A Salute to General Ambivilence

[anarchangel23]

The meme claims that this is a list of books made by the BBC of which, the average person will have read six. I'm dubious that the BBC had anything to do with this list, but I'm don't care to check it myself, so I'll lazily indicate my skepticism and move on to the list.

As Mash says, "If nothing else, it's a good way to pick some summer reading

Comments

[confusiontempst]

That makes me feels o much better about my read total, which I think came out at around 12.. Which feels really shamefully low when you get this list from reading Mash's version.

[confusiontempst]

Er.. Forgot the other part.
Looking at thsi list of books, with a couple of exceptions, I found myself generally unstirred by the thought of reading the ones I haven't already read. Like, why would I want to go read so many 'classics'? There seems to be some sort of disconnect for me which doesn't call out for me to read the old masters of fiction.

That said, I found both 1984 and Brave New World interesting dystopia's when I read them, and both made for insightful commentaries on the world to the 18 year old me who read these books.

[anarchangel23]

I don't think it's a disconnect as much as a preference. I'm not really interested in using this sort of list as a checklist, so I don't.

I should read 1984 and Brave New World at some point though.

[xullrae]

You should read To Kill a Mockingbird. Everyone should :-)

[xenogram]

I'd avoid any of the Dune prequels by Brian Herbert if I were you. They really, really stink.

[anarchangel23]

I'd heard that. I was just thinking of reading the core novels.

[graeco_celt]

Mmm, I'd agree with this.
I read Dune when I was in my mid teens and then tried to read Dune Messiah and found that I had already lost interest and couldn't really get connected to it.

I recently bought and re-read Dune in Spanish and found that I still love it but I have no desire to bother with even the rest of the original trilogy.

[cataragon]

I've read quite a significant number of these (a version of this meme went round about 5 years ago, when I probably did it, but I'm too lazy to go looking for it). All I think it indicates is that I was a voracious reader as a child, with limited resources and access to a lot of The Classics. Having said that, I think a lot of people underestimate the ways in which classic literature underpins our culture now - it can be quite fascinating to see tropes and things develop in their early forms. Now these things bloom and grow at an alarming rate, but historically the process was slower.
Quite a lot of them are awesome and very very well written also. The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books. Jane Austen has somehow become synonymous with a sort of refined girliness, but her books are often wickedly and quite slyly funny.

[anarchangel23]

Yeah, I might have done it then as well. I seem to remember seeing a similar thing with far more new stuff... and there was definitely a chain letter aspect to one version of this meme too. I suspect this is the latest evolution of the same meme because of the various inconsistencies (mix of single books and series, and duplications).

[anarchangel23]

I love Use of Weapons; it's probably the most disturbing book I've read... although, Perdido Street Station packs a punch in that region).

The only reason I haven't read The Wasp factory is that I haven't worked my way through Bank's non-sci-fi works yet. And that's a big yet.

[graeco_celt]

Why do these lists almost always include 1984 and Brave New World but not Fahrenheit 451?!

They're grouped together in my mind as the three primary distopic future novels but everyone seems to forget Bradbury, when they make up these lists.

[confusiontempst]

I read Farenheit 451, but I found it totally lacking. If I had to pick a 3rd dystopia, I'd go with Stand on Zanzibar.

[anarchangel23]

Chalk that up as another of the list's many problems!