Have You Read These Books?

Published on by Margaret

Danielle at A Work in Progress has been enjoying reading bits of Michael Dirda’s Book by Book.  She writes:

In a chapter on the pleasures of learning, he lists books he calls “patterning works”.  These are not necessarily obvious classics, but he says that these are the books later authors regularly build on.  “Know these well, and nearly all of world literature will be an open book to you.”

She asks – How many of these have you read?  So I’ve listed them as follows:

The Bible (Old and New Testament–King James Version) — Yes, amazingly (to me) I have read all the Bible, although I scan read those boring bits in Leviticus etc.

Bulfinch’s Mythology (or any other accounts of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths) — I’ve never heard of this but I have read quite a lot of myths in various books.

Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey — I’ve only read excerpts at school.

Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans — No.

Dante, Inferno — I started to read this a couple of years ago or so, when I was taking a short WEA course. When the course finished I was full of good intentions to carry on reading it, but that never happened.

The Arabian Nights — Again, I’ve read some of the tales.

Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (tales of King Arthur and his knights) — Like Danielle I have read some versions of King Arthur. I would like to read the Penguin Classics version of The Death of King Arthur, which has been sitting on the bookshelves unread for quite a while now.

Shakespeare’s major plays, especially Hamlet, Henry IV, Part One, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,The Tempest — King Lear. I have read all these and more both at school and whilst taking an Open University course on Shakespeare.

Cervantes, Don Quixote — No – I keep meaning to and it’s been on the TBR list for ages.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe — Yes. I visited Lower Largo in Fife, where Alexander Selkirk lived. He was Defoe’s inspiration for writing the book. There is a statue of Selkirk on one of the houses – see Margaret’s Miscellany for photos.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels — No – I’m aiming to read it this year.

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen — Yes – I loved these as a child when I first read them.

Any substantial collection of the world’s major folktales — Yes – again as a child when I was forever borrwing books of fairy tales from the library.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice — Yes, several times.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland — Yes – and Through the Looking Glass, which one of my aunties gave me.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes —  I have read Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles but not the short stories, although I’ve got a book of them on loan from the library at present.

Some gaps there in my reading, but I hope to fill some of them this year.

10 thoughts on “Have You Read These Books?”

  1. I’m missing Plutarch, Dante and Malory. Bulfinch’s Mythology I ahven’t read, but I had (still have) several great book on classic myths as a child which I loved.
    I’m planning to re-read the Brothers Grimm and fortunately, I have an old edition that hasn’t been gutted like many of the newer editions I have seen. I want the stepmother to dance in red-hot shoes until she drops dead, please, not for her to just say sorry and go away (yes, I have actually read a version of Snow White that ended that way).

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  2. Well, I was quite shocked that I could answer ‘yes’ to some of these questions! Perhaps I’m better read than I thought. LOL.

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  3. My results are remarkably similar to yours Margaret, but I can brag that apart from having read both the Iliad and the Odyssey, I read large chunks of the former in Latin too.

    One patterning book missing from that list is Moby Dick – which now I’ve read it (!) I’m finding references everywhere.

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  6. I am missing Plutarch, Cervantes and most of Swift – I read some, but found it hard going; the same with Don Quixote, I’m afraid, and I don’t think I’ll ever get through it. Like you, I’ve read some of Arabian Nights, and I haven’t actually read Bullfinch, but various collections of mythology are mainstays of my bookshelf, including my treasured Larousse Encyclopaedia, which I genuinely have read all the way through. I loved Dante! I’ll be impressed if you find many readers of Plutarch’s Lives (any?)

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  8. Most of the books on this list are ones that people usually claim to have read, but never did. I’ve read the Iliad and Odyssey in Latin and English, and most of Shakespeare’s plays, but other than that I’m woefully lacking. Bulfinch is something everyone going to college in the U.S. needs to have even if they’re majoring in physics or something.

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  9. I have read many of the books on the list, but personally did not like all of them. Of the ones I haven’t read, Don Quixote is the only one I would like to read. This is an interesting list though.

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  10. Helene Hanff makes a very similar observation in her book ‘Q’s Legacy’ where she writes about trying to self-educate through the works of a Christian scholar having been brought up as a jew and thus missed out on many of the works Christians take for granted. It took her years to catch up with references that you or I would probably take for granted.

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