Far and away the most amazing book I've ever read is Proust's *Remembrance of Things Past* which is also on Barkley's list.
I also would put 100 years of Solitude on my list, along with Peter. The other eight are then:
Stanley Elkin, The Franchiser or George Mills
Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Dickens, David Copperfield or Bleak House or Dombey and Son
Anything and Everything by Wodehouse, with the Blandings Castle novels firemost
Marx, Capital
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
4 comments:
Finally someone lists Wodehouse. Good choice!
Don the libertarian Democrat
Just to clarify, my list, like Peter's, includes Garcia Marquez. What I wrote sounds like Peter is on the list. And although Peter has influenced me, he is not a book!
Don, the Wodehouse bug bit me early, as a teen-ager - my father was a big fan. Lord Emsworth, Roderick Spode, Gussie Finknottle, the Empress of Blandings, Jeeves and Beach and Bertie and on and on - I could not imagine a world without these wonderful creations.
I had my existentialism phase, but I fear that again I was probably most influenced by a secondary compendium, a set of snippets from various leading existentialists, including Kierkegaard, put together by Walter Kaufmann.
Underworld
and
Nobody's Fool
Yea, I know. not classics; nut great reading
Post a Comment