A Decade of Some Significance.
As my few regular readers will know SaLT has just passed its 10 birthday. They will also know that despite reading a reasonable number of books per year (about 75 on average) I still have a nagging feeling that I’m not reading ‘the right kind of books’. Now I’m more than aware that simply reading anything these days (with the possible exception of Harry Potter or 50 Shades) is considered by some as unusual at best or elitist at worse, but I do feel that I need to ‘up my game’ and read at least some ‘better’ books. I know this will undoubtedly make me, in the eyes of some, even more elitist but I’ve been shrugging off such criticism for as long as I can remember.
One of my ideas, along with reading more of the Classics (as well as Classical literature – something I’m singularly failing to do so far) is to read more ‘significant’ books, in other words books that have had a significant impact on the cultural, political and other aspects of life over an extended period. Some of these books are pretty obvious, others less so. That’s part of my problem of course. Not being the best educated person in the world I struggle to know exactly which books meet the ‘significant’ category – so I grope, feel my way and rely on lists from experts at least to point me in the right direction. I’m certainly more conscious of this trend in my reading these days but I’ve been looking for these books with varying degrees of deliberateness for the lifetime of this Blog. So let’s see what I’ve managed so far – in reverse chronological order.
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore
About Looking by John Berger
A Vindication of The Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
War on Wheels – The Evolution of an Idea by C R Kutz
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Design as Art by Bruno Munari
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
The Rebel by Albert Camus
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
A Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara
Well, about the only thing you can say about 17 books of varying significance over a period of 10 years is that it’s not completely pitiful and that, looking on the bright side as I invariably do, the only way is definitely up! An average of less than 2 significant books a year can’t be that difficult to beat after all…. At least I hope not! Luckily I’ve already had one reviewed this year and it’s only February. Even if my review pile (only 2 books presently) nor my 'reading next' pile (4 books) actually contain significant books I’m confident that there should be at least 2 more making their way into 2016’s list of reviewed books – a military manual from the 1930’s and a political biography from the 1960’s. I might even make it 4 books this year – but that’s quite a stretch at this point [grin]. I do promise that the average from now on will be at the very, very least 2 significant books a year – but I’ll try for 3 and even try to push it beyond that. It’ll be interesting what I can dig up from places as yet unknown….
2 comments:
There is a book on books that have changed the world, though it included titles I don't think most modern readers would even be aware of -- like "The Geographic Pivot of History" and "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History", which the author of this list-book claimed, drove western imperial policy prior to the Great War. (The book in question was by Robert Downs...I read it back in the Mists of Time, 2008.)
Congratulations to you on ten years of blogging...there are very few people who carry it on this long! Strange to say I think we've been following each other for most of that time.
I mounted a goal like this a few years back, though I've never actively pursued it. The idea was to read books that had Changed the World, and included The Origin of Species, On Civil Disobedience, The Communist Manifesto, and Common Sense.
I know what you mean by world changing books - but I have no real intention to read Newton, Galileo or such. Nor do I intend reading any of the great (or not so great) religious books of the world. Although they are of undoubted significance they hold very little interest to me. I will be reading some more classical Greek and Roman works though....
The 10 years have flown by. The blog has changed quite a bit since the early days and has largely settled down into a regular format. I'm still playing with it though to try and keep things fresh and interesting.
I have copies of The Origin of Species, The Communist Manifesto, and Common Sense plus a few other obvious ones which I'll get around to reading. I'll also see if I can surprise myself and my readership with a few off-the-wall or obscure significant books too... [grin]
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