group, and I am not the person you addressed, but I LOVE Wind in the Willows!!!! It's great!!!!!!!!

Just finished Goerge Elliot's Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. What a beautiful story. I love the changes in the character of Marner from the beginning of the book to the end. A great redemption story.