From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Some Canonical Lists
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 21:32:51 GMT


                                    Saturday, the 15th of August, 1992

Part 5 of 5 , Continued.

**********
List 7: Recommended Reading in Great Literature, Lake Forest Library,
        Lake Forest, Illinois
      |Ancient World
1. The Bible
2. Aristophanes, _The Birds_
3. Aristotle, _Poetics_
4. Homer, _Odyssey_, _Iliad_
5. Horace, _Odes_, etc.
6. Pindar, _Olympians_, etc.
7. Plato, _Republic_
8. Sophocles, _Oedipus Rex_
9. Theocritus, _Idylls_
10. Virgil, _Aeneid_, etc.
    ----For background & lighter reading
11. E. Hamilton, _Mythology_, etc.
12. M. Renault, _The King Must Die_, etc.
13. J. William, _Augustus_
      |Middle Ages
14. Bede, _History of the English Church and People_
15. _Beowulf_
16. A.C. Cawley, _Everyman & Miracle Plays_
17. G. Chaucer _Canterbury Tales_
18. Dante, _Divine Comedy_
19. W. Langland, _Piers the Ploughman_
20. T. Malory, _Le Morte d'Arthur_
    ----For background & lighter reading
21. Ackerman, _Backgrounds to Medieval Literature_
22. J. Gardner, _Grendel_
23. M. Stewart, _The Crystal Cave_, etc.
24. T.H. White _Once and Future King_
      |Renaissance & 17th Century
25. M. Cervantes, _Don Quixote_
26. J. Donne, Collected Poems
27. J. Dryden, _MacFlecknoe_, etc.
28. B. Jonson, Epigrams, Plays
29. C. Marlowe, Poems, _Doctor Faustus_
30. J. Milton, _Paradise Lost_, _L'Allegro_
31. W. Shakespeare, Sonnets, Plays
32. E. Spenser, _Shephearde's Calender_
      |18th Century
33. H. Fielding, _Joseph Andrews_
34. T. Gray, _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_
35. S. Johnson, _Life of Milton_, etc.
36. A. Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, etc.
37. J. Swift, _Gulliver's Travels_
      |19th Century
     ----Poetry
38. M. Arnold, _Dover Beach_
39. R. Browning, Collected Works
40. S.T. Coleridge, _Ancient Mariner_
41. E. Dickinson, Collected Works
42. J. Keats, Collected Works
43. E.A. Poe, _The Raven_
44. P.B. Shelley, Collected Works
45. A. Tennyson, _Idylls of the King_, etc.
46. W. Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_
47. W. Wordsworth, Collected Works
     ----Prose
48. J. Austen, _Pride and Prejudice_
49. C. Bronte, _Jane Eyre_
50. E. Bronte, _Wuthering Heights_
51. L. Carroll, _Alice in Wonderland_
52. W. Cather, _My Antonia_, etc.
53. J. Cooper, _Last of the Mohicans_
54. C. Dickens, _Great Expectations_, etc.
55. F. Dostoyevsky, _Crime & Punishment_, etc.
56. G. Eliot, _Adam Bede_
57. R.W. Emerson, _American Scholar_, etc.
58. G. Flaubert, _Madame Bovary_
59. T. Hardy, _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_, etc.
60. N. Hawthorne, _Scarlet Letter_, etc.
61. W. Irving, _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_
62. H. Melville, _Billy Budd_, _Moby Dick_, etc.
63. W. Scott, _Ivanhoe_, etc.
64. W.M. Thackery, _Vanity Fair_
65. H.D. Thoreau, _Walden_
66. L. Tolstoy, _War and Peace_
67. M. Twain, _Huckleberry Finn_, _Roughing It_
        |Late 19th & 20th Century
     ----Drama
68. S. Becket, _Waiting for Godot_
69. B. Brecht, _Mother Courage_
70. A. Chekhov, _Cherry Orchard_
71. L. Hansberry, _A Raisin in the Sun_
72. H. Ibsen, _A Doll's House_, etc.
73. A. Miller, _Death of a Salesman
74. E. O'Neill, _Ah Wilderness_, etc.
75. Pirandello, _Six Characters in Search..._
76. G.B. Shaw, _Pygmalion_, _Major Barbara_, etc.
77. A. Strindberg, _Miss Julie_, etc.
78. J. Synge, _Playboy of the Western World_
79. O. Wilde, _The Importance of Being Ernest_
80. T. Wilder, _Our Town_, _Skin of Our Teeth_
81. T. Williams, _Streetcar Named Desire_
     ----Poetry
82. W.H. Auden, Collected Works
83. e.e. cummings, Collected Works
84. T.S. Eliot, _Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_
85. R. Frost, Collected Works
86. G.M. Hopkins, Collected Works
87. A.E. Housman, Collected Works
88. T. Roethke, Collected Works
89. W.B. Yeats, Collected Works
     ----Essays, Short Stories, Expository Works
90. J. Didion, Collected Works
91. A. Dillard, Collected Works
92. L. Eiseley, _Immense Journey_, etc.
93. J. McPhee, Collected Works
94. F. O'Connor, Collected Works
95. Saki (Munro), Collected Short Stories
96. L. Thomas, Collected Works
97. J. Thurber, _Carnival_, etc.
98. E.B. White, Essays
     ----Prose
99. S. Anderson, _Winesburg, Ohio_
100. J. Conrad, _Lord Jim_, _Heart of Darkness_
101. W. Faulkner, _Sound and the Fury_
102. F.S. Fitzgerald, _Great Gatsby_
103. E.M. Forster, _A Passage to India_
104. J. Galsworthy, _Forsyte Saga_
105. E. Hemingway, _The Sun also Rises_
106. A. Huxley, _Brave New World_
107. H. James, _The Ambassadors_, etc.
108. J. Joyce, _Portrait of the Artist..._, etc.
109. D.H. Lawrence, _Women in Love_
110. S. Lewis, _Main Street_
111. J. Steinbeck, _The Grapes of Wrath_
112. V. Woolf, _To the Lighthouse_
113. R. Wright, _Native Son_
      |Contemporary
    ----Prose
114. K. Amis, _Lucky Jim_
115. J. Baldwin, _Go Tell it on the Mountain_  
116. S. Beckett, _Murphy_
117. J. Barth, _The End of the Road_
118. R. Bradbury, _The Martian Chronicles_
119. A. Burgess, _Enderby_, _A Clockwork Orange_
120. A. Camus, _Outsider_, _Plague_
121. R. Ellison, _Invisible Man_
122. F.M. Ford, _The Good Soldier_
123. J. Gardner, _October Light_
124. W. Golding, _Lord of the Flies_
125. J. Heller, _Catch-22_
126. J. Herriot, _All Creatures Great & Small_
127. J. Knowles, _A Separate Peace_
128. H. Lee, _To Kill a Mockingbird_
129. N. Mailer, _Armies of the Night_
130. T. Morrison, _Song of Solomon_
131. G. Orwell, _Animal Farm_, _1984_
132. A. Paton, _Cry the Beloved Country_
133. J.D. Salinger, _Catcher in the Rye_
134. J.R.R. Tolkien, _Lord of the Rings_
135. J. Watson, _The Double Helix_

---

This is a little pamphlet that Martha picked up at the Lake Forest
Library.

It seems to me a little more pop, contemporary than any of the
previous lists?

I've read 1., 2., 3., 4., 6., 7., 8., 9., 15., 17., 18., 20., 22.,
24., 37., 40., 43., 45., 51., 53., 61., 68., 70., 72., 73., 77.,
79., 81., 84., 108., 116., 118., 120., 131., 133., and 134., for 36 out of
135 entries.

**********

List 9: ``The UWM Bookstore's Select 100 as of April, 1989''
1. _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, Twain
2. _Animal Farm_, Orwell
3. _Art of War_, Sun Tsu
4. _As I Lay Dying_, Faulkner
5. _Atlas Shrugged_, Rand
6. The Bible
7. _Brave New World_, Huxley
8. _Brothers Karamazov_, Dostoevsky
9. _Candide_, Voltaire
10. _Canticle for Liebowitz_, Miller
11. _Catch-22_, Heller
12. _Catcher in the Rye_, Salinger
13. _City in History_, Mumford
14. _Clockwork Orange_, Burgess
15. _Color Purple_, Walker
16. _Communist Manifesto_, Marx & Engels
17. Complete Works, Shakespeare
18. _Confederacy of Dunces_, Toole
19. _Confessions_, St. Augustine
20. _Crime and Punishment_, Dostoevsky
21. _Crucible_, Miller
22. _Cry, the Bleoved Country_, Paton
23. _Dancing Wu-Li Masters_, Zukav
24. _Divine Comedy_, Dante
25. _Doctor Zhivago_, Pasternak
26. _Don Quixote_, Cervantes
27. _Double Helix_, Watscon
28. _Dune Trilogy_, Herbert
29. _Elements of Style_, Strunk & White
30. _Entropy_, Rifkin
31. _Ethan Frome_, Wharton
32. _Fahrenheit 451_, Bradbury
33. _Farewell to Arms_, Hemingway
34. _Faust_, Goethe
35. _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_, Thompson
36. _Federalist Papers_, Hamilton, Madison, Jay
37. _Flatland_, Abbott
38. _Forbidden Colors_, Mishima
39. _Foundation Trilogy_, Asimov
40. _Fountainhead_, Rand
41. _Free to Choose_, Friedman
42. _Godel, Escher, Bach_, Hofstadter
43. _Gone with the Wind_, Mitchell
44. _Grapes of Wrath_, Steinbeck
45. _Gravity's Rainbow_, Pynchon
46. _Great Expectations_, Dickens
47. _Great Gatsby_, Fitzgerald
48. _Gulliver's Travels_, Swift
49. _Handmaid's Tale_, Atwood
50. _Hiroshima_, Hersey
51. _How Democracies Perish_, Revel
52. _Iliad_, Homer
53. _Invisible Man_, Ellison
54. _Jane Eyre_, Bronte
55. _Leaves of Grass_, Whitman
56. _Little Prince_, St. Exupery
57. _Lord of the Flies_, Golding
58. _Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
59. _Madame Bovary_, Flaubert
60. _Man's Search for Meaning_, Frankl
61. _Mere Christianity_, Lewis
62. _Moby Dick_, Melville
63. _Monkey Wrench Gang_, Abbey
64. _My Antonia_, Cather
65. _1984_, Orwell
66. _Odyssey_, Homer
67. _Of Human Bondage_, Maugham
68. _Of Mice and Men_, Steinbeck
69. _Old Man and the Sea_, Hemingway
70. _On the Road_, Kerouac
71. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, Garcia Marquez
72. _Origin of Species_, Darwin
73. _Paradise Lost_, Milton
74. _Plague_, Camus
75. _Pride and Prejudice_, Austen
76. _Prince_, Machiavelli
77. Qu'ran
78. _Republic_, Plato
79. _Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_, Shirer
80. _Road Less Travelled_, Peck
81. _Room of One's Own_, Woolf
82. _Sand County Almanac_, Leopold
83. _Second Sex_, de Beauvoir
84. _Seven Story Mountain_, Merton
85. _Siddhartha_, Hesse
86. _Slaughterhouse Five_, Vonnegut
87. _Small Is Beautiful_, Schumacher
88. _Steppenwolf_, Hesse
89. _Stranger_, Camus
90. _Stranger in a Strange Land_, Heinlein
91. _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, Kuhn
92. _Tao of Physics_, Capra
93. _Tao Te Ching_, Lao Tzu
94. _Third Wave_, Toffler
95. _Ulysses_, Joyce
96. _Unsettling of America_, Berry
97. _Utopia_, More
98. _Walden_, Thoreau
99. _War and Peace_, Tolstoy
100. _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, Pirsig

---

They give out this mimeographed sheet at the University of Wisconsin--
Milwaukee bookstore. It states:
``This list was compiled by tabulating nominations by UWM faculty,
staff and students for the Select 100. It includes changes which have
resulted from nominations received since the original list was released.
We asked you to recommend books which you have found to be so useful and
important that no one could consider himself/herself an educated or
enlightened person without having read them. This is your cumulative
response.''

It's pretty pop, too, I think.

I've read 2., 6., 9., 12., 13., 20., 21., 24., 32., 34., 36.,
39., 42., 45., 46., 48., 52., 58., 61., 62., 65., 66., 68.,
69., 71., 73., 74., 76., 78., 85., 88., 89., 95., 100., for 34
out of 100.

**********

Final remarks:

I use lists like these as a partial guide to my own reading.
I do read other things.

I ``scored'' myself with each list, mostly to point up that
there's tons of stuff I've not read. I will say that there is
nothing on any of these lists that I haven't yet read which I do not
wish to read (although I'd qualify that perhaps by saying that
_The Tao of Physics_, _The Dancing Wu-Li Masters_, Ayn Rand, and
Jeremy Rifkin can well wait til I've read everything else).

Of the stuff I have read, I would recommend all of it as good
or great books. A good fraction of it is 17-time-readable
literature, especially the stuff on Adler's lists, which is
what Adler tried to select for. This, and the remarkable repitition
across some of these lists makes me think that there
is something quite objective about this selection process.

Also, I would point out that if Mike Morris says ``These are the
two greatest books in the world'', you really haven't any need
to listen to him very much. Whereas if T.S. Eliot says ``Dante
and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.''
it ought to carry more weight. Eliot and Adler and Fadiman
and Rexroth are worth listening to because they have read so much
more than most of us have. There is such a thing as expertise about
literature, and these guys are experts. Doesn't mean we have to
agree with them finally, or even read half the stuff they have,
but I think we shouldn't dismiss credit where credit is due. 

I'd recommend, again, _99 Novels_, _The Lifetime Reading
Plan_, _How to Read a Book_, and _Classics Revisited_ and
_More Classics Revisited_. They are all so much more than
just the reading list. It would be neat to see such books
as _100 of the Best African-American Books_ in the vein of
Burgess' _99 Novels_. Or _100 Masterworks of Science Fiction_.
I'd buy such reading-list books if they were to cross my path
in bookstores. I've read a good bit of 20th C Latin American
literature, and I like reading it alot, so I'd particularly love
to see a guide to it like these.

There's a difference between descriptive lexicography and
prescriptive, and of course, what everybody fears is being said
is that you're nobody unless you've read all these books. In none of
these cases is that being said, I think. I would not use any of
these lists for other than personal prescription. Actually,
I think prescription has about zero place other than in the classroom,
and though, as I said, I'd use it heavily in my ideal 12 years of
primary education, if I could only realize that fantasy, I'd hope
to lay off the prescription more and more at the university level.

Actually, I think the list here that comes closest to a reasonable
high-school prescriptive list is Clifton Fadiman's. That list, with
additions, I think would be a wonderful core high-school curriculum.

*******************

The end. (exhausted sigh)

                 Mike Morris
              (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books