The 110 Best Books: The Perfect Library

[ezodisy]

No Thomas Mann, no J.M. Coetzee, no William Faulkner, no Günter Grass? Why, one could build a solid library by selecting Nobel laureates from the last 100 years or so who were not selected for inclusion.

It seems that some people need to engage in a little Vergangenheitsbewältigung vis-à-vis the shift away from Britain as the center of the literary world.

Come on, Coetzee is a good writer but he does not belong between Mann and Faulkner.

[Kullervo]

Yes, but have you read the books they list?

A good bit, and own a good bit more. There are a lot I have no interest in reading (Beloved, Clausewitz, etc). It's not really a bad list, but the omissions are too egregious to call it a "perfect" library — but none of that matters, I just like to complain.

Oh, and it looks like Proust was included after all. I wonder how my page search missed that.

[Herman]

Nothing belongs between Faulkner and his bottle of bourbon. And certainly not a transparent sense of prose.

[PSmith08]

Come on, Coetzee is a good writer but he does not belong between Mann and Faulkner.

Well, that point's arguable, I suppose (certainly Waiting or Life and Times achieves some parity with something like Tonio Kröger, but Mann and Coetzee were and are doing very different things); my point, though, in name-checking Coetzee was to include a modern author. Also, Joseph und seine Brüder is considerably more off-putting than Waiting, though the latter is certainly more coherent than The Sound and the Fury.

The problem remains: the list is pretty shoddy, at best.

[ezodisy]

On War
Carl von Clausewitz

The first, and probably still foremost, treatise on the art of modern warfare. The Prussian general looked beyond the battlefield to war's place in the broader political context.

Has anyone read this? Sounds like what I'd be interested in. It's listed under "Books that changed the world" (I've read two and a half of that list  ).

[Florestan]

Has anyone read this?

I didn't, but he's the guy who stated that war was the continuation of politics with other means. Unlike today, when it's the other way around.

[val]

The typical UK list.

For them Germany has no poets: Heine, Goethe (poems), Trakl, Rilke, Brecht. No philosophers either: Kant, Nietzsche, Engels, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Popper. No theatre: Kleist, Schiller, Brecht again. No novels: Goethe, Thomas Mann, Hesse. Not mentioning juridic books (Kelsen).

But I understand them. A German list would probably include,regarding British books, Shakespeare. No more. 

[ezodisy]

I didn't, but he's the guy who stated that war was the continuation of politics with other means. Unlike today, when it's the other way around.

hahaha

The typical UK list. 

well there is a reason for that: UK properties are small.

By the way Val: don't mention the war

[(poco) Sforzando]

This perfect list does not include Don Quixote, Goethe's Faust, Moby Dick, any Dostoevsky, any of the Greek tragedies, any plays of Ibsen, Molière, or even Shakespeare fer chrissake — who's kidding whom?

[karlhenning]

This perfect list does not include Don Quixote, Goethe's Faust, Moby Dick, any Dostoevsky, any of the Greek tragedies, any plays of Ibsen, Molière, or even Shakespeare fer chrissake — who's kidding whom?

Truly, a sforzando post!

[mn dave]

http://www.optimates.us/Greatbooks.htm

[Florestan]

http://www.optimates.us/Greatbooks.htm

Decidedly, these lists are a joke!

France without Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert and Proust...

And Russia not at all...

[mn dave]

Decidedly, these lists are a joke!

France without Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert and Proust...

And Russia not at all...

Hm. I'll keep looking...

[Florestan]

Hm. I'll keep looking...

Why?

[mn dave]

Why?

Why not?

[Florestan]

Why not?

Because

[karlhenning]

Just another one-liner for the hell of it.

[karlhenning]

— Didn't want to be left out! 

[Florestan]

No Karl left behind

[karlhenning]

Phew!