The challenge is simply: list the classic books you think people should read, and its occasion was a list at themanual.com which a commenter pointed out was “mostly crap”. I checked it out anyway, and found some of the proposals pretty odd. The listmaker was wise to save his suggestion of Joyce’s Ulysses till last, because I probably would have given up on him as soon as I saw it.
It so happens that I’ve finally begun the huge task of unpacking and organizing my books this past week, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about literature lately. So here is a quickie list of seven books I think people who like reading fantasy and science fiction should read. Perhaps I’ll try to reread them all in the coming year: I haven’t been doing nearly enough rereading lately, and these are all old friends.
The Charwoman’s Shadow, by Lord Dunsany.
Winter’s Tales, by Isak Dinesen.
That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis.
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Worm Ouroboros, by E. R. Eddison.
The Odyssey, Homer.
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton.
The Castle, by Franz Kafka.
If you have suggestions of your own, please chime in. I always like to get comments.
No Moon is a Harsh Mistress?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good book; I'd consider it, but I don't think I'd put it on a list this short.
DeleteActually (now that I am considering it), if you snip out the few pages where the philosopher, I forget his name, presents what you might call the Paradox of Governmental Authority--how is it possible for a group of people acting corporately to have a right to do something that no one member of the group would have a right to do as an individual--I don't think the rest of the book would stand out beyond run-of-the-mill, pretty-good science fiction novels. Those few pages, though, deserve to be in every intelligent high school student's reading.