/lit/ - Literature

All "Great Books" reading lists are memes. They're overly general and arbitrary. These lists typically include works of science, mathematics, philosophy, prose, poetry, drama, religion, mythology, etc. There is no reason why so many disparate subjects should be included in a single list and called "great" because no one man can judge the greatness of all those various subjects and no one man realistically could be well-versed in them all (only a genius could do this and it would take him a lifetime to finish such a list so, being a clever man, he would avoid it anyways). Many people, when they see a list like this, feel a sort of intellectual anxiety because they now feel a burden to learn deeply about so many disparate things, to become a specialist in all subjects. This isn't necessary and in fact, it's stupid to attempt it. It's much better to refine a list to one subject and to a certain time period, for example "The Great Works of 16th Century English Poetry." A list like that will do away with much arbitrariness and would be ten times superior to the more general lists typically called "Great Books" lists. The problem of arbitrariness is more subtle though. When it comes to ancient texts, there is a lot of consensus about what is great (Plato, the Greek tragedians, the Bible, etc.), but you'll notice a strong arbitrary bias occurs in proportion to the contemporariness of a text (look at the end of the list to see how many random modern Jews you should read; or look at the random hodgepodge of mediocre writers about whom there is no consensus of their greatness such as Conrad, Woolf, Faulkner). "Great Books" reading lists follow a dialectic, not of greatness, but of popularity and influence. Many writers are included in these lists who aren't great, but rather merely influential. The end of the dialectic of course will lead you God knows where (I suspect nowhere interesting or good; you'll likely become a mere liberal democrat). These lists leave no room open for true greatness near the end, but rather suffocate you with an arbitrary preference for the influential, popular, and 9 times out of the 10, the subversive.

Therefore, I recommend you carve out your own path. Be precise in what you read. Remember that you'll never have enough time to read everything that you want to read, so be careful in your choices. Sharpen your tastes by reading one author deeply (seriously pick one writer and read his entire oeuvre). Then read around him in a sort of spiral. Read deeply, and then perhaps generally and then deeply again, but remember to follow your own dialectic. Don't feel any imperative to read things that you don't want to read because some ivory-tower pair of glasses told you that it's great (trust me, whoever made that list hasn't read everything on that list and is no judge). In order words, read what you want, but of course aim to read good works in preference to bad or mediocre works (also, read the Bible first).