More randomocity

[danuv]

There's a thunderstorm a brewin' so I'm in my favorite spot for viewing storms on my porch with a glass of white wine. I'm starting to think I really actually prefer white wine despite this nagging feeling that it makes me totally uncool in some way.

Recently I had someone else tell me I was well read. I've been told this by a few people and it always confuses me. Mostly I read a hodge podge of art history books and biographies with the occasional fiction tossed in when forced (generally related to one of the art history or biographies). I don't really think I'm well read, mostly I think I read a little bit more than the average housewife and chose peculiar books. But this has me curious... what is well read anyway?

I'd like to hear some suggestions. I know this is the sort of question that only usually would draw answers from four or five of you on my f-list but really I am very curious. What would you (YOU) say are your top five books that any Well Read person must read? Or if you'd prefer what Sort of books would a well read person read?

Comments

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

I would say you are well read from an art history perspective and for biographies of personalities associated with the art world. Not a bad thing.

As for books. There are so many, that it would be impossible to choose five. I think, mostly, the ones that would be chosen, would have to be chosen based on overall interests.

[danuv.livejournal.com]

I think I'm well read in a VERY narrow area of art history for someone who isn't studying it in school.

So you don't think there's anything that most people ought to have read then? No major classics or anything?

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

Well, too many to choose. Too many agendas to fill. But, if you are talking about the English language... I can suggest two off the top of my head.

1. The Bible. It can teach you a lot about human nature, philosophy and moral values. It has good "stories" in it and can provide one with much to think about.

2. The dictionary. You read it. You have, essentially, read every other book written in the English language. You just have to assemble them all in the right order. LOL

If I were going to add others... let's see...

Stranger in a Strange Land
Five Smooth Stones
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
Lysistrata
The Crucible
a Shakespeare play or two
Ivanho
Tarzan
The Warlord of Mars
Emmanuel
Poetry by Robert Frost and TS Eliot
O'Henry's short stories
The Foundation Trilogy

An eclectic collection that have all helped to make me in some way... have had an impact in some manner. There are others, classics like the Iliad, War and Peace, and other books we were subjected to in high school, that have had their impacts as well.

But, if it is pure knowledge you seek, and you want to be well rounded...

find a good history book covering history up to the 20th Century.

A good general science text

A collection of philosophy works with Hegel, Sartre, and others in it.

one book each covering anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

Then, read at least one additional text in each of those areas covering at least 3 subareas that interest you.

Read a book on starting and running a small business

A book on general economics.

Read a book on US government and history.

That should pretty much cover the bases. :)

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Yay, thanks for the list. :)

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

if you need help on what they are.... holler.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Doing some quick checking, only 60% of the population read any book last year.

Only 47% read "literature" in 2002 (defined as not self-help, etc. I think.)

Of the people who read, they average 6 books a year.

Frequest readers (12-49 books a year) represent 12% of the population and Avid readers (50+ books a year) represent 4% of the population.

So how many books do you read a year?

[danuv.livejournal.com]

See, I'm thinking well read is not quite the same thing as 'reads a lot'. My granny, for example, reads probably hundreds of romance novels a year. I wouldn't really consider her well read though she reads constantly.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

(And I'll worik on the list later.. I'll come up with something interesting, hopefully)

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Looking forward to it.

[brododaktula.livejournal.com]

I think generally "well-read" means that you're aware enough of the breadth and some depth of the speaker's field that you're worth a somewhat condescending compliment. Since you've been told this a lot, though, maybe it's from genuinely kind rather than bitchy people, in which case it would mean that you know a surprising amount about a surprising array of things. I guess in each case I'm implying that it's more about what you can comfortably discuss than actually what your reading list is, and I think that is generally how these comments work.

As far as what a well-read person should read, I think much of it goes back to having strong foundations you can build on. So I think all of my recommendations are sort of things that children could read and maybe once did. I think being well-read means picking up on resonances, making connections, and so I look at the reading aspect as just amassing many bits you can piece together in various ways.

A good collection of classic poems, preferably read aloud. I'm not coming up with a title off the top of my head, but I had some sort of Golden Treasury of Poetry as a kid and I pick up on and create quotes and allusions often because poems can dig so deep into the bone.

D'Aulaire's book of Greek Myths. Gorgeous pictures, simple tellings of complex stories. Obviously you can get more detail elsewhere, but you'll have all the basics here.

As far as plays go, there are plenty of options depending on your interest. Again, plays can be good to read aloud in the bathtub if you're me or with friends if you're not. Tom Stoppard's always a delight, and Shakespeare is sort of a given on lists like this. If I have to put down one title, though, it will be The Importance of Being Earnest, which I think is kid-friendly enough and yet brings up all sorts of issues of identity and class and gender and respectability while being totally hilarious.

This is cheating a bit on the "kids" side of things, but everyone needs some Borges short stories. Plenty of his stories would work for kids too, but I remember the delight I felt when first reading metafiction and how twisty and thrilling it made the world seem. Foucault's Pendulum, though longer and quite different, did the same thing, revved me up and made it so I'd look askance at conspiracy theories ever after. Books that change reality (although surely we could argue they all do) are powerful indeed.

This one's definitely cheating, but I said it's all about the resonances and if there's a book you absolutely love and find yourself in (my top picks are Emma Donoghue's Stir-Fry and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle) it might be worth doing periodic rereadings so you can gauge how you've changed. I'm a big rereader anyway, but it's a neat feeling to recall so vividly how I felt at 16 and still agree with parts of my old self while wincing at others. Seeing yourself in a book helps you see yourself in the world, and helps you connect the things you read to the bigger world, I think.

And all of these are just from my perspective, that if someone dropped a reference to one into conversation I'd get excited and want to talk about it. Maybe that means I'm trying to set up the patronizing situation I described at the top, but I hope not. I think a certain amount of breadth, interesting and/or salacious factoids, and genuine passionate excitement about the topic are what make someone seem not only well-informed but fun to hear from on whatever topic is at hand. And isn't that what we all aim to be? (I don't know actually if it is; writing this was really hard and I may utterly disagree later. But for now it's my guess.)

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Your answers (here and on your lj) are going to add pages to my Amazon list when I get to adding. :P I needed some things the kids could turn to when they are a little older and more interested in books (other than Ramona which is taking Rhiannon months to get through). I'm guessing that books on 19th century prostitution in the Wild West won't really be to their tastes (maybe I should hope not).

[brododaktula.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that your kids have to read these, just that I sort of feel there's an equivalence between broad knowledge and being younger. I guess it's the whole thing about broad basics that in some ways you can't get as an adult because instead you go off on interesting tangents based on parts of what you read. I don't think that's a bad thing either!

[danuv.livejournal.com]

No no, I guess you just reminded me of how it felt when I was young and raiding the 'grown up' bookshelf. I realized that I don't have too much that would really interest them. I need to be planting subversive materials. :)

[brododaktula.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

I wish we still had the book report my brother did in third grade on Kafka's Metamorphosis, which he thought from the title would have a lot more fun bug stuff. "This guy turns into a bug and NO ONE EVEN NOTICES!" It was hilarious.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

I'm not a big fan of canon. I doubt I've read the top five books I'd put on a list like that. I think being well-read is more about swimming in a sea of books and being able to synthesize ideas between different books and come up with a whole that's more than the sum of its parts, but I would think that because that's how I read.

I think you could grid the world out by time and place and subculture and if you'd read something out of each bucket that'd be well-read but it wouldn't necessarily give you a whole lot of depth. But I guess that's what I'd think of.

I like the way you, you personally, danuv, treat books like hypertext (ahaha, because no one was doing that before hypertext was invented, but it's a handy metaphor so bear with me) and take something from any given book as a leaping off point to read four or five more books.

I'd say you were extraordinarily thorough in your particular chosen field but clearly not ignorant of the existence of other fields which could definitely add up to well-read. One of the big tricks to being perceived as well read is to be able to make an intelligible but non-comittal (as to whether you've read it or not) comment should anyone bring up a book you're only passingly familiar with. The disgusting and also hilarious and fun thing is that this can be virtually a sport in lit-snobby circles.

As for five books -well, I can maybe manage five categories:
I'd LIKE everyone to plough through Robinson Crusoe because it's seminal and is also incredibly interesting to see how far the notion of extended fiction prose has come. But it's a bit of a slog. Don Quixote sort of for similar reasons. Also it's great.

I think a dose of the John Stuart Mills is handy for living in America although it's well to read with a critical eye for his biases. Upside for you: Not Fiction! It is handy though to have it on hand (mentally speaking...) to challenge or understand base assumptions beneath varying factions' arguments. Ditto some oh my god dry Adam Smith. And Mary Wollstonecraft definitely

I think a well-read person would be acquainted with some 19th-21st century playwrights but I'd be hard pressed to settle on one that would be worth reading rather than holding out for performances (yeah, like I get to those) or DVDs of performances. Chekov possibly for the revolutionary naturalism.

Salman Rushdie is in the running for author of the 20th century but I still haven't made it all the way or in fact most of the way through Midnight's Children. Better people than I say it's one of the must reads and it's on my bookshelf if you ever want to.

Points for Ulysses and/OR To the Lighthouse. I haven't finished either because I'm a slack cow. I never said I was well read. Ulysses is gorgeous though, it just ...uh... requires a lot of dedicated brain space. And time.

A.S. Byatt for short stories (yeah, I am so totally biased. She's fantastic though!) I think she's got a near perfection of the form and it's a form not to be ignored entirely. There are lots of other contenders for must-read short stories though.

So that's like, totally a liberal-Writerly list and I didn't even include Nabokov though he probably ought to be in there. There would be a dozen lists over if you were to insist that being well-read included the sciences or history or more political theory.

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Hrm, Rushdie has made both of your lists... there must be something there.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

The man can seriously write! Plus he's sort of an avatar of postcolonialism which doesn't play as big in the US as in the Rest of World but is pretty important in the scheme of the twentieth century.