Open Mike: Editions

Here's a list of the two kinds of people in the world: 

1. People who like lists
2. People who don't

As a member of the first group, I'm continuing to putter away on my grand list project, my bite-off-almost-more-than-you-can-chew book recommendations list.

The list is now called "266 Books by Genre." The number keeps changing!

The list started when my son decided at age ten or 11 that he didn't like to read. As an inveterate reader and bibliophile, this consternated me deeply—how do you learn about the world if you don't read? Books are where you find most of what humans know, and have learned, and have thought; they are where, mostly, the great glorious life of the mind resides.

Zander yesterday. (And an example of the Zeiss 24mm Sonnar
wide open at ƒ/1.8, too.)

So, taking a cue from our epic read-aloud traversal of the Harry Potter series when my fine lad was in single digits, I got a bright idea. I figured I'd just pick a bunch of the best books I know for finding out about the world, and read them aloud to him. Who says you can only read aloud to little kids? I was influenced by my off-the-grid friends Jim and Becky, who continued to read aloud to their daughter Lillian until well after the time when she could just as easily read aloud to them. (Their family might still read aloud together when she's home from college, I don't know.) 

Jim and I were in the same 5th grade class at Bayside Elementary School, where we "hated" our teacher, a certain Mrs. Memmel. (She had firm favorites, and fairness was not a big point with her). But nemesis Mrs. Memmel did me one big solid, I think. For an hour a day she would read aloud to the class and have us follow along in our own books. It was there I heard how all the punctuation marks sounded. I've been visual since birth, and all my life had loved books for pictures; but fifth grade was when books really came alive for me—when type began to speak.

My project of reading aloud to Zander didn't last very long...about three chapters into an ornate translation of The Three Musketeers, to be precise. That is one difficult book to read aloud, and neither one of us were enjoying it much. In any event he had already discovered video games, then, as now, his favorite pastime. My reading put him to sleep, but I wasn't sure how much he was getting out of it. It seemed tiresome to me too. We stopped.

But I'd already succumbed to the danger ahead: I had started thinking about which books would be worth reading aloud to him...and by extension which books would be worth reading if you could only read a few...

...Think about it; they had to be comprehensible to a teenager, they had to be interesting and fun to read, but I wanted them to contain some education, too—some wisdom and useful information—some measure of truth about humans and our lives in the world. My idea was, if they end up fated to be the only books he ever reads, which ones should those be?

Another influence on this thinking is St. John's College in Maryland and Santa Fe. It teaches an entire curriculum based on reading alone. As a young man I really wanted to go to St. John's, and got as far as a campus visit. I loved the idea of educating yourself from "great books."

(Come to think of it—this just occurred to me—I'd make a great St. John's professor. How many other people do you know who tried to teach themselves Anglo-Saxon just to read The Seafarer? As an iconoclastic polymath autodidact, I'd be a natural candidate! Lol.)

Of course, St. John's picks very different books than I'd pick. They go right to primary sources, the great masterpieces of history. I've read some of those, and a lot of them are tough slogging. I mean, I don't mind reading Chaucer in Middle English or The Wealth of Nations, but these are not books that are recommendable to others, most especially post-videogame teenagers.

Another antecedent is Dr. Eliot's famous Five-Foot Shelf, which I admire. From a distance.

Reading aloud—the original conception of the project—would impose certain disciplines, too. Reading aloud is more clearly a cousin to entertainment, so you'd want to pick something reasonably gripping, something that stood a chance of carrying your listener along. You'd also want words that slipped the tongue with mellifluousness and grace, writings with a little poetry and eloquence—literary art. You would shun books that are dry, and, since reading aloud requires an investment in time and effort, you'd stay away from those that are overlong. (It is safe to claim that reading Proust was a life-changing experience for you, because only about one in 100,000 other readers will be in a position to contradict you.) You would never choose Kant, or James Gould Cozzens.

(Kant illustrates a chronic failing of book lists: they're always telling you to read books you know damn well you'll never read. "Read Ulysses," says the List of 100 Great Novels, with a supercilious sniff of supriority. Sure thing, pal. "Read War and Peace." No, you read War and Peace. I'm doing well just to make it three-quarters of the way through The Death of Ivan Ilyich.)

All of this thinking has contributed to my evolving "266 Books by Genre" list, now aimed at intelligent teenagers generically, with adults invited too. (My list has some hard books, true, but it also has some easy ones.)

It is astonishing how much work can go into such a list, if you're taking the task seriously. The research to nail down one entry can occupy me for a whole evening. I have probably read at least 50 books merely as research for the list, and the number could easily be double that, depending on how you count. And I have re-read a number, too, which is not one of my usual reading habits (too little time, too many books). I'm re-reading O.E. Rolvaag's wonderful novel Giants in the Earth right now, and I must say I'm enjoying it a lot more now than when I read it in American History class in high school (although I was proud of myself for getting entirely through it when I was 14).

I'm reading the Harper Perennial Classics paperback. I bought it as consolation when my Kindle went AWOL recently.

I have a vintage hardcover of that selfsame book, but it's packed away in a box in the basement. Managing one's own reading sources is sometimes not the easiest thing in the world.

Separate problems
But back to The List, which I guess I should capitalize, given the capital I'm investing in it in terms of time and energy and care. It currently consists of 36 genres or categories, with between three and ten titles in each. So far, only one author is represented twice. The categories and their matches to various books are almost a separate puzzle, and I'm having fun with that too—for instance, To Kill A Mockingbird is in the "Legal & Courtroom" category, whereas it might also fit in the section called "Family," and Crime and Punishment is (perhaps too cleverly) located in "Psychology."

The categories can take on their own life a bit, as well. When you only have five or six books with which to "cover" a topic, you can't be exhaustive—each set provides a snapshot, you might say, a taste, a window into a far broader literature. I try to ask, if a general reader were only going to read five works of science fiction (for example), which five should those be? And, if that reader is perchance going to go on to become an aficionado of that genre, which titles are most likely to lead her in that direction?

In many cases it's not the greatest masterpieces of each genre that are the best choice. Many times, those really are best appreciated by someone who is delving deeper into the genre, and loves it better than than can be encompassed in five titles. I do that same thing with authors, too—I love Turgenev, for instance, but he's represented on The List by the brief psychological novella First Love rather than by his acknowledged masterpiece Fathers and Sons. The latter should really just not be any reader's first or only exposure to Turgenev.

Then there's the question of expertise. With certain categories, I'm almost an expert—the six titles in "Arts & Crafts" fitted themselves together very neatly, and very early on. But "History" is still wide open, with only one final choice nailed down. I could read for the rest of my life and not rise to the level of expert, so in the History category I am going to have to rely on research and the opinions of others.

On the other hand, I think "Money & Finance" is nailed down. I'm not an expert, but I did extensive research and consulted a number of people, and I think I've winnowed the many candidates down to a good, readable, and reasonably balanced selection:

Money & Finance (7)

Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds (Chapters 1–3) [1841]
Edwin Lefevre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator [1923]
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson [1946]
Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire Next Door [1996]
Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker [1989]
Anthony Bianco, Wal-Mart: The Bully of Bentonville [2007]
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society [1958]

As I say, just a taste of the subject—but a tasty one. And catholic—one might prefer the word "idiosyncratic"—as well as thought-provoking.

The glowing page
Finally, there is the question of editions. Books are physical objects, and all books are emphatically not created equal. Not only does physical presentation and object-quality vary wildly, but the actual contents can differ—translations, annotations, selections, even introductions (my personal copy of Huckleberry Finn features the introduction by T.S. Eliot—that might not be important to 99.9% of that book's readers, but it is to me).

This intersects with another evolution in my life and the life of the world. A few years ago I bought an early Amazon Kindle. I did not take to it right away, but, like digital cameras, digital books have just a few indisputable, indubitable advantages that cannot be gainsaid. In the case of digital cameras, it's high-ISO capability and the elimination of the odious chore of wet chemical development; with digital books, it is radically improved convenience in terms of access and storage, and the fact that you can choose your type size on the fly to make reading as comfortable as pie. (It now annoys me that I can't adjust the size of the tiny type in car magazines...although I probably could on an iPad.)

I realized how much I had grown to depend on my Kindle when I lost it a few weeks back. It was like a beloved dog had run away. I was bereft.

I finally faced facts—that damn'd Kindle isn't coming back—so I ordered a Kindle Paperwhite. Review forthcoming, but suffice it for now to say that the Kindle has really evolved.

The Kindle hasn't made me love books any less, however. I adore books, and will do so until I expire. But it has changed the way I buy books, as well as the books I buy.

My mantra is now "fewer, but better." Since I bought the Kindle I have donated more than 20 boxes of books to the local used book store. What I look for now are paper books that have to be paper books—ones that are fine, or rare, or old, or well-designed, or well-made, or unusual, or illustrated, or interestingly bound, or that benefit from formatting—and books that are important to me personally. To have it as a paper book, it's no longer enough for a book just to deliver into my hands a text, long the job of the cheap paperback—for that, for me, the Kindle has taken over.

With many of the books on The List, a capable Kindle edition or a workmanlike paperback would do just fine—all you need is the text.

But with others, the edition is important. I'd love to be able to recommend every title on my List in the form of an in-print paper book, and in just the right edition. That adds another layer to the research process, however, because, having once selected a book, I then have to research all the various printings and editions, always with an eye to availability. (It doesn't help that the Amazon website is not very rigorous in discriminating between various editions of a book.) It's looking like the size of the task of recommending editions might come close to the size of the task of picking the books. 

Sometimes, it's easy. For instance, Betty Friedan's great classic The Feminine Mystique, a shoo-in choice in the "Feminism" category (and a suprisingly good read for those of us of the male persuasion), has just been republished by W.W. Norton & Company in a 50th Anniversary edition. A nicely produced hardcover, lovingly prepared and presented, with good-sized, readable type—and Gail Collins and Anna Quindlen thrown into the bargain? Done and done.

This business can be problematic, too, though. For example: You'll notice that Edwin Lefevre's famous investing classic, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, is included in my "Money & Finance" genre. Well, it is now available new in a 2009 annotated edition from Wiley that is just super. The new annotations by John Markman are worth twice the price of the hardcover, and they bring Livermore and Lefevre's collaboration more alive than it has been in years. I don't even like money and investing, and I've been immersed in this. In this case, it's hardly enough just to recommend the title...it has to be a paper book (the formatting is key) and it has to be this specific edition.

I'm beginning to think—just beginning to think—that this great List of mine might actually never get finished. It's possible that, like the sum total of the books in a living reader's experience, it might remain forever a work in progress, sustained by the endlessness of the world's good books and the meager thimbleful we can each imbibe in one mere lifetime. One might even observe that most lists are in a sense never final, because everyone who ever reads a list finds clunkers and gems, choices that fit their needs and tastes and ones that don't. One seldom if ever swallows the thing whole, but picks and chooses and takes away from it what he or she will.

But I plan to keep going anyway. Unfinished lists are just not as good as the ones that are done, for the compiler if no one else.

Mike

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic editorials and essays that appear only, but not always, on Sundays on TOP.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Terry Letton: "On the subject of reading aloud to children, when my daughter was very young I was alone with her one evening when she went on a crying jag not to be stifled. After trying all the obvious answers, food, food's end result, rocking...with no success, I picked up a book at random and started reading aloud with immediate result. The book, The Philosophy of History by G.W.F. Hegel. It worked so well that when she was pregnant with her first child I gave her a copy of her own."

Mike replies: I'm going to wager she's not the only one Hegel ever put to sleep.

scott: "You know what would make this list a whole lot better? If you shared it with your loyal readers, even in its incomplete form. Sure, there will be quibbling about which books made the cut or didn't, but that's the point, isn't it? And it's rather a tease to talk about the merits of this list without sharing it."

Mike replies: Well, it's not finshed, scott, and not ready for presenting. What I thought I might do is release every category one at a time once I'm finally happy with it, as I've done in this post. I'm mulling over the idea of doing so on its own separate blog, to avoid irritating TOP readers who aren't interested. We'll see.

David Dyer-Bennet: "I used to kind of like the 'great books' idea for education. But the more I learned and the more great books I read (foundational works in various intellectual areas, I mean, not fiction), the more it became clear to me that we've mostly found vastly better ways to explain these things than the people who first figured them out managed. This was most clear to me comparing Newton or Leibnitz with modern introductions to calculus (math is my degree field). So now I'm kind of off the idea."

Mike replies: Well said, and, really, I agree. It's far more efficient to read a good modern summary of the views of Thomas Hobbes in current English than it is to try to pluck them out of Leviathan by yourself. This is probably where the idea that "classics are great books nobody ever reads" came from. On the other hand, I'm a fan of Elizabethan translations, so it can cut both ways.

Christopher: "I would be a person very interested in this type of list. Especially if it is directed at newer, less seasoned readers. I've had a bad relationship with books for the majority of my life, as I've struggled with dyslexia and a plethora of other learning disabilities throughout it. The learning disabilities aren't what really stifled my love of books however, it was the way some of my teachers tried to 'cure' it and the public humiliation that soon followed which truly had the debilitating effect of destroying my relationship with books. I have only really started making the turn to enjoying reading quite recently. So I would push to say, that even while an unfinished list may not be particularly good in your eyes, the goal of the finished list may still be reachable while the list is in progress, so would it not be beneficial to publish it as such? A work in progress that never gets finished but is visible will always have more of an impact than one sitting away in a cabinet somewhere."

Mike replies: My condolences, Christopher. That was my son's problem too: he had a reading disorder when he was young, and his teachers refused to excuse him from reading aloud to the class, and he got made fun of. He transferred his resentment to books. The resentment survives, even though he now reads very well.

One good strategy you shouldn't be ashamed to try is to look for classic books written for adolescents (there's a lot of garbage floating around, hence the advice to look for established classics). For instance, if you want to read about the Civil War, start with Rifles for Watie or Across Five Aprils. You might not appreciate age-appropriate romance books for kids, or books about mice riding motorcycles, but books for young people can run the gamut from the inane to great literature such as Alice in Wonderland and Lord of the Flies. Checking out reading lists for any particular age group is easily done in private thanks to the Internet.

Thrillers might be a good way to get into reading—maybe our friend John Camp could recommend some that are known to be page-turners.

Certain writers have blunter, more plainspoken styles, like Raymond Carver. That might help you get past any skill impediments. And make no mistake, they can be very serious writers. Try out some Hemingway short stories or the short novels of John Steinbeck, for that matter.

I'd also suggest not wasting your time, and letting yourself off the hook when things aren't going well. Set yourself a page limit—40 or 60 pages, maybe—and read at least that much of every book you attempt. That gives you a good chance to get into the book. But then, at that point, if you aren't into it, give up and try something else. Don't feel bad about bailing out on a book. Not everything grabs everyone, and no one is keeping score. Reading for yourself shouldn't be an obligation and it shouldn't be punishment.

Phil Maus: "I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life educating myself through books. I learned to read at an early age and by seven or eight I could easily handle Twain, (I mean his text, not necessarily his ideas). School and I never got on well and I quit in my teens. One of my life's great regrets....

"Still, I thought the best way to learn about the world, as you put it, was by reading 'the Classics,' which in my limited formal education consisted of Dickens, Twain, Dumas, Stevenson, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Chekov and a handful of others I'd heard of. And that was about it. Throw in about an equal number (maybe a few more) non-fiction titles and you've pretty much summed up my education. Many of these were read in my berth in some ship, where I spent much of my youth. Of course, I've read many more books than that in my life, but none, I think, of any real consequence. And, my second great regret in life....

"I've never lost the love of reading or the curiosity or the desire for the knowledge contained in books. I still believe—naively I think—that if one can possibly find or make the time (the scarcest commodity of them all) to read a book, it should be something of substance. In other words, it must be a 'classic.' Whatever that means anymore.

"My wife of ten years doesn't read and never has and I've given up on my many attempts to impress upon her the value of a good story and the many other virtues contained in books. During the day I can't read while the TV is on and the TV is always on. Downside of living in a large, one-room loft; no escaping to the den to read. At bedtime, which used to be the hour or two each night I would spend with whatever book I was enjoying, reading long ago became an unwelcome activity and all my 'attention' should be directed elsewhere, or to sleeping.

"How I envy those who are well and roundly read, or for whom reading many books and acquiring the knowledge contained within isn't such a daunting proposition. Still, I am looking forward to your list, Mike, finished or not. Maybe with your help, and if I can manage to wrest the time to read a book, I'll have an idea what to spend those precious hours reading."

Mike replies: I'm single at the moment, so I'm used to not having to compromise. To my detriment, in some ways. But still, it does not seem unreasonable at all to me to demand a few hours free of the TV now and then so you can read.

Bill Tyler: "DDB's comments on the great books seem only half right to me. I certainly wouldn't want to learn calculus by reading Newton, but a good translation of Plato is far more informative than a modern summary of his ideas. I think the distinction is between works where the form of expression is a crucial part of the material expressed, and those where the underlying ideas come clearer as they are expanded and refined. Consider reading a restatement of Swift's 'Modest Proposal' versus the original. Everything important will be lost."

Comments

[Tim Bradshaw]

Chaucer in middle english is "not recommendable to others": what? Count this as my recommendation: I read most of the Canterbury tales (some of it aloud) at school and I would definitely recommend it to anyone, especially in the original language. It's wonderful of itself, and also teaches several important lessons about language. If you are a native english speaker you should read this as much as you should read Shakespeare. If you're not it may not teach the same lessons about language, though it's still just great fun.

[Peter]

I tried to interest my son in St. John's when he was looking at colleges; he had no interest (he's now a semi-literate IP/corporate attorney. My daughter has undergrad and master's degrees in photography, which has turned out to be a hobby. You can only try.

I also read "Giants In The Earth" in high school(English); to this day, I have never met another person that has read it. Thanks for the spark; I think I'll see if I can get it on the Kindle and read it again.

[Peter Tasker]

"Books are where ...... the great glorious life of the mind resides."

Classic! Thank you.

Peter

[Mark]

I love that dog. Looks very much like one I lost recently.

[Patrick Perez]

"when type began to speak." Sums up for me why I'm buying more books again (naturally, faster than I can read them). I bought my first e-book reading device about 6 years ago with the intention it would be used primarily for public domain/classics that I could get for free.

As a young 'un I was proud that one of my high school teachers described me as a 'voracious reader' on my college recommendation. But some time in the past twenty years real reading fell victim to reading computer screens. And I feel it has made me dumber. I don't think my brain engages the same with what I read on a computer. But now I have the Kindle Paperwhite and feel it is the best (so far) for reading text oriented content. Oddly, I read very few books on it. Instead, I read longform magazine articles zapped to the Kindle via wifi. Coincidentally, most of them I find from the website Longform.org.

One thing that has led me back to physical books is the typography. While the Paperwhite is very good for text, (I'd place the text quality of the PW as equivalent to mass-market paperbacks, where previous (non illuminated e-ink) devices were equivalent to newspaper text in regards to contrast, a major factor in legibility independent of text size/typeface). But there is just no comparison between books on a Kindle and physical books as far as page design and legibility/readability.

So while I look forward to seeing your list (I'm listless) I've been buying many of the types (if not actual) books that St. John's uses. I'm presently reading The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant (a 1962 edition updated from the '26 original. It is published by Time in what I imagine was a series to compete with Penguin Classics, hoity-toity for the Hoi Polloi.

An additional reason I read few 'books' on the Kindle is because I refuse to purchase Digitally Restricted Media. I've gotten some in print books for free, but its mostly Project Gutenberg (many poor translations have frustrated me. Reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I made up a drinking game based on the excessive use of a the Latin phrase a priori) or magazine articles.

Being the nerd I am, my lottery fantasy includes enrolling in St. John's. I'd only learned of it about five years ago, but it is just the thing that will help me become an autodidact (g). When I was looking for colleges in my HS days, it wouldn't have interested me.

As for lists, my brother is reading the Modern Library Associations top 100 novels of the 20th century http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
And for your History section I read (free, from Amazon) The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Peter Heather, Oxford University Press 2005). It is somewhat (SA) more accessible than Gibbon. As I like to say, Rome didn't burn in a day.

Patrick

[Scott L.]

"Zander yesterday."

A photograph of two individuals where only one is named? Unfair to that fine looking individual on the right!

Nice photo though.

Best regards.

[Tommy F]

I´ve read somewhere that there are 3 kinds of people,
those who can count and those who can not.

[William Flowers]

I'm so glad you mentioned Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth. I, too, read it as an assignment in high school, and always meant to return to it as an adult. Now is my chance.

Thanks.

[Len Salem]

A couple of thoughts after reading Mike’s Sunday post of 24th March 2013
Thought No. 1
Young people today are mostly tuned in to assimilating knowledge, following stories, learning generally, in small chunks. Often with considerable visuals accompanying same. This is habit forming.
BUT – I once read a novel ( I forget the name I’m afraid) where the main protagonist was a young man who wrote computer games. He was, in the book, wildly successful because he had realised that one of the most basic human drives is a thirst for knowledge and he made this desire to learn to be at the heart of his games, which also made him a lot of money.
So maybe educationalists need to revise school methods so that they start with the short chunk computer appropriate presentations that grab their recipients interests. Then, once the students are starting to get beyond the basics, they work on their innate desire for knowledge to encourage them to seek out the deeper, more considered, approach that you find in books. So book reading should be an end point, not a starting point, in teaching anything.

Thought No 2
Before books became generally available, knowledge was mainly imparted by oral tradition. I have a suspicion that when books did start to become available to the masses, there may have been an undercurrent of opinion among those who taught, analogous to what we hear now: "for goodness sakes, it seems all the youngsters want to do nowadays is read books instead of sitting down while their elders and betters explain the world to them out aloud. That’s awful”
P.S
When writing the above I had in my mind outpourings of the human mind conceived as books. I’m not for the moment addressing the pro’s and con’s of their presentation as objects in themselves versus Kindle type formats, in an educational context.

[Michael Matthews]

I'm with you on Liar's Poker. You might find The Big Short by Michael Lewis equally interesting. He is so credible a source that I can believe he accurately tracked the entire economic near-collapse to its source -- and in doing so shows how little has changed.

Now I have to read the rest of your finance list. I think it all starts right where you suggest: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

[Jim ullrich]

There are 10 people in the world, those who can count in binary and those who cannot.

[Patrick]

About a year ago, on a whim, I started reading H G Well's The Time Machine aloud to my wife while we were sitting up in bed one evening. This was probably the tenth time I'd read it, but the first time aloud (and the first time my wife had ever experienced it).

When reading silently it flows well, but trying to articulate the obsolete verbal patterns of a prim and proper nineteenth century English gentleman can lead to a lot of stammering. You really have to read Wells in the political and economic context of the time and place his books were written in the first place. When you add in the language difference, it makes for a challenging book to read aloud.

[Paul Van]

Interesting... I've been intermittantly working on a similiar project for my nephew. His dad and I both read a lot, and I would like to introduce him to some of the same pleasures - even if he is more interested in sports!
It's a lot tougher than it sounds to create a reading list for someone who is not already an accomplished reader. :)

[Rodger Kingston]

Mike, I understand just what you're going through. I spent many years compiling my 1995, self-published, "Walker Evans In Print: An Illustrated Bibliography." Oh my, the attention one had to pay to all the various "points," details that distinguish first editions from later ones; and the joys of figuring out the many editions of titles such as "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," in many languages besides English (of which I ended up with something like 39 different editions). And the ever-present need to be consistent in presentation and formatting, numbering and renumbering, was enough to drive me to drink.

I started the project one fine day, with the realization that if I put together, like Yin and Yang, the list of titles in my growing Walker Evans collection with my equally growing Want List of titles to search for, I'd (theoretically at least) have a complete listing of everything Evans.

That led to the eventual publication of "WE In Print" (with 1210 entries), and in 2002 an Addenda with 612 more entries. And there are notes for a future Addenda of several hundred more entries, but that I leave to someone younger and more energetic.

The point of all this is that despite the hours - years, really - of hard work, both detective and clerical, and the fact that the edition of only 400 copies still has a carton left unsold in my basement after almost 20 years, it was without question worth all the effort; it is something that I produced that people still use. John Szarkowski praised it. I made many good friends in the world of Walker Evans. At the time, it was the largest, most complete Evans bibliography, and no doubt still is unless someone has piggybacked new findings onto mine (which I hope they do). And while I am primarily a documentary photographer, I have no assurances that I will be remembered for my photographs at all, but I'm pretty sure this bibliography will never be entirely forgotten or without value to Evans collectors and scholars. I'm still glad I did it.

[dale]

You never know what can develop from reading aloud, I did to all my kids well beyond when they could read on their own.(3 daughters)
My youngest credits (blames) me for her PHD in Medieval History because after tiring of reading little girl books like the entire "Little House" series etc. When reading the "Anne of Green Gables" and Anne Shirley became infatuated with "The Lady of Shalott" I seized the opportunity and switched to Tennyson! The rest is er, PHD History....

[Dennis]

I've become something of a childrens book critic over the last 10 years. I've been reading aloud every night to her since she was a few months old. She's a great reader, but we still enjoy reading together. I try to pick a book that would be challenging for her. She tries to pick books that are just plain fun. Reading aloud sure teaches you a lot more about prose than reading to yourself. I'm reminded of those visual puzzles where words in a paragraph are omitted and your brain instantly fills the in. Reading aloud, things that your brain glosses over sound clumsy. The Harry Potter series was great fun to read (I'm a long time Sci-Fi/Fantasy fan) ... I'd read it years ago to myself, but reading it out loud made me realize how coarse the prose is. Anyway, good books or bad, I'm happy to have started this tradition.

[Jack]

Regarding Kindles:
When you have your full list, I suggest you have a way of downloading all your books to a kindle. You get the percentage of 266 books. Hey, the whole collection should go for less than a single Leica lens.

I look forward to your paperwhite Kindle review. To me it is 4 times better than the original.

[Paul Macdonald]

Why not make it a 'living' list, where you maintain it on line with a running summary of titles you add and those you remove. The changes might be just as interesting to your audience as the current version. Putting it up in unfinished form might give you the satisfaction of a tangible product, and would give your readers the information now, not at some indeterminate point in the future.

Paul

[James Sinks]

I tried to teach myself to sightread Anglo-Saxon so I could read Beowulf aloud. I wasn't concerned with understanding the words, I just wanted to know how Beowulf sounded. My feeling has always been that for poetic works, you can't grasp the work unless you know how it sounded.

It didn't go very well. Even with a grounding in German, a passing familiarity with Norse pronunciation, and a fairly deep knowledge of the culture that spawned Beowulf, I just couldn't do it myself.

[Stephen Gilbert]

"Where are the Customers' Yachts?," by Fred Schwed, Jr. The joke on which the title is based is alone worth looking at.

(http://books.google.com/books/about/Where_are_the_customers_yachts_or_A_good.html?id=99zVAAAAIAAJ)

[Ernie Van Veen]

There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

[James Sinks]

Also, re: books that need to be books, Al Bester's Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are both books that need some typographic finesse to tell the story. Unfortunately every edition I've seen uses new typesetting, but literally cut-n-pastes the specially formatted sections from an earlier edition. I'm guessing the first edition--possibly the initial serialization in Galaxy--was the only one that actually had special plates cut and everyone else has been using photographs from that.

Both books are also excellent, if you haven't already read them. The Demolished Man in particularly is a high water mark in science fiction.

[Malcolm Leader]

You made me realize something. In elementary school we often had a teacher read an entire book over several weeks to us, usually after lunch when we were all a bit lethargic. I think I did leard pronunciation from this! Among others,I remember "The Phantom Tollbooth" and "A Wrinkle in Time" both of which launched me into the SF and Fantasy genre. Heinlein (and others)closed the deal. Today I read tons of technical stuff for my job so subsequently I gravitate to fantasy to unwind. Try getting wrapped up in the "Wheel of Time" series (14 1000 page books and thousands of characters) or George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" series. Be prepared to take notes.
I tried listening to books on tape. In the car I couldn't pay attention to driving and the plot simultaneously so that was a bust. At home, I just got sleepy. However, a live human reading to you is different - although not everyone has the ability to read aloud effectively. Somehow the interaction of page-words-eyes-brain is special to be and is better than any drug I ever tried. Some authors have it, some don't.

[Geoff Wittig]

I spent about two and a half years reading all of the Tolkien trilogy to my (then) two children. It started out as a lark to get them to bed, but rapidly took on a life of its own. Soon we all looked forward to it. Great stuff, a real bonding experience.

But where to go after that? The Hobbit really didn't do the trick, as it lacked the powerful narrative arc of the Trilogy. And then they were adolescents, and that was that.

But they plan on reading Tolkien to their kids if and when they have 'em.

[Mike Mundy]

James Gould Cozzens? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.

"Cozzens has virtually disappeared from the American literary scene" per Wikipedia.

As I recall, though, "Guard of Honor" was quite good.

[John Krumm]

I occasionally read to my wife if she can't sleep, with some success. My bedtime book reading has been in large part supplanted by iPad web browsing (including your site). I can read a book on the iPad if it's my only choice (I had to for a class I took last fall) but my brain still prefers paper. I use my Kindle for the types of books I don't want on my chest, like Thoreau's Complete Journals, or books I want immediately. Otherwise I'll buy the physical book if it's not too much. We have a great "friends of the library" bookstore here and I love passing on almost new titles, usually picking up another. One thing that's strange, my novel reading has almost died, and I was an English major in college. Not sure what the deal is with that. Seems like my mind has become too slack for the form, and I'll pick up more friendly (even if technical) non-fiction and memoirs.

[Clayton Jones]

Mike, Three questions for you:

1) Is Harry Potter on your list? [No. --Mike]
2) If so, in what category?
3) Do you count it as one book or seven?

Thanks, great post.

[Steve Jacob]

I became a Kindle convert when I started travelling a lot a couple of years ago. There is something incredibly cool about having a whole bookshelf in your pocket.

However getting kids to read is a tough one. I blame schools mainly. Most of my English teachers seemed to treat it as a virtuous crusade, but Thomas Hardy and Dickens nearly put me off reading for life!!

Better to treat reading like music. Kids all like music of some kind, even if we don't approve of the selection. As a kid I listened to 10cc and read all kinds of trash, from cheap pulp sci-fi novels to crime fiction and war stories.

But as I grew up I came to literature naturally, just I as I learned to appreciate a good whisky and the finer points of Bach. I worked my way through Conrad, Hemmingway and Faulkner, as well as Nabakov, Checkov and Kafka. I never took to Classic English Literature though. The damage was irreparable. It still bores me rigid.

I lived in the US in the late '80s and had a close friend in Chapel Hill whose 12 year old daughter also hated books (probably had a similar school experience to me). However I remembered as a young boy reading all of C.S.Lewis' Narnia novels and being totally captivated, so I bought them the box set for Christmas one year, on the off chance she might take an interest.

Much to his amazement she read them back to back about seven times before graduating to Ursula Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey. His granddaughter is now about the same age and is head of the school Harry Potter Fan Club ;-)

Whatever you say, Harry Potter got a whole generation of pre-teens off the sofa and away from their Playstations, and that can't be a bad thing.

And I am not remotely ashamed to admit that I still love to get lost in anything by China Mieville, David Brin and even a classic Philip K. Dick or Frank Herbert. I had read Dune before turning 16 and the rest of the series soon after, and I still love them now.

Want something for a teenager? Pick something along the theme of their favourite computer game and see what happens, or if that fails try the original radio series for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on audio CD.

still available from Amazon!

[Ross Chambers]

Another list:

Harold Bloom's possibly tendentious classified one in "The Western Canon" (itself claimed anecdotally to be found shelved in the war history section of one bookshop).

Bloom uses the Vico system which was used by Joyce in "Finnegans Wake":

The Theocratic, Aristocratic, Democratic and Chaotic Ages.

For all that dogmatism it's not a bad checklist.

And, one of the advantages of e-book readers to this committed print buyer: many of the older books included are easily available as e-books, often free from the marvellous Project Gutenberg.

[Dean Johnston]

Hiya!

> ...depending on how you count.

That would limit me to ten ;-)

[Leif T]

There are lists and then there are lists;
This one from "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," by Borges in which he describes 'a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,' the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:
1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

[SP]

+1 for Paul Macdonald

[Robert Brazile]

I read aloud to my daughter through junior high or so; if nothing else, it was great together-time. As for reading Dumas: I had far better luck reading Steven Brust's Khaavren/The Phoenix Guard series to her -- excellent and fun Dumas pastiche and my daughter seemed to enjoy rather than regret the "ornate" language. As a plus for the conversation here: TOP denizen DDB and Brust go way back...

[Animesh]

Mike,

That is a very fine photograph- compositionally/aesthetically, technically.

Re books- I can highly recommend 'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond. Since I have always wondered the "exactly, why?" of lots of things, it's nice to see a well-argued point of view on many of the questions in one's mind.

Bill Gates has a list too (what he's reading): http://www.thegatesnotes.com/GatesNotesV2/Books

That's where I pick up many recommendations, including this one. Thought I'd point you to this "list" too.

[Sid Lissner]

As a graduate, five decades ago, of a college which used the Great Books program, I now think that the curriculum was akin to the 18th-century idea of encyclopedia, which wasn't a good or successful enterprise then. The Great Books program turned out to be not so great, though, of course, many folks would disagree with that conclusion. The Great Books program turned out to have a narrow focus on certain Western European ideas. I've since learned that that there a lot more great books from many more lands and ages than what we read in college.

[Good point, Sid. Great to whom? --Mike]

[Winsor]

My vote for "what to read lists" are contained in the books of Michael Dirda, the senior book reviewer at the Washington Times. If someone is going to make these lists then they should have read everything and Dirda qualifies in that department. His books and column are entertaining. The lists contained in his books may not hit every classic but they will certainly enlighten while being ever so entertaining. And entertaining is what brings anyone back, not what one ought to read. Suggested: Bound to Please or Classics for Pleasure.

[Sarge]

My son once asked his Mom, "How come Dad knows a lot of stuff?"

"Because he reads," she replied.

"How come I haven't seen him reading?"

There was indeed a long spell when I stopped reading books (coinciding with my son's middle- through high school years). I was appalled for setting such a bad example. The only thing in print that I read then was The Economist. Newspapers and anything read off an LCD screen didn't count. I haven't really resumed my reading habit in earnest. Perhaps it's time I bought a Kindle.

I'm glad I've read one book at least in your Money and Finance category, J.K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society. His memoir's A Life In Our Times is hilarious. I've also read his Ambassador's Journal but none of his novels.

I'm curious if you have a category for espionage/thrillers? And if so, whether any of John Le Carré's novels is in it. I'm a fan particularly of his Smiley trilogy (for the window to the Cold War that it gave me). And Little Drummer Girl (for his unthorthodox take on the Palestinian problem and his delicate narrative on interrogation methods which anticipates rendition and waterboarding).

Looking forward to the next installment of your List.

[Chan]

I was halfway into Dostoevsky Brothers Karamazov. Now I just vaguely remember what it was all about. I think from now on it will serve as pillow :)

[sirhcton]

I, too, think linking to Amazon for your 266 books is a good idea.

As for the Paperwhite, I find it to be just the thing for a dedicated reading device. It is more comfortable to carry around (get a dedicated cover for it) than the tablets, even the newer high resolution ones. It's front lighting is more comfortable for extended sessions and you need to worry a lot less about the state of the battery - it is good for about 28 hours of use. Admittedly, the "experimental browser" is really only useful for Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon.

[Phil Gyford]

I've been intrigued by the idea of The Best Books on any one (or all!) subject(s) for a while. Some time back I started http://www.septivium.com/ to try and begin compiling such a list, or at least gather some support from elsewhere, although it never went very far. There are always more books, and always less time!

If you haven't seen Ask Metafilter's thread from 2007 about the best books for particular fields, you might find that interesting. I extracted the books here, although the original thread is worth a read too: http://www.septivium.com/b/2009/05/07/mefi/

[Nigel]

Like your finance list, but would suggest - Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed - as an alternate selection.

"It's far more efficient to read a good modern summary of the views of Thomas Hobbes in current English than it is to try to pluck them out of Leviathan by yourself..."

... but possibly less instructive. The Atlantic has an excellent blogger who takes on such tasks:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/western-thought-for-class-cutters-and-schoolmen-reformed/274055

"Harry Potter... reading it out loud made me realize how coarse the prose is"

Agreed. Fun doing the voices, though.

[Agreed here too. To your main point, note that I'm not advocating against engaging with great books or suggesting that fully adult, veteran readers shouldn't do so at least in a few cases (I have a friend who thinks that everyone with intellectual interests should have at least one book with which they engage fully, know deeply, and continue to study). But that doesn't mean that recommending a parade of such books would work for a list like mine. --Mike. Oh, and thanks for the link.]

[Manuel]

My list:
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (best book ever written, IMHO);
André Malraux, The Human Condition;
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World;
Homer, Odyssey;
Homer, Iliad.
While I wouldn’t reasonably expect teens to read any of them (unless under coercion, which would do nothing to help their taste for literature to develop), these are among the most important books in the history of literature.
As for the juvenile aversion to books, I am happy to report that I had some success in persuading my nephews to read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and William Golding’s The Lord Of Flies, i. a., after explaining them the authors’ purpose was not to write simple tales, but to describe human nature through metaphors. That intrigued them and made them look for the hidden sense in the authors’ words.

[Les Myers]

Your Sunday posting on reading is excellent. Until last September, I directed a radio reading service for blind and visually impaired listeners. About 80 volunteer readers came to studios in Brewer and Portland Maine- and some recorded from their homes- and presented daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and books.Funding shortages shut the service down last September after 12 years. My wife and I read aloud to each other, mostly while we're on vacation. My brothers and I badgered our mother to read "Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel" again and again and again until she threatened to bury the book somewhere. I sent two copies to my brothers today to celebrate those happy read-aloud times.

A link that your readers may find interesting that combines fine photography and literature is:

http://undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com/

Finally this:
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that
they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been
prevented by a good teacher."

Flannery O'Connor

Regards- Les Myers

[Patrick Perez]

Chan said "I was halfway into Dostoevsky Brothers Karamazov. Now I just vaguely remember what it was all about."

Its about a family of jugglers.

Patrick

[Ravi Bindra]

The Worm Ouroboros, 1922 pre-dates The Hobbit.