Best Books We May Never Read Completely: The ADD List

Let's admit it. There are some books we may never actually finish yet still enjoy. Here's a short list of some of mine:

(1) Ulysses
(2) Finnegan's Wake
(3) Bible
(4) Shahnameh
(5) Mahabharata

It's not that I don't read these. It's just that they are all so full of so much that if I ever do get through all of them, it will be in multiple sittings. The one I'm most focused on getting through all of these days is the Bharata.

Yummy another list

I tried 100 years of solitude by Marquez three times

I tried Alexandria quartet twice

oh another great idea! Thanks A_musing! I do feel less alone now re. Ulysses. Gracias!

Here's mine, but not including Ulysses....yet.

1. Clarissa
2. Against the Day
3. Mason and Dixon
4. Gargantua and Pantagruel
5. Tristram Shandy

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, The Alexandria Quartet, Anatomy of Melancholy, and Dance to the Music of Time are all books which I enjoy, but which I fear I will never finish completely.

It is their sheer length which is the inhibitor.

ISoLT could easily go the same way, but Proust has intiiated me into so many lost secrets and arcane methodologies that I will try manfully to master the whole series.

True Zeno, Isolt is a mountain !

Joseph and his brothers by Mann is a great book. But is hard work getting through . I managed but I would like to read it a second time but for that I lack the courage.

Even if it's any good, there's a small possibility that I'll fail to finish Infinite Jest once I get started properly. I had the persistence for Rebecca West's aforementioned monstrosity (it is brilliant in almost every respect, just very long for such a densely written work) and Ulysees.

I've not read Moby Dick straight through yet, although I have read every page of it. I skipped the chapter of encyclopedic whale-facts on the read through, and read that chapter in isolation, years later. I recommend this method. It is great, especially without that chapter, which I could have done without.

I don't regard it as an especially good book, but many people think it's 'great': Finnegan's Wake. I've read perhaps 80% of it. I read the beginning, became really annoyed with having to refer to a reader's guide every other page, and started jumping about the text. I read substantial large sections through, but there's still one or two pieces that didn't seem worth the effort so I've skipped 'em, for the moment. It's not nearly in the same class as Ulysees, which for me was a breeze once I'd found my way into it, and funny.

A good 35 min. with FW should do for most everyone. Too much will make you crazy, at one sitting, ie.

I love the Petit Larousse Illustré, but it is not one of those dictionaries that bears a linear reading.

Robert

I actually got through The Bible and Ulysses. I kinda knew how the former ends, and, I had mucho use of study guides and crutches on the latter.

I am also 3 strikes on One Hundred Years of Solitude.

My nemesis is The Histories, but I know I will make it through. I'm about 2 years, on and off, on that bad boy.

My intimidation list includes:

Gravity's Rainbow
The Tale of Genji
In Search of Lost Time (the whole nut)
The Mahabharata
The Ramayana (also, for that matter)
Thucydides (...if I'm having trouble with Herodotus?!)
Gargantua and Pantgruel (I figure, though it can't be much "harder" than Cervantes, can it?)
Tristam Shandy

...edited to add The Complete Works of Shakespeare, which showed up in the Salon's 2010 TBR thread.

I forgot about The Tale of Genji, Sandydog. Me too there. You mention harder than Cervantes and, well, I didn't finish (but enjoyed what I read) of Don Quixote either.

Hi Sandy,

I read Thucydides this summer and I am now going for the second time through Histories. I use the Robert B. Strassler edition which really kick-started my reading of this behemoths. Strassler really takes away the obscurity of this books for the 21th century reader.

Just ordered now the Xenophon editited by Strassler which has just come out.

I have found an unlikely companion read for the Histories which I will review by the end of the week

Has anyone ever read the entire Mahabarata or Ramayana unless they know Sanskrit? It's my understanding that they have not even been completely translated into English.

To date, I've finished every book I've attempted.

Ones I had to try multiple times on, though:

* Finnegans Wake
* The Lord of the Rings
* Old Man and the Sea (I'm as surprised as you are)
* Understanding Analysis (which is the thinnest and most complicated mathematics book I've ever read)
* The Holy Bible (minus the apocrypha. One of these days (Alice), I plan on rereading it, apocrypha included)
* Don Quixote

Ones I faltered with, but overcame in the end:

* Atlas Shrugged
* Gravity's Rainbow
* The Illuminatus! Trilogy
* House of Leaves (my friends were actually concerned for my mental health while I was reading this one)

Ones I thought I'd hate, but actually liked:

* Battle Royale
* The Return of the Native

#14, "Old Man and the Sea (I'm as surprised as you are)"

In other groups I'm in, this would be and is, no surprise at all. Most Hemingway discussions I've seen don't really care for this book. Maybe too many read it in high school or something (usually the kiss of death to a book is make high schoolers read it).

I never cared for it, but then, a hint to any jailers I may have, if you want to make me crazy, don't let me read anything except Hemingway. Ugh!

13. Anna, I think the Ramayana is not very long and is readily available in English, unless I am wrong.

The Mahabharata is a little trickier. There is a great Chicago translation of some of the books; this touchstone points to the first volume. A later book and a part are published in that series; otherwise the series seems to be dormant.

The Clay Sanskrit Library has undertaken to publish the rest, but they have been financially challenged and may not succeed. I have their book 6 in two volumes at hand to take on soon.

A couple of Indian book dealers have what they claim to be complete sets in antique translation.

There is no one Mahabharata although there is sort of an official one. I believe Buitenen used it for his Chicago volumes but diverged from it when he knew better.

I think I will be able to read it all in English before I die.

Robert

16: Thanks! This matches what I had heard about the Mahabarata. I guess I thought the Ramayana was really super long too.

I hope you are able to read the whole thing in your lifetime - without having to learn sanskrit.

Kudos to you cowboy for reading (did you really read every page?) of FW? That's truly impressive.

Lots of people call House of Leaves unreadable, but I loved it and sailed right through.

7> I actually stopped about 250 pages into IJ for about two weeks when I first read it, while I tottered on the precipice of indecision and gave myself a breather: should I finish or shouldn't I? I picked it back up and it just started to click. You get used (at least I did) to his maximalist style after awhile, and once you understand the weird year structure (which he explains somewhere in the 200's - he should've done that at the beginning, imo) the book does flow and is quite comprehensible.

You might be surprised to know that the original text he delivered to the publisher was 1,700 pages and was line edited, whittled down to its present, just-over-1,000 pages. But hey, who am I to give you a hard time if it turns out you don't like his style or the book period since I'm one of the few around here who loathed Ulysses against everyone's violent protestations. I appreciate that you're as open as you are to giving IJ a chance regardless.

I loved Genji, but have attempted Anna Karenina three times. I am pleased to report that I'm 684 pages into it though, so hopefully, I've got it licked this go round.

The only book that has ever really defeated me, and still intimidates me, is Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. I have no idea what any of it is about, and suspect it might be a very elaborate hoax.

But I like to carry it around with me and look learned while reading it.

People can make quiet some impressions with the books they read :

I was last year in the Midlands and when I needed a taxi late at night to go back to my hotel, I could only find a louzy one. The driver looked like a simple brute. But on his dashboard, well thumbed, was a book by Primo Levi.

In Greece on the beach, there was a hunk of a guy, all muscles, washboard and all who got quiet a lot of looks in his tight trunks. I was not impressed until the guy lay down and took Finley's book " Economy in ancient Greece" and started reading it. He was over halfway !

>18 absurdeist:.

I did in fact read every page of FW. Some twice. <joke>I didn't realize the book had ended.</joke>

There is a complete translation of the Mahabharata from the 19th Century - the Ganguli (I hope I've spelled it right!) translation. It is available on line in several places, but is generally acknowledged to be out of date.

It is supposed to be bad luck to keep a complete Mahabharata in your house, putting up another barrier to completion (unless you keep a couple volumes at work and move them around)!

Gone With the Wind.

I don't think I'll ever get through Margaret Mitchell's very long and twisted civil war romance.

20>

You may already have the prerequisite education in early analytic philosophy, especially Frege and Russell, and a good understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical milieu, but plenty of people try to tackle Wittgenstein's Tractatus as though it is a text that could make proper sense to the general, intelligent, reader. It isn't. Most of what is especially valuable about Wittgenstein's Tractatus concerns particular problems in early analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of language, mathematics and logic.

Easily the most reliable explication of the Tractatus in English is the recent reader's guide by Roger White, though I may be a little biased (my name appears somewhere).

I assume when you refer to it as "probably an elaborate hoax", you are referring to the final propositions of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein implies something along those lines. Fortunately that apparently paradoxical statement is only a sliver of what Wittgenstein is up to.

Anyway, you probably know all this, in which case I recommend that you get White's guide, and go back to the text.

In fact, I can hardly imagine what it must be like to read the thing if you aren't studying it. A good book - yes. Well written - no.

;-)

18>
I'll slay that beast if it's the last thing I do, though I hope not.

Snicker-snack.

The Golden Bowl by Henry James has been on my night stand for three years! I've been about halfway through for most of that time. I don't know if I can move it back to the book shelves unread. I have never let a book get the best of me, and it drives me nuts!

>20 QuentinTom: The Tractatus nearly killed me, and I still don't know for sure if I got it right. I carried it around for awhile and it spurred many interesting conversations in airports. Good luck.

>22 aethercowboy: Here's an idea for FW--cut out all the pages, remove the title page and FOB material, and tape the remainder to, like, a cylinder, so they shoot straight out in all directions bristles on a brush. Then you have a Finnegan's Wake with no beginning or end.

I'm right there with you Third_cheek. Moby Dick is definitely my albatross. However I am doing okay with Clarel thus far.
belva

>25 Third_cheek: and 27 philosophy of language is my field, but logic and math absolutely not, which might explain why I found it so difficult. Thanks for the suggestion for White's guide. I'll look out for it.

What is philosphy of language ?

30>

You probably already know about the strange tree-like structure of the Tractatus, and that it can't be read straight through end to end like a typical book. This is one of the most annoying things about the book. If you don't already have a good grip on how the structure works, then this might help:

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html

Take a look at the map, for example, then go to the English/German link of the Tractatus itself, and you'll begin to see how the book needs to be studied. This won't help you make sense of the argument, because in many instances Wittgenstein assumes that you are already engaged in much the same research project as him so you'll be able to fill in the gaps yourself. In a sense you are right to think this is a work of madness. Any sane writer would have made his arguments explicit, and presented them in a way that made each move clear. It probably ought to have looked more like Baruch Spinoza's Ethics in structure.

Again, you may already know all this stuff, in which case it's back to the reader's guide. It might help to know that by the time he was writing the notes which became Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein was himself becoming confused about his earlier work, because the approach is radically different from his later efforts.

I think some of what he is doing with philosophy of language in the Tractatus is now old hat. Some of his claims are obviously better suited to discussion of propositions in mathematics rather than natural language.

Third cheek, you are in grrrrrrave danger of being pressed into leading the first non-fiction group read of the Tractatus if you are not careful.

Seriously, though, that link is very cool and useful. I have spent some time in the map reading in

In a sense you are right to think this is a work of madness. Any sane writer would have made his arguments explicit, and presented them in a way that made each move clear.

On the other hand, you could also say that Wittgenstein was right to choose a form that reflects his content, rather than imposing something more linear on ideas that argue against non-linearity. No?
It is a sign, perhaps, of Wittgenstein's genius that he created this form; if we assume a fluid borderline between genius and madness.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

33,34,35>

Internet connection, or user going mad?

You may be right about the structure, but for me the failure to provide the explicit arguments is the greater flaw.
Still, I think it's a brilliant book nonetheless.

</i>

Mac, to answer your question.

Very generally, at its broadest, the philosophy of language is the field of study which seeks to answer questions such as:

what is language
where does it come from
how does it work
how does it shape our ideas, the way we see the world
what is the relationship between language and consciousness, language and mind

It intersects with disciplines such as semiotics, grammatology, translation theory, phenomenology, neuroscience, psychology, literary criticism, anthropology and sociology, theoretical and applied linguistics.

Touchstone figures are:

Saussure
Barthes
Wittgenstein
Jakobsen
Lakoff and Johnson
Chomsky
Whitehead
Russell

Mm. Any additions, anyone?

Is evolutionary biology considered off-limits for the philosophy of language?

No, indeed not. Especially where evolutionary biology intersects with neurobiology.

A good introduction for general readers of some of the issues in the philosophy of language - primarily from a linguistic perspective, but he does touch on some of the other areas I have mentioned- are Stephen Pinker's books. However, Pinker needs to be approached with caution. He places for too great an emphasis on psychology and medical models of conducting linguistic research, and I am not convinced that they offer an accurate picture of language and how it works and what it is for.

I humbly offer for general perusal this post for more on Pinker.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/09/language-instinct-stephen-pinker.html

37: Sapir and Whorf as well, though I guess they are pretty discredited by now. (I have a bachelor degree that required some linguistics, but they were all introductory courses lo these many years ago...)

tomcatMurr is right, it's a huge field and there's really no straightforward answer to determine whether a philosopher is dealing in philosophical issues of language, mind, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of literure and criticism, philosophical semantics, semiology, etc.

It would be easy to go on adding to the list of candidate philosophers, since the large part of the analytic tradition is given over to related issues. It was also an important area in scholastic philosophy of the middle ages.

I'll add Quine, just for the hell of it. Most of his work was as a logician and philosopher of logic, but his Word and Object touches on very many of the areas of philosophy that tcm has mentioned. It also touches on issues in metaphysics, logic, epistemology.

To see how language might be implicated in all these diverse issues, you could start by considering a classic analytic philsophical problem:

How does the sentence "The cat sat on the mat" mean that 'The cat sat on the mat'?

It seems pretty simple, but very quickly we find ourselves in a tangle of very subtle and complicated issues.

Enough already.

(slightly off topic) Speaking of philosophy, anyone read Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates yet?

I was particularly impressed with prof. Steven Mithen's " evolution of the mind"
A great book and a strong recommendation. Mithen indeed referred to Pinker, which I have here on my TBR pile but not started yet.

39 : Great ! I read your post before plunging into Pinker

In a back corner of the linguistics department where fewer would see me I enjoyed reading Frege and Strawson. I don't remember what they said though, except that Venus as a referent can be problematic or some such.

Robert

Thanks Mac!

Anna, you mentioned Whorf and Sapir, a pet theory of mine. Their hypothesis was largely discredited due to the evil machinations of the psychologists. However, I think it's clear that anyone who speaks more than one language, especially with experience of living in a foreign linguistic culture, knows the hypothesis to be true. It is making something of a comeback now, although under another name. There is a brilliant young linguist at MIT who is doing fascinating work in this area - her name escapes me but I will try to find out more.

Mmm. It occurs to me that we have somewhat hijacked the thread. Apologies to all.

For the Philosophy of Language Crowd, I heartily recommend Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid. It's not philosophy of language per se, but more about language acquisition and intervention. The Whorf-Sapir fans will find it interesting, since she summarizes some of the research into the way in which brain function differs in different languages and how that affects language acquisition. It is a popular book, but she's also got some wonderful technical work worth reading.

Merleau-Ponty is a lot of fun on issues of language acquistion and epistemology and overlooked by many; Plato on Socrates' opposition to the written word is fundamental in my mind.

Philosophy to add to the list: Hegel. Logic.

I doubt I shall ever finish any book written by Heidegger, although I have made many valiant attempts.

48> Try Hubert Dreyfus's free podcast of an entire course of lectures on Being and Time and save yourself some of the effort, if not the time. As a bonus, and reassuringly, you get to hear a respected Heidegger scholar, after two decades of study, still struggling to get some of the basics of the story straight in his head. He's generally very good, albeit endearingly confused, like an old man that's lost his spectacles: "Now where did I just put that thought?" (sic).

>49 Third_cheek: lol. I love the phrase "now where did I put that thought." That is exactly how I feel every time I attempt to read Heidegger.

50> Thankyou.

I haven't read loads of Heidegger but I like the way he wrote -- the teacher that introduced him to me very clearly explained how important it was to keep going, not to get stuck in sentences for immediate meaning to but to have faith in the meaning becoming more apparent as I moved through it, a wonderful piece of advice. Its a bit like some poetry to me - Dylan Thomas comes to mind.

Edit - Oops - I was reading the philosphy thread earlier, took a break, came back and saw the Heidegger mention and have gone off on it on the wrong thread. So, I've edited and put that stuff where it belongs.

>52 tonikat:
I've found a Zen approach to reading Heidegger helpful. Simply let go and flow.

Sounds good to me. I only ever flow a little though, both with zen and with Heidegger -- must let it happen more.

>53 urania1:.

Is that anything like "lie back and think of England?"

>55 aethercowboy: No. Better . . . soooo much better . . . ohhhhhhhhh . . . Ahhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

edited to correct respondee #

How generous of you!

I want to read what she's reading

LOL!!!

Hey isn't that a line from, what was it called, When Harry Met...Solla?

Hahahaha... off to buy some Heidegger...

Lol @ slick, yes, the Hugo line came to mind for me, too...

For me, the first time, Being and Time was less "ooooohh....aahhhhhh" and more "What? Wait? Hold On... What do you mean? Huh? Eh? What is that? Are you sure? Stop a second? It does what? etc."

But yeah, I guess the sex analogy works for me too.

Still, I hope this doesn't mislead anyone into thinking that Heidegger is in any way a sexy writer. He's not and it isn't. The only euphoria to follow from reading Being and Time comes at that point when you feel that you won't have to read it again, either because you get the idea or because you realise you couldn't care less. At last, you can move on to where the real Heideggerian action is at - Merleau Ponty. In accordance with stereotype, the Frenchman is the sexier phenomenologist.

lol

dammit man, you just edited your post. I was laughing at the sex analogy, not at your thoughts on Heidegger.

Still here, and understood :)

The only euphoria to follow from reading Being and Time comes at that point when you feel that you won't have to read it again, either because you get the idea or because you realise you couldn't care less.

you're speaking personally surely? Or else making a very large assumption of everyone else?

Well, Heidigger is a jerk, so the assumption about everyone else is an affirmative one.

Robert

You've told me all I need to know.

Wow, I feel much better after reading this thread. Heidegger and Derrida have been known to counteract my chronic insomnia quite successfully. (What I read ABOUT their ideas is interesting - I just can't stick with the actual text!) Now that I figure is forgivable but I've always been a little guilty about how damn hard it is for me to get through some of the other titles in this thread - LOTR, for instance.

The big one for me is the Bible. I did not grow up in a religious household and entered high school thinking that Jesus Christ was in fact the immediate descendant of Adam/Joseph and Eve/Mary. Since then I've gotten a slightly better grip on the darn thing and have tried to read it multiple times, if only so that other works of literature make sense to me. Unfortunately, I was successful neither in completing the read nor starting it. My entire knowledge of Genesis comes from Faulkner, which, I think, perhaps will be problematic one day when I inevitably mix up Go Down, Moses with the ten commandments.

11. Thou Shalt NOT go down on Moses!

66> It was a sarcastic joke - sorry if it didn't come across so well! :)

66> It was a sarcastic joke - sorry if it didn't come across so well! :)

I do reread Heidegger sometimes, when I'm obliged to teach it, and I do find some of his ideas compelling, but there's no getting around that most people find his style of writing to be very difficult, and I don't think that's because the ideas are necessarily difficult or that the readers are stupid, rather it just isn't the best of writing. I've even had some (not all) German students who say that they preferred reading it in a good English translation, which came as a shock.

#72 - I see, my sense of humour must have been on holiday for the day. No problem then, I guess I just wanted to say I don't find things as you say.

I can't claim to read German. Reading him in English can be difficult, and I do not claim to be really well read in him -- but I really like him (aside from understandable worries over the Nazi thing - but even that I see as a reminder that no matter how right we can get things we can still get things totally wrong (as many a German did)). To some extent I see some congruence between this form in which he expresses himself and what he's saying - he who was so concerned with woodpaths seems to be deliberately saying things just as he pleases and not with a view to the short clear sentence structure that has come to dominate academia and much writing. Its an idiosyncracy I do not mind and in fact seems to suit his speculation and argument.

This quote, from On the essence of truth, about the process of his lecture, seems to me to suggest something about his approach to writing too - and something I agree very much with:

"The course of the questioning is intrinsically the way of a thinking which, instead of furnishing representations and concepts, experiences and tests itself as a transformation of its relatedness to Being." (Basic Writings p138).

73> I don't have my copy of "Basic Writings" present at hand (a little Heideggerian joke for everyone).

Does he actually say in the quoted passage that he's talking about writing and communication, or is this in the context of a passage about such communication? I'd have thought not, but I don't mind being shown wrong - really. :)

No, he is not talking about writing. He is talking about the process of his exploration of the essence of truth - it's me who finds it relevant to thinking about his writing more generally (or that which I have read so far).

75> Fair enough. And I can see how it might be relevant to his way of communicating, whether we agree or not, so all's well. And you are quite right to say that Heidegger ascribed to something like a 'poetic' view of communicating philosophical ideas, especially in his later philosophy - I tend to forget these things, since I'm usually focused on particular issues in Being and Time.