Are you 'well read'?

Magic Eight Ball

Apparently a Canadian TV channel had a group of literature experts get together and have a discussion on what books one would have to read to be considered a 'well read person'.
Interesting idea so thought I'd post the list and see if anyone has read any of the books mentioned, or if you think there are books that should have been on the list.

The King James Bible

The Odyssey - Homer

The Iliad - Homer

The Aeneid - Virgil

Metamophoses - Ovid

Thebian Plays - Sophocles

A Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius

The Confessions of St. Augustine

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Inferno - Dante

29th Sonnet - Shakespeare

Unfortunately I've read nothing on the above list.
What do you all think? Have you read any of them yourself?
Do you think something has been missed?

parker kent

I've read four from that list in college but it strikes me as a ridiculously narrow list. I guess they have chosen that list as they are used as the inspiration for countless other texts.

Far too many possible candidates to mention as additions to the list, but I think special mention should be reserved for Shakespeare's tragedies and The Canterbury Tales.

Manach

3 out of the list, but again that is from a College course. I'm not counting the Vulgate, as its not the KJV.
However, no Jane Austen ????

RonMexico

Utter bollocks.

Miss Lockhart

Wow, that's a very narrow list! I would not consider someone who had ONLY read those books as well read!

I have read 2 from the list - both in secondary school:

The Odyssey
29th Sonnet

buck65

Nonsense is right, if you were to read that list you may be well read but you also may never read again.

This is how i feel about about "literature experts"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjO5cs16MTU

metrovelvet

I've read nine of them, but I dont think it's a good list.

thelonecarrot

Why do Snobbery and dead people always seem to go hand in hand?

Correct if I'm wrong(pretty sure I ain't) but every author on that list is very much dead.

It's not as if the art of storytelling has gotten worse. Nor did it peak around the 18th century. Yet you still have old texts thrown at you in lists like this as if they are somehow "better" than any books written by breathing authors.

A list with contemporary and classic texts would be a real "well read" list. Because it really would mean you've read a wide range of books from different time periods and angles on society and not just sat in a corner of a library shooting up on Nostalgia.

Lux23

None and I suppose to be really well read you should read them in their original text. Whoever compiled that list is a knobjockey.

Plowman

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Earthhorse

Just the 29th sonnet by Shakespeare, eh?

What an odd inclusion on a very narrow list.

Eliot Rosewater

thelonecarrot wrote: »

Correct if I'm wrong(pretty sure I ain't) but every author on that list is very much dead.

We can go one better; every author on that list is dead with a few hundred years. :pac:

I do understand the tendency towards the old. However if all you've read was written 400 years ago then I don't see how you qualify as "well read". There is a wealth of classic literature written in the last 100 years; Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Golding etc etc, and this stuff it probably more instructive in understanding literature today.

I think this whole notion of being "well read" is a bit bolloxy anyway. You can read the whole works of Shakespeare, but it counts for little if you couldn't understand them or appreciate them, as Plowman said. Also there's just so much stuff to read out there even within the "classics". Narrowing it to 10 is nothing short of ridiculous; anyone who wanted to parade themselves as "well read" would have to have read hundreds, I think.

So it's usually just an ego trip.

Plowman

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OxfordComma

Really bizarre list. I know trying to list the books you "must" have read in order to be well read is entirely futile, but still, a lot of obvious books were omitted, like (as others have mentioned) Shakespeare's tragedies.

Earthhorse

Plowman wrote: »

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Yes, but this is an exercise in literature is it not, rather than Shakesepearean biography?

Anyway, having a list of ten works by which to determine whether someone's well read or not is pretty counterintuitive.

Plowman

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Earthhorse

Plowman wrote: »

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Without wishing to get into a discussion on that topic, my original point was that they had chosen just Sonnet 29 as one of the works by which a person could be known to be well read. If they had chosen Shakespeare's Sonnets or one of his plays I wouldn't have made any comment as it wouldn't have seemed so incongruous.

Plowman

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raah!

I always imagined the term applied to someone with a good breadth of reading. Not someone who has read 10 books. Though I guess it would be pretty rare to find someone who has read only those books there :P

smallerthanyou

Read them all? I'm not even sure I've heard of them all.

DazMarz

I've read a good few of the texts on that list, but only through my college course.

I consider myself fairly well read, as I read a disproportionate amount! I'm forever with a book nearby that I'm reading. The thing is, I would not read books in my leisure time that would be considered 'classic' or 'acclaimed'. I read contemporary novels and thrillers, murder novels and so on.

I don't think that in order to be ''well-read'' you have to read certain novels.

Eliot Rosewater

DazMarz wrote: »

I consider myself fairly well read, as I read a disproportionate amount!

Without meaning any disrespect, I think the concept of "well read" is as much about quality as quantity, with quality defined as in the academic sense, given that "well read" is a kind of academic term.

Denerick

I've read a lot of Jeffrey Archer's and John Grisham's books in my youth.

I think this list is discriminatory.

sron

I've read 2 of Shakespeare's sonnets making me extremely well read. Look on my works, ye mighty... and so on.



Really though, if someone calls themselves well-read they are an incontrovertible toss-pot.

DazMarz

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Without meaning any disrespect, I think the concept of "well read" is as much about quality as quantity, with quality defined as in the academic sense, given that "well read" is a kind of academic term.

Oh I don't doubt that, but I'm just saying that I have familiarised myself with many different aspects of many different cultures and so on by reading an awful lot of material; from the academically acclaimed to the 'easy-on-the-grey-matter' trash novels.

But I think the narrow-mindedness of some who look down on a lot of literature is not something that should be encouraged at all.

smallerthanyou

DazMarz wrote: »

Oh I don't doubt that, but I'm just saying that I have familiarised myself with many different aspects of many different cultures and so on by reading an awful lot of material; from the academically acclaimed to the 'easy-on-the-grey-matter' trash novels.

But I think the narrow-mindedness of some who look down on a lot of literature is not something that should be encouraged at all.

Agree with DazMarz. If you read a good spread of everything including trashy thrillers, chick lit and the odd literary masterpiece surely you are better read and getting better experiences from reading than just reading the narrow list the Canadians came up with. I've read none of them except maybe the sonnet in school and none of them are particularly calling to me to be read.

nitrogen

thelonecarrot wrote: »

Why do Snobbery and dead people always seem to go hand in hand?

Correct if I'm wrong(pretty sure I ain't) but every author on that list is very much dead.

It's not as if the art of storytelling has gotten worse. Nor did it peak around the 18th century. Yet you still have old texts thrown at you in lists like this as if they are somehow "better" than any books written by breathing authors.

A list with contemporary and classic texts would be a real "well read" list. Because it really would mean you've read a wide range of books from different time periods and angles on society and not just sat in a corner of a library shooting up on Nostalgia.

I couldn't agree more.

I also would have thought the term 'well read' should equate to a vast knowledge of history, cultures and science. How many non-fiction books are on that list?

Eliot Rosewater

DazMarz wrote: »

Oh I don't doubt that, but I'm just saying that I have familiarised myself with many different aspects of many different cultures and so on by reading an awful lot of material; from the academically acclaimed to the 'easy-on-the-grey-matter' trash novels.

Agreed! And this really highlights the problem with the term "well read": it's meaning is wide open to interpretation.

"I'm well read, because in not reading anything I leave my mind free from any bias or prejudice in judging works I may or may not read in the future." :pac:

DazMarz wrote: »

But I think the narrow-mindedness of some who look down on a lot of literature is not something that should be encouraged at all.

This kind of accusation gets thrown around quite a bit, and I think it's a little off the mark. There are lot of people, particularity those in English departments, who consider writing to be something more than just storytelling. It's not that they look down on writers like John Grisham; it's that writers like John Grisham are not within their field of interest. The books they are interested in are usually more artistically complex with their focus on style, thematics, message etc.

There's this conception that academic "snobs" sit around fire places sniggering at other forms of writing, but I don't think they do; those other forms just probably don't even occur to them.

SeekUp

I agree with a lot of what's been said re: this list isn't expansive or varied enough to help determine whether a person is well-read. Although maybe what the "experts" meant was that someone who is well-read would probably have read all of these texts in addition to a variety of more contemporary classics, non-fiction, etc. I don't even know if that would be true, but I think that explanation might work a little better!

I've read three of the texts there. Well, three-and-a-half if you count the Good Book. :cool: