Embarrassing: I like to consider myself erudite and fairly well read, but I have read only about four of the books on that list in their entirety:

Dune (gift from my best friend)
Fear of Flying (at the behest of a girlfriend)
Also Sprach Zarathustra (in German because I wanted to)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (why I'll never know)

My friend Jack Lewis, who founded Gun World, the magazine I edit, owned Private Pilot magazine in the '70s. One of his contributors was sending him these pieces about a bird and meditations about flying. He published four of them and then told his contributor, "Hell, I'm running an aviation magazine, not a bird magazine." The author said, "Okay, can I have the rights to the pieces you published back. Jack assented, and so he gave away Jonathan Livingston Seagull--not one of his best business decisions.

My uncle once characterized Jonathan Livingston Seagull as "the second worst piece of sh*t produced in the 20th century." The worst, he said, was none other than The Prophet. I still miss the old fellow.

Read: Slaughterhouse 5, Catch 22, The Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar, Confessions, On the Road, Dune, The Doors of Perception, The Hitchhiker's Guide, To Kill a Mockingbird and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Enjoyed: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye (I read it when I was young, and I remember liking the book, though I don't know that I would enjoy it if I read it again), Slaughterhouse was ok, I liked Cat's Cradle better, Catch 22 and Hitchhiker's Guide. I thought that I would enjoy On the Road, but I did not. I thought it was boring. I did like Walden, which some think is a boring book to read. The Bell Jar was required, and I don't think I finished it. I may have used Cliff Notes for that one.

I didn't mention Rand...I read the other Rand book, "Atlas Shrugged" which was well-written but the characters were brutal.

I never read "The Fountainhead" but saw the movie from the 40s or 50s, and it certainly was a depressing little flick.

Happy to see The Leopard made the list.  Astonishingly over-looked novel.

Confessions (Rousseau) and The Sorrows of Young Werther were at the top of my Straussian grad professors' hit list.

V. disappointed to see Brideshead was omitted.  Also, the Ginger Man by Donleavy. WTF?!

Many cult works are just shit.

Last edited by Admiral Cod (2008-04-27 21:30:43)

Why do the Straussians like Rousseau?  I know they do, it's just I don't get what sort of clever reading  they've come up with.  Also, that they care
for Werther (or anything cultural besides the faint drippings of the patina of culture) is remarkable.