Jared's List

[sonic1]

Last few months (omitting poetry and children's lit):

Epic of Gilgamesh
Tale of Sinue and other egyption poems
Pindar: The Odes
Petronius: The Satyricon
The Code of Hammurabi
Lucretius: On the Nature of the Universe
The Annotated Mother Goose
The Annotated Alice
Strunk & White: The Elements of Style
Sapho-various translations
Alcaeus-various translations
Euripides-complete plays
Sophocles-" "
Aeschylus: The Oresteia
Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Gengi
Kobo Abe: Kangaroo Notebook
Aristophanes: Complete plays
The Zanzibar Chest: Aiden Hartley
Thucyclides: The Peloponesian War
Herodotus: The Histories
Dante: The divine Comedy
Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism
Rudyard Kipling: Kim
The Columbia History of the World




See a theme :wink:

[Janet]

Wow - very impressive! :D

[Sarahrob]

Ooh, some of my favourites in there - I absolutely love the Oresteia (particularly the Libation Bearers), Medea and Iphigeneia in Tauris, and as for Antigone... I love it so much I know chunks of it by heart.

Sad, but true...

[Kell]

I studied Euripides, Sophocles & Aristophanes during my college course & loved them all!

[sonic1]

I highly recommend going back to classics you read at earlier ages.

I have learned so much and have experienced them so differently as an adult, as to make them seem like totally different books.

The Iliad, for example, I hated in high school, because I felt it was all just war, and a total boy-book (though I am a boy).

But after reading it this time, I found so much more in there. I also really appreciated Homer's depiction of his heros-which were more fallable, human and petty than even most modern literature, and therefore more truthful in some ways (even though they often exibit superhuman strength and such).

The way the gods influence people is fascinating too. There are times I can look around me and wonder if Aphrodite is still using cupid to make people do totally insane things for love or to fall in love with the most unsuspected of subjects.

[Sugar]

Last few months (omitting poetry and children's lit):

Just out of interest - any chance of a post with the poetry collections you have dipped into and the children's stuff you have read?

[sonic1]

Last few months (omitting poetry and children's lit):

Just out of interest - any chance of a post with the poetry collections you have dipped into and the children's stuff you have read?

Sure; they will be long, and I work a lot so I will have to get back about that.

[sonic1]

Poetry the past few months (mostly a lot of classic stuff). Poetry is something I go back to a lot, and don't nesessarily read straight thru like a book. I ommitted the classic romans and greeks mentioned already above.


Robert Frost
Emily Dickenson
Walt Whitman
John Dryden
ST Coleridge
Gertrude Stein
ALexander Pope
WH Auden
Rudyard Kipling
William Shakespeare
Robert Pinsky
Carl Sandburg
Philip Levine
John Donne
Robert Lewis Stevenson
William Blake
Charlotte Bronte
Louise Bogan
T. S. Eliot
Langston Hughes




I read children's lit in a similar manner at poetry. I could never mention all of them, since I read like 10-15 picture books a day to my kids. But I will mention the ones I have read for myself lately, many of which are returns or frequent returns. A few are new reads.

Brooks: Freddy the Detective, Freedy goes to Florida, Freddy and the Ignoramus

Dahl: Matilda, The Twits, the BFG, James and the Giant Peach

Abel's Island: Steig

Pippy Longstockings (all three books)

Aesops Fables

The White Mountains Trilogy

Barrie: Peter Pan

The complete Hans Christian Anderson

The complete Grimms tales

All of L. Frank Baums Oz books and Wonder tales

Lewis Carrol: alice books and poetry

Rudyard Kipling: Just So Stories

Carl Sandburg: Rootabega Stories

Edith Nesbit: Treasure Seekers, Railway Children

All the Beatrix Potter books

Oscar Wilde's children's stories

Kingsley: Water Babies

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales: Jon Scieszka

Complete Brer Rabbit (both the original version and the modernized)

and many many more I can't think of offhand

[Sugar]

Another interesting list there! I don't include the picture books that I read (as a children's librarian, doing storytimes a couple of times a week, I would have a massive list!), but include anything that I read in "my" time. I see there is quite a lot of "classic children's" stuff there too, and a few I don't know. I guess they must be American?

Brooks: Freddy the Detective, Freedy goes to Florida, Freddy and the Ignoramus
Abel's Island: Steig
The White Mountains Trilogy
Carl Sandburg: Rootabega Stories

[sonic1]

Another interesting list there! I don't include the picture books that I read (as a children's librarian, doing storytimes a couple of times a week, I would have a massive list!), but include anything that I read in "my" time. I see there is quite a lot of "classic children's" stuff there too, and a few I don't know. I guess they must be American?

Brooks: Freddy the Detective, Freedy goes to Florida, Freddy and the Ignoramus
Abel's Island: Steig
The White Mountains Trilogy
Carl Sandburg: Rootabega Stories

Yes they are american, and really really good stuff. All except the White Mountains Trilogy which is sort of a kids science fiction (and decidely British), al beit with better developed characters, and not so allegorical.

I too read at least 30 picture books a week, and it would be crazy to list those, but suffice it to say there are some great reads in there.

Definately check out the Rootabega stories. Thay are awesome. Being a poet, Sandburg tells the stories in a rather poetic way, with lots of repetitions. And characters include talking brooms, corn fairies, Rootabega kings, and a kid that plays his "spanish spinish splishy guitars made special" with his mittens on, because of the cold bitter cold. A wacky world where the plot is dreamlike, and the characters even more so.

[sonic1]

Here is a sample online of the Rootabega stories.

http://www.josephperry.net/rootabaga/index.html