The 100 Best Books of All Time: 60-51!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ค. 2024
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Feeling kinda miserable after a bad football game so I’m very glad to see this anticipated series continued!
Nothing like a 5933 page Indian poem to start the day
It's about the size of an encyclopedia
Just sat on the bus and I could not ask for a better video to watch on my way to work. Thanks 😊
Ah, the video I was waiting for!
Love this series, Steve, and judging by the popularity of it, I see I'm not alone.
I would definitely be checking out Lu Xun, whose name I hadn't even heard of before. Also, seeing the Mahabharata in there, unabridged, was incredible.
Fantastic, another installment and it did not disappoint. The wait was worth it! Thank you!
What a delight to see The Shropshire Lad on your list. Enjoying this series, Steve.
I've never heard of it but now I want to read it @
Wait, we were made to read the other Chaucer in school!
Well, an embarrassing 2/10 today; 13/50 so far. Keep 'em coming, Steve!
Chaucer! I'm way overdue for a reread of that excellent work! I have the first 2 of a 3-volume Gibbon set on my shelf that I ought to dust off soon!
Great list! Thank you 😊
I attempted to read Gibbon about a year ago, and I was surprised by how readable The Decline and Fall is even after three hundred years. Gibbon's friendly enthusiasm, his delight in his subject, came through on every page. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to read an edition with the footnotes moved to the back as endnotes, and flipping back and forth hundreds of times became so irritating that I put it down. I'm looking forward to the day I find an edition with the footnotes where they belong.
He's argument about Christianity being a major reason for Rome"s fall is pretty compelling
FYI The Penguin classics unabridged version he mentioned has the footnotes at the bottom of the page. The footnotes definitely play a big part in the reading experience of that book…
@@tripp8833 Would you happen to know if the footnotes in Latin are translated in the Penguin edition?
@@stretmediq I've heard he caused quite a bit of controversy at the time. I only read to about chapter 21 before my frustration with the endnotes boiled over. Honestly, the only thing that scares me about the rest of the Decline and Fall is the ascendency of Christianity, all those remaining centuries of religious infighting, heresy, schisms, and self-righteousness. I'm not always as patient with religious topics as I'd like to be.
@@MustReadMore No the ones in Latin aren’t translated. Although if you have an AI app on your phone like GPT4 you can take a picture of it and ask to translate it…
Can we have the next 10 please Steve. This is getting me through a tough work deadline x
Hooray! The next instalment! And such great books - I recently read the abridged Penguin Mahabharata and I can fully concur: it’s an immensely poetic work and an ocean of stories. As if the whole of ancient India had been put into a book. Some day I will read the unabridged version!
I've read excerpts from it and saw a film version years ago on PBS if memory serves but never the whole thing. It's on my literary bucket list but realistically I'll probably never get to it before I die :'(
A few March of the Mammoth contenders there. 😮
I've read several of the books on your list including parts of the Mahabharata but not all of them unfortunately. I took a couple of classes in Latin in college because I was fascinated by the subject (I still have my old Wheelock's text book) and the Aeneid was one of the works we used as translation exercises and I've read the Harvard Classics translation. I read Gibbon in the Great Books of the Western World set. So far your picks, at least the ones I've read and can thus have an opinion of, are spot on. Curious about what your number one will be
The only Horace I have read is a translation by my young son. It was not compelling. I think I need to read another translation....
as difficult as it is to learn Latin, it's worth it just to appreciate the gorgeous poetry of Horace in the original language! Plus, David Hume is one of my ancestors! LOL
Man, the list is at the halfway point and Treasure Island is yet to come up. I'm getting worried.
Treasure Island is one of my favorite books. I have an Easton Press edition of it which is just beautiful
Hmm... A lot of useful clues, thanks. I have an abridged Gibbon and enjoy it a lot; I suspect that the unabridged would be endlessly entertaining. Read Moby Dick unabridged, and am glad I was not robbed of the parts that get cut out. Haven't read the others, apart from some anthologized Horace, so your thoughts are welcome.
I need to read the Lu Xun book
Me too
OMG I've actually read some of these, which might be the first time in this countdown. Moby Dick and Mrs Dalloway, Can;t say that I enjoyed either of them sadly
Moby Dick is a masterpiece but I like Billy Budd better
Interesting to know, LousyReader.
Plus Bartelby is usually packaged with Billy Budd.
I got a huge kick out of Confidence Man.
Interesting picks. Do you suggest reading treatise by Hume or will enquiry of human nature suffice which I gather is a more accesible and trimmed down version that Hume wrote later.
You can't read Hume without reading Kant"s Critique of Pure Reason which is his response to Hume and which is a direct precursor to modern theories of consciousness. It also pretty much destroyed the empiricists concept of the mind as a tabula rasa best described by John Locke. Kant also developed the nebular theory of the formation of the solar system, which is the prevailing account accepted by astronomers today, both of them as philosophical exercises. I have a copy of Hume I bought at a little hole in the wall bookshop in Edinburgh :)
@@stretmediq yup will probably be reading atleast "prolegomena to any future metaphysics" by Kant and we'll see if I'll get to pure reason as well. Thats interesting I've also heard that Einstein was influenced by Kants works.
@@waffle.23I've read the Prolegomena a couple of times and I tell people who want to read Kant to start with it because it's short and more accessible than his other works so they can get a taste of what they're getting into because he is one of the most difficult philosophers to read. In fact he's so dense I recommend people read other people's works about Kant instead of reading Kant himself unless they're serious about philosophy in that case he's unavoidable
@@waffle.23if you read Einstein's book on relativity you can see the tremendous influence philosophy had on him. In fact I would go so far as to argue that because his theories are based on thought experiments more than empirical observation, the exceptions being the Michaelson/Morely experiments and the discovery by Ole Roemer that light has a finite speed, his work is more a work of philosophy than of physics
Hmm my first comment seems to have disappeared Maybe God is punishing me for being too much of a windbag 😆
Dont keep us in suspense too long Steve!
Surprised Moby Dick is not ranked much higher.
I think he said these are not ranked, only the top 10 are
Edward gibbons decline and fall of the Roman empire is 1.2 million words, the mahabharata is roughly 1.75 million. So if it became a black spine, penguin volume it would definitely need 4 books 🤣
From a talk in 1970
"“n a way, the world is facing nearly the same situation India faced during the Mahabharat war. There were two camps, or two classes, at the time of the Mahabharat. One of them was out-and-out materialist; they did not accept anything beyond the body or matter. They did not know anything except the indulgence of their senses; they did not have any idea of yoga or of spiritual discipline. For them the existence of the soul did not matter in the least; for them life was just a playground of stark indulgence, of exploitation and predatory wars (the West?, Alok John’s interpretation). Life beyond the senses and their indulgence held no importance for them.
This was the class against which the war of Mahabharat was waged. And Krishna had to opt for this war and lead it, because it had become imperative. It had become imperative so that the forces of good and virtue could stand squarely against the forces of materialism and evil, so that they were not rendered weak and impotent.
Approximately the same situation has arisen on a worldwide scale, and in twenty years’ time a full replica, a scenario of the Mahabharat will be upon us. On one side will be all the forces of materialism and on the other will be the weaker forces of good and righteousness.
Goodness suffers from a basic weakness: it wants to keep away from conflicts and wars. Arjuna of the Mahabharat is a good man. The word ”arjuna” in Sanskrit means the simple, the straightforward, clean. Arjuna means that which is not crooked. Arjuna is a simple and good man, a man with a clean mind and a kind heart. He does not want to get involved in any conflict and strife; he wants to withdraw. Krishna is still more simple and good; his simplicity, his goodness knows no limits. But his simplicity, his goodness does not admit to any weakness and escape from reality. His feet are set firmly on the ground; he is a realist, and he is not going to allow Arjuna to run away from the battlefield.
Perhaps the world is once again being divided into two classes, into two camps. It happens often enough when a decisive moment comes and war becomes inevitable. Men like Gandhi and Russell will be of no use in this eventuality. In a sense they are all Arjunas. They will again say that war should be shunned at all costs, that it is better to be killed than to kill others. A Krishna will again be needed, one who can clearly say that the forces of good must fight, that they must have the courage to handle a gun and fight a war. And when goodness fights only goodness flows from it. It is incapable of harming anyone. Even when it fights a war it becomes, in its hands, a holy war. Goodness does not fight for the sake of fighting, it fights simply to prevent evil from winning.
By and by the world will soon be divided into two camps. One camp will stand for materialism and all that it means, and the other camp will stand for freedom and democracy, for the sovereignty of the individual and other higher values of life. But is it possible that this camp representing good will find a Krishna to again lead it?
It is quite possible. When man’s state of affairs, when his destiny comes to a point where a decisive event becomes imminent, the same destiny summons and sends forth the intelligence, the genius that is supremely needed to lead the event. And a right person, a Krishna appears on the scene. The decisive event brings with it the decisive man too.
It is for this also that I say Krishna has great significance for the future.
There are times when the voices of those who are good, simple and gentle cease to be effective, because people inclined to evil don’t hear them, don’t fear them, blindly go their own way. In fact, as good people shrink back just out of goodness, in the same measure the mischief makers become bold, feel like having a field day….”
60-59? So only 2 books? LOL
I noticed that too but I'll give Steve a pass because his brain is firing on about 10,000 pistons so one misfire out of a million is pretty impressive 😆
Not one misfire. Last week he did a video on “Damp mail on a Thursday.” It was Wednesday.
Mahabharata 😂😂 seriously 😒