Posted by Joffre on 30/11/2011, 15:32:58, in reply to "Re: Recent Reading"
190.192.125.229
: The works I'm reading now are more in the courtly and
: heroic vein than the Decameron.
Yes, I only mentioned it because you mentioned the Canterbury Tales.
I've always avoided the Decameron as a book of short stories. The Canterbury Tales just seemed too important to skip. Maybe the Decameron is too. Actually, maybe I read the Canterbury Tales because I had the book, having bought it before I became so resistant to short stories.
The Heptameron is actually on my long list. I think my interest in it came from Jane Smiley's book. Being 'a book of short stories', it may languish on my list for a long time.
I'm now reading The Brothers Karamazov probably the highest rated work I've never read, the only one from the top 25 of the Burt list anyway. I've read Notes from the Underground, C&P, The Idiot, and The Gambler. Read all those long ago, most of them at least twice. Must have been 15 years since I read a Dosty novel for the first time.
I recently read How Fiction Works by James Wood and found it very interesting. It doesn't have any list like the Jane Smiley or Francine Prose books, but it does have a bibliography of all books referenced in the text. All of them will be familiar to you guys.
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