Posted by Joffre on 30/8/2009, 14:10:27
68.222.73.169
Those of you who like books on books, do you know of The Rough Guide to Classic Novels? I stumbled across it on amazon a few weeks ago. It was just published last year.
First, the little I don't like about it: Rough Guides seems to be a franchise if that's the right word, and the book has a little the look of Classic Novels for Dummies or The Idiot's Guide to Classic Novels, though I don't believe either of those exists. For me, what's missing from all books of this type is better information on the aesthetic significance of the inclusions. This is what this author does that's new. This is what she does better than anyone. This is a major feature of his style. Stuff like that.
Not a ranking like The Novel 100, the rough guide compares best with The New Lifetime Reading Plan. The introductions to books are shorter than in the NLRP; most are only about a page; few are more than a page and a half.
The rough guide covers a lot of books, 229, and each inclusion ends with a suggestion of where to go next. It's a broad list, including things like The Lord of the Rings and an Agatha Christie novel, but it doesn't include anything that offends me, no Stephen King or Harry Potter. The Agatha Christie novel seems to me the most questionable inclusion, but it is a novel I've considered reading. There are a few books I've either not heard of or heard very little of.
Browsing the index, these are some of the inclusions which interest me for one reason or another: Cheri, Dirty Snow, Exercises in Style, Le Grand Meaulnes, Hopscotch, Journey to the End of the Night, Life: a User's Manual, The Maias, Mehmed My Hawk, Snow (and now I've lost Lale), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.
I'm reading The Good Soldier Svejk right now. I'm a little disappointed so far. I don't find it nearly as funny as it's reputed to be. I still have a long way to go, but I'm a hundred pages in. Steven and Sterling have had birthdays recently. Mine was the 19th. My reading plan for the rest of the year is to read the books I got and then The Man Without Qualities. I'll see what I have time for after that. Last week, I read Jaques the Fatalist which was quite amusing.
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