I've finally sorted out my reading. I was looking for something with more power (more higher centers material) than 19th century novels. They can be interesting and fun, but... So I thought epic poems. But that didn't fly. I've read them all. I decided I can't find anything more powerful than the Bible and sound doctrine. So: 1. the Bible (AV1611), 2. Thomas Boston's unique and powerful work Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 3. Pilgrim's Progress, 4. The Fourth Way, and, 5. for now, Don Quixote.
A critic, in passing, mentioned off-hand that Don Quixote had the 'cosmic' in it. It's also one of the seven or so great novels I have listed to read. I read an abridged version many years ago, but don't remember it. I wasn't awake when I read it. Interestingly when I read War and Peace many years ago I was awake, because I remember that work and the reading experience.
The books listed above are in the history, imaginative literature, philosophy, and sacred writings template. The Boston work is history (the ultimate history, the history of redemption). Bunyan is imaginative literature, and the Work fills in for philosophy. The Bible for sacred writings. They all have the advantage of being Christian works, so no mixed language like if I included a pagan work or something.
The Boston and Bunyan books were folk classics in their day.
I've already written all this before, but...
I think a very sound 10 book list of great novels is this:
Don Quixote
Tom Jones*
Moby Dick
War and Peace*
Anna Karenina
Brothers Karamazov
Vanity Fair*
Middlemarch
Ulysses
Magic Mountain
I've only read, complete, three of them!
11.10.2008
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I've only read three of them but that's because I keep changing the list. For instance Crime and Punishment used to be in the list (replaced by Middlemarch), and I just read Crime and Punishment.
Also, I've read works similar to the ones listed. Believe it or not if you've read Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, for instance) you have what Ulysses gives you stylistically (Woolf disdained Ulysses as overrated, by the way).
I've read enough of Moby Dick to have 'read' it by the standards of most university professors. I read Don Quixote in abridgement. Etc.
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