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The Best 10 Fictional Works

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Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened. It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf to make room for new ones. They're often of the genre of "The Coming Crisis of 1981." Valuable in its way in 1979, but not so much later. Literature lasts, which is why so many of our choices here have been oldies.

Why do we read fiction? Any number of reasons, but one major reason is to help us see--often, see anew. So one of the things that separates literature from a pleasant afternoon's escape (of *course* I read thrillers too; I like pleasant afternoons of escape) is that literature does make you see anew. It does all sorts of other things too, if you're sensitive to its techniques.

One of the best ways of teaching yourself about those techniques is James Wood's "How Fiction Works." Wood is a staff writer on the New Yorker, and a passionate reader. He's not going to teach you how to write a novel, but he'll certainly teach you how to read one better. He's deliciously opinionated, but makes his arguments lucidly and persuasively. It's a small book, and I often toss it in my backpack for the subway, open it at random, and start to think as I read it.

Pamela

"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

Nick Thompson

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Tom Carter

Tom,

You wrote

This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

Can you say a bit more about the context in which you are reading these things?

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Tom Carter
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 12:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works

All -

10??? Oh, well . . .

When I was a kid, my parents installed this in the living room (you can still sometimes find it in used book stores -- saw one a few years ago for $150, missing Marx and Freud !). I learned a lot :-) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World

Some years ago, I was asked for "recommended reading" (by a group of students), and I pulled this together:

Fiction - July, 2001 (html) (mostly 20th century, but some other stuff . . . This needs to be updated :-)

This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

Earth Abides, by George Stewart

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

The Goldbug Variations, by Richard Powers

In prior years of the class, we've also read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller, "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing, "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs, and "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (so we could watch Apocalypse Now :-). I guess if I'm ready to require students to read them, I must think they're worthwhile . . .

tom

On Oct 8, 2010, at 12:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction and available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time. Google searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one particular publisher. This is a good group to poll since you all (most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I know the suggestions will be good ones for me!

Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to vote on them.

My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:

"Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac McCarthy

Thanks!
Robert C.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Robert Gehorsam

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck

Hi, I get to claim both lurkership and newbie-ship here, and have enjoyed this thread.

This is an interesting idea, Pamela, that literature has endured, more than non-fiction. It feels intuitively true as we look back on various canon(s). It does all sorts of

I come from the opposite direction; for years I read nothing but fiction (plenty of science fiction, and I still have a special jonesing for urban fantasy), though I spent time in the 80's as an editor of general trade books on science and computing. But recently, just the past few years, I have read more and more non-fiction, most recently and belatedly, Collapse, by Jared Diamond, which is a masterpiece in its own right. Great literature clearly endures from both its universality and beauty, but I also wonder how long the novel will endure as a form.

Which leads me to note that few people have brought poetry to the fore here. When you talk about the pleasures that come from being sensitive to a form's techniques, there's nothing like poetry, maybe because of the intensity that must be brought to bear on each word. As an undergrad, I wrote a lengthy paper on an early and somewhat traditional Yeats poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus. It was entirely a formal and linguistic analysis, and I believed then, as now, that not one aspect of language -- syntax, semantics, form, phonology, you name it -- escaped Yeats' attention as he composed, all serving his specific purpose. He was the master. Alas, I lost the paper in one move or another.

But here's the poem, and as a bonus, for everyone who loves Ray Bradbury, you'll probably see the connection --

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,	5
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,	10
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran	15
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;	20
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Robert Gehorsam

CEO

Image-Metrics

On Oct 9, 2010, at 4:27 PM, Pamela McCorduck wrote:

When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened. It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf to make room for new ones. They're often of the genre of "The Coming Crisis of 1981." Valuable in its way in 1979, but not so much later. Literature lasts, which is why so many of our choices here have been oldies.

Why do we read fiction? Any number of reasons, but one major reason is to help us see--often, see anew. So one of the things that separates literature from a pleasant afternoon's escape (of *course* I read thrillers too; I like pleasant afternoons of escape) is that literature does make you see anew. It does all sorts of other things too, if you're sensitive to its techniques.

One of the best ways of teaching yourself about those techniques is James Wood's "How Fiction Works." Wood is a staff writer on the New Yorker, and a passionate reader. He's not going to teach you how to write a novel, but he'll certainly teach you how to read one better. He's deliciously opinionated, but makes his arguments lucidly and persuasively. It's a small book, and I often toss it in my backpack for the subway, open it at random, and start to think as I read it.

Pamela
"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."
Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Stephen Thompson

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve:

There are so many good suggestions I despair of finding the
Classic Comics version of all these books - that's the only way
I will get through them all. (An HS teacher said when you get to college,
read the first and last 2 chapters then read the classic comic for the
middle
- its faster). But now that the last youngin' is off to college I
should have the
time to read the full version.

I don't think I have seen mention of ancient Greek/Roman mythology (Edith
Hamilton's translation is visible on my shelf - well worn since 1969) nor
any Norse mythology.

For scifi, my Fahrenheit451 book is "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny

Steph T

On 10/9/2010 12:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

> Stephen -
>
> Good points all. Most of us went off on a "my favorite reads" jag
> with only a minor interest in whether it was "Literature" by any
> nominal or not-so-nominal standard.
>
> It doesn't surprise me that most of us have a collective
> double-standard. In our own fields of study/expertise we take offense
> when others don't consult or reference the studied origins of the
> field, and yet when we wander out of our field, we think that we can
> make it up as we go along. Like the NewAge (rhymes with SewAge) of
> the 80's where everything was Laser this and Quantum that... with
> hardly a clue what any of it meant.
>
> Robert's request *did* suggest that he was interested in his "literary
> education" and I think your response is much more ... "responsive"
> than the rest of our interjections.
>
> Though I do have to say I enjoy hearing the clamor of everyone's
> favorites (not to mention shouting my own out and dissing others'
> without regard to any semblance of decorum).
>
> Carry on,
>
> - Steve
>
>
>> Most of you are PhDs and respond to inquiries from the
>> non-science type to aspects of your field(s). So how about asking
>> a college in the English Lit or World Lit department?
>>
>> Robert, you mentioned you are going to improve your literary
>> education, so the works will generally be older because those
>> have had an effect on the development of literature. The works
>> should provide some understanding of the development of the
>> field as well as being entertaining, insightful, etc.
>>
>> To make a musical analogy, I thoroughly enjoy Bach Fugues but
>> if I wish to understand the musical form of the fugue, I also need to
>> listen to Medieval and Renaissance forms that lead up to it
>> (the ricercar, fantasy, etc)
>>
>> Think of the field as having a core trunk and then many branches
>> at the top. It sounds like you are asking about the 'trunk' of the
>> field.
>>
>> So maybe you need 10 books to represent the trunk of the literary
>> tree and then afterward pick 3-5 more works for each branch to
>> cover the last 150 - 200 hundred years.
>>
>> Steph T
>>
>>
>> On 10/9/2010 3:44 AM, Saul Caganoff wrote:
>>> All great suggestions and timely since my library book is due back
>>> tomorrow. I'll add a couple of other suggestions:
>>>
>>> The English Patient (Ondaatje)
>>> Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Persig) (not sure if this
>>> counts as fiction)
>>> A Glass Darkly (Philip K Dick)
>>> On the Road (Kerouac)
>>> Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera)
>>> Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
>>>
>>> and for the Illiad I strongly recommend the audio book with Derek
>>> Jacobi reading the Fagles translation (abridged).
>>>
>>> +1 for all Herman Hesse titles mentioned.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Saul
>>>
>>> On Saturday, October 9, 2010, Alison
>>> Jones<[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>> After 10 years of lurking something I can finally comment on.
>>>>
>>>> In no particlular order:
>>>>
>>>> Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
>>>> Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
>>>> Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
>>>> Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
>>>> Sometime a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
>>>> Beloved by Toni Morrison
>>>> Middlemarch by George Eliot
>>>> Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
>>>> To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
>>>> Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
>>>> Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There are so many more!
>>>> Alison
>>>> (Yeah, I know it is 11. And you are so right Robert (Holmes), I
>>>> should really say Pevear and Volokhonsky's Karenina ☺)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 8, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and
>>>> would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best
>>>> Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction
>>>> and available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time.
>>>> Google searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one
>>>> particular publisher. This is a good group to poll since you all
>>>> (most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I
>>>> know the suggestions will be good ones for me!
>>>>
>>>> Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to
>>>> vote on them.
>>>>
>>>> My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:
>>>>
>>>> "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac
>>>> McCarthy
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>> Robert C.
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

Thanks for the Yeats, Robert. He's one of my favorites, and was even before I knew there was a tenuous family connection.

On Oct 9, 2010, at 4:56 PM, Stephen Thompson wrote:

Steve:

There are so many good suggestions I despair of finding the
Classic Comics version of all these books - that's the only way
I will get through them all. (An HS teacher said when you get to college,
read the first and last 2 chapters then read the classic comic for the middle
- its faster).   But now that the last youngin' is off to college I should have the
time to read the full version.

I don't think I have seen mention of ancient Greek/Roman mythology (Edith
Hamilton's translation is visible on my shelf - well worn since 1969) nor
any Norse mythology.

For scifi, my Fahrenheit451 book is "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny

Steph T

On 10/9/2010 12:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Stephen -

Good points all.   Most of us went off on a "my favorite reads" jag with only a minor interest in whether it was "Literature" by any nominal or not-so-nominal standard.

It doesn't surprise me that most of us have a collective double-standard. In our own fields of study/expertise we take offense when others don't consult or reference the studied origins of the field, and yet when we wander out of our field, we think that we can make it up as we go along. Like the NewAge (rhymes with SewAge) of the 80's where everything was Laser this and Quantum that... with hardly a clue what any of it meant.

Robert's request *did* suggest that he was interested in his "literary education" and I think your response is much more ... "responsive" than the rest of our interjections.

Though I do have to say I enjoy hearing the clamor of everyone's favorites (not to mention shouting my own out and dissing others' without regard to any semblance of decorum).

Carry on,

- Steve

Most of you are PhDs and respond to inquiries from the
non-science type to aspects of your field(s). So how about asking
a college in the English Lit or World Lit department?

Robert, you mentioned you are going to improve your literary
education, so the works will generally be older because those
have had an effect on the development of literature. The works
should provide some understanding of the development of the
field as well as being entertaining, insightful, etc.

To make a musical analogy, I thoroughly enjoy Bach Fugues but
if I wish to understand the musical form of the fugue, I also need to
listen to Medieval and Renaissance forms that lead up to it
(the ricercar, fantasy, etc)

Think of the field as having a core trunk and then many branches
at the top. It sounds like you are asking about the 'trunk' of the field.

So maybe you need 10 books to represent the trunk of the literary
tree and then afterward pick 3-5 more works for each branch to
cover the last 150 - 200 hundred years.

Steph T

On 10/9/2010 3:44 AM, Saul Caganoff wrote:
All great suggestions and timely since my library book is due back
tomorrow. I'll add a couple of other suggestions:

The English Patient (Ondaatje)
Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Persig) (not sure if this
counts as fiction)
A Glass Darkly (Philip K Dick)
On the Road (Kerouac)
Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

and for the Illiad I strongly recommend the audio book with Derek
Jacobi reading the Fagles translation (abridged).

+1 for all Herman Hesse titles mentioned.

Regards,
Saul

On Saturday, October 9, 2010, Alison Jones<[hidden email]> wrote:
After 10 years of lurking something I can finally comment on.

In no particlular order:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Sometime a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

There are so many more!
Alison
(Yeah, I know it is 11. And you are so right Robert (Holmes), I should really say Pevear and Volokhonsky's Karenina ☺)

On Oct 8, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction and available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time. Google searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one particular publisher.   This is a good group to poll since you all (most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I know the suggestions will be good ones for me!

Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to vote on them.

My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:

   "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac McCarthy

Thanks!
Robert C.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

Tom Carter

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

<base href="x-msg://1506/">Nick -

I teach a Junior level course for our Honors Program. Our program is open to students from all majors, so my "audience" in the class comes from everywhere -- majors of students in the class this Fall range across Art, English, History, Math, Biology, Business, Teacher Prep, Psychology, Computer Science, etc.

One of the primary objectives of the class is to get them started on / excited about doing their Senior Honors thesis (which typically is some form of research/scholarship/creative activity in their own discipline). The title of my course is "Methods of Discovery" . . . so some of it is "research methods" type stuff, but I do quite a bit of "interdisciplinary" work with them. Latour, for example, makes them think hard about how science really works, but also how sociology/philosophy of science works . . .

I like to have them read a reasonable amount of fiction, partly so they can develop a sense of the roles that narrative and metaphor play in our efforts to understand the world. I like ending with Richard Powers' "Gold Bug Variations" because it is "science fiction" in the sense that main characters are scientists doing real science (much of the book is set in the 50's in a research lab working on making sense of the DNA codon coding system) -- but also Bach's Goldberg Variations plays an important role in the book (whence, partly, pace Poe, the title :-)

tom

On Oct 9, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Tom,

You wrote

  This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

Can you say a bit more about the context in which you are reading these things?

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Tom Carter
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 12:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works

All -

  10??? Oh, well . . .

  When I was a kid, my parents installed this in the living room (you can still sometimes find it in used book stores -- saw one a few years ago for $150, missing Marx and Freud !). I learned a lot :-) :

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World

  Some years ago, I was asked for "recommended reading" (by a group of students), and I pulled this together:

     Fiction - July, 2001 (html)  (mostly 20th century, but some other stuff . . . This needs to be updated :-)

  This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

   Earth Abides, by George Stewart
   Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
   The Goldbug Variations, by Richard Powers

  In prior years of the class, we've also read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller, "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing, "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs, and "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (so we could watch Apocalypse Now :-). I guess if I'm ready to require students to read them, I must think they're worthwhile . . .

tom

On Oct 8, 2010, at 12:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction and available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time. Google searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one particular publisher.   This is a good group to poll since you all (most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I know the suggestions will be good ones for me!

Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to vote on them.

My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:

   "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac McCarthy

Thanks!
Robert C.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Julia Susemihl

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck

Pamela, thank you for the inquiry into fiction. How does it work? Why does it move us? Ahhh...the liberation conferred by the art of the storyteller and imagination!

An additional offering to enhance the joy of reading: Ayn Rand's colorful lectures "The Art of Fiction."

Julia

From: [hidden email]
To: [hidden email]
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:27:30 -0400
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works

When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened. It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf to make room for new ones. They're often of the genre of "The Coming Crisis of 1981." Valuable in its way in 1979, but not so much later. Literature lasts, which is why so many of our choices here have been oldies.

Pamela

"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

Nick Thompson

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Tom Carter

It’s wonderful to know that somebody somewhere is teaching a course like that. For years I taught a freshman seminar entitled The Pursuit of an Inquiry in which they could do book research on any topic and write a paper about that they found. By the end of the first month many were begging for assignments, but I would not do it. Nor would I take the role of expert, EVER. I claimed inferior knowledge on anything they wrote about.

The one moment when I broke discipline was when the kid who was doing a paper on the Oedipus Complex claimed that it was named after the dinosauer Oedipus Rex. When I asked him – butter wouldn’t have melted in my mouth – how he came to this information, he said he had read it in his introductory psych text. As it happened, I had written that text, so I was pretty sure he was wrong.

Out of some, I got wonderful wonderful work, and they went on to take charge of their education, rather than to be victims of it. Lord how I miss it.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Tom Carter
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 3:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works

Nick -

tom

On Oct 9, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Tom,

You wrote

This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

Can you say a bit more about the context in which you are reading these things?

Nick

All -

10??? Oh, well . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World

Some years ago, I was asked for "recommended reading" (by a group of students), and I pulled this together:

Fiction - July, 2001 (html) (mostly 20th century, but some other stuff . . . This needs to be updated :-)

This semester, in a class I am teaching, we're reading (among other things, including "Pandora's Hope" by Bruno Latour).

Earth Abides, by George Stewart

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

The Goldbug Variations, by Richard Powers

tom

On Oct 8, 2010, at 12:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

Nick Thompson

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley

Robert,

I hope you are going to compile the list when this is all over.

Perhaps you could gin up a reading group for the City University of Santa Fe
Spring Coffee House Seminars. Do we know anybody with a PhD in English who
would lead us?

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 9:14 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Best 10 Fictional Works

The situation so far... in case you are not keeping count:

Given some restrictions, like only accepting the first 10 mentioned by
anyone ... so far we have 73 submissions, 4 have been recommended 3
times, 9 have been recommended twice and the rest once. And just to
confirm that my literary education is somewhat lacking, I noticed that I've
read only 4 of them.

Any more recommendations?

Thanks,
Robert C

On 10/8/10 1:44 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

> Ok, so I've decided my literary education is somewhat lacking and
> would like to know this group's recommendations for the "10 Best
> Literary Works" I should read. They have to be works of fiction and
> available in English and not just say of 2009 but of all time. Google
> searches tend to list the best of a year or be listed by one
> particular publisher. This is a good group to poll since you all
> (most) have at least some kind of scientific/technical bent. So I
> know the suggestions will be good ones for me!
>
> Once I have a list of all suggestions maybe I'll ask you all to vote
> on them.
>
> My list currently starts with Frank's recommendation today:
>
> "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac
> McCarthy
>
> Thanks!
> Robert C.
>
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>
>

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Steve Smith

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Victoria Hughes

On 10/9/10 1:27 PM, Victoria Hughes wrote:
> and even us lurkers
> (10 !? can't even begin to get it down to ten, thus the absence of
> presence)
> are getting a kick
> and
> learning a lot
> from this all...
And no fair submitting 10 (only 10?) Terry Pratchett Novels... though I
think I have a couple of yours still.

Thanks for Lurking Out Loud, it helps (maybe) buffer my own ravings a
little.

- Steve

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Steve Smith

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck

Pamela -
> When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened.
> It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts
> getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over
> make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf
> to make room for new ones.

Well put. I've always held that Fiction often tells more Truth than
non-Fiction... Important, fundamental truths about Life, the Universe
and Everything... but then so does Poetry...

Not all non-fiction is dated however... as we still read Plato or
Archimedes or Lau Tzu or Sun Tzu or Sappho or Galileo with great
interest and delight and relevance.

Thanks for the reference to Woods "How Fiction Works".
I love (good) books on writing. My current fave is "Mark my Words", a
collection of quotes of Mark Twain on Writing. Another favorite is
Stephen King's "On Writing".

Writing (much less reading) threatens to become a lost art. My 30ish
daughters still write (and read) but few of their peers do. They were
born before the VHS tape and suffered under my archaic sense that they
should not have TV in the house... They now read (and write and draw
and make things) while their young men sit in front of a tube (like I am
now) watching tiny sports-heroes run up and down courts/fields or
playing computer-games. At least the young men also play musical
instruments in front of audiences sometimes... and they can really kick
my ass at Guitar Hero.

Also realize that some of us hairy-chested bibliophiles don't bother to
pull books off our shelves, we just build new ones and then when one
room is lined with books we add on another room and fill *that* with
shelves and fill those with books!

I'm currently building a 236 sq ft sunroom on the south of my house
with about 100 linear feet of wall/window space. 40 of those linear
feet are heat-mass wall, but I fear they will be covered with
books/shelves before the winter is out, and by next winter, probably the
window bays will be filled with books too... mediocre insulation, poor
heat mass and lousy windows, books are...

I'm also putting in an airtight stove to make up for the inefficiencies
of the book-laden windows/walls... and if I play my cards right the
whole system becomes self-limiting as I burn some of those egregious
books... My estimate is that I could probably go through 2 cords in a
winter... if my wife keeps bringing them home as fast as she has been
for 10 years or more now. I can't read them as fast as she brings them
home but I'll bet I *can* burn them that fast! No more hauling firewood
for me! The Pulp Mill won't pay firewood prices, so why not?

- Steve

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lrudolph-2

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley

On 9 Oct 2010 at 16:04, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Perhaps you could gin up a reading group for the City University of Santa Fe
> Spring Coffee House Seminars. Do we know anybody with a PhD in English who
> would lead us?

I know that, being unacquainted as I am with the CVs
of the Friends and Relations of this august body,
I am about to put my foot in my mouth, but I'll do
it anyway:

Why would you want to ask a PhD in English to "lead"
you? Ph.D.s in English are to the joy of reading
fiction or poetry as firefighters are to fires.

(Go on, Nick, tell me about all the high old times
you had with Stanley and Ginger and Fern and the gang
at English House, chewing the literary fat, slicing and
dicing metaphors and leading the animals two by two onto
the narrative ark. Doubledogdareya!)

Of course there are exceptions, just as there always
turn out to be a few arsonists in every volunteer
fire department. (You might call them "the Firebug
Variations".) And I'm sure any FRIAM-related Ph.D.s
in English are just like that!

Lee

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Steve Smith

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Stephen Thompson

Steph T.
>
> For scifi, my Fahrenheit451 book is "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny
>
I'll see your "Lord" and raise you a "Jack" (of Shadows)... Zelazny (our
own hometown boy) was awesome... I miss him. And his works.

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Steve Smith

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley

Lee -

Why would you want to ask a PhD in English to "lead" 
you?  Ph.D.s in English are to the joy of reading 
fiction or poetry as firefighters are to fires.

I think I understand Nick's need for a PhD-person... (something about establishing credibility in the whole City College thing).

But this is the *very same Nick* who just wrote:

Out of some, I got wonderful wonderful work, and they went on to take charge of their education, rather than to be victims of it. Lord how I miss it.

And I (also) say "Why English", why not World Literature or something more expansive... and for the benefit of the women on this list... why do we (mostly) read the words of "dead white men"? Really? Without going all feminist, I'd really like to have more submissions here of women writers. Until 30 years ago, there weren't that many published...

And responsive to the points made about "whence Poetry" in this discussion... I offer my (latest) favorite Poet...

Her name is Vera, Vera Pavlova (She shall tell you the truth and the truth shall make you drool!). She is awesome.. and while she *is* white (but not exactly western, certainly not American/British) she is not dead and she is not male.

Of course there are exceptions, just as there always
turn out to be a few arsonists in every volunteer
fire department.  (You might call them "the Firebug
Variations".)  And I'm sure any FRIAM-related Ph.D.s
in English are just like that!

And they are all named Guy Montag (at least on their blogs).

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Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

On Oct 9, 2010, at 6:49 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Pamela -
When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened. It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf to make room for new ones.

Well put. I've always held that Fiction often tells more Truth than non-Fiction... Important, fundamental truths about Life, the Universe and Everything... but then so does Poetry...

Not all non-fiction is dated however... as we still read Plato or Archimedes or Lau Tzu or Sun Tzu or Sappho or Galileo with great interest and delight and relevance.

Oh, I certainly didn't mean to imply that. Not only do I read all of those above (well, Archimedes not so much), but my signature this week is from a delightful book called "The Domestic Manners of the Americans," by Fanny Trollope, mother of novelist Anthony Trollope. She lived in the U.S. for a couple of years around 1830, and her observations just hit you between the eyes. De Toqueville gets all the credit, but my oh my, they saw things eye-to-eye. (De Toqueville arrived in the U.S. just as Fanny Trollope was going back to England, and it's unlikely either one read the other--yet they both remarked on the same things. It would all be quaint, except for how contemporary the observations of both are.)

Also realize that some of us hairy-chested bibliophiles don't bother to pull books off our shelves, we just build new ones and then when one room is lined with books we add on another room and fill *that* with shelves and fill those with books!

Sigh. Not much of an option in Manhattan. You've gotta discard. Especially when you calculate what it's costing in rent for each book.

Best of luck with the conversion from pulp to firewood!

"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

Leigh Fanning

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

> And I (also) say "Why English", why not World Literature or something
> more expansive... and for the benefit of the women on this list... why
> do we (mostly) read the words of "dead white men"? Really? Without
> going all feminist, I'd really like to have more submissions here of
> women writers. Until 30 years ago, there weren't that many published...

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, early 1800s, is a great book. Is it literature? I'm not
qualified to say, but it's a fantastic story with beautiful writing.

The male dominated Western educational experience is what most of us have had.
It's all we know, until we jump to other pools of thought and nonconform to
the establishment that nurtured (controlled?) us in the tender years.

Likewise, I am keenly aware as well that we are largely reading only in
Western European and American works. Can any folks on this list who were
raised outside this tradition, weigh in? Additionally, I appreciated the
sci-fi variant, and would be interested in a fairy tale variant. I've read
wonderful tales in the German and Norse traditions, and once found a delightful book
of Tolstoy fairy tales. I know nothing of Eastern ones, among others,
and would like to remedy this if someone has suggestions along these lines.

Leigh

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Stephen Thompson

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Pamela & Steve:

Winging their way to me via the magic of the Internet
and Amazon Books are three books: two recommended here:

1. James Woods "How Fiction Works"
2. Zelazny's "Jack of Shadows"

and one recommended by a reviewer of Wood's book (not a happy review)
Percy Lubbock's "The Craft of Fiction"

(Not to mention I am also still working on Menand's "The Metaphysical Club"
also recommended in this forum)

Now if only you physicists can get that faster-than-light drive working
I can hitch a ride and have sufficient time to read....

Thanks,
Steph T

On 10/9/2010 5:51 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

> Steph T.
>>
>> For scifi, my Fahrenheit451 book is "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny
>>
> I'll see your "Lord" and raise you a "Jack" (of Shadows)... Zelazny
> (our own hometown boy) was awesome... I miss him. And his works.
>
> ============================================================
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>

Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

I read Lubbock many years ago, and he's got much good to say, as does E. M. Forster on the novel, and even, if I recall right, Henry James. But I prefer Wood. Your mileage may vary.

Menand's "The Metaphysical Club" is good stuff too, but dense, I agree.

On Oct 9, 2010, at 8:29 PM, Stephen Thompson wrote:

Pamela & Steve:

Winging their way to me via the magic of the Internet
and Amazon Books are three books: two recommended here:

1. James Woods "How Fiction Works"
2. Zelazny's "Jack of Shadows"

and one recommended by a reviewer of Wood's book (not a happy review)
Percy Lubbock's "The Craft of Fiction"

(Not to mention I am also still working on Menand's "The Metaphysical Club"
also recommended in this forum)

Now if only you physicists can get that faster-than-light drive working
I can hitch a ride and have sufficient time to read....

Thanks,
Steph T

On 10/9/2010 5:51 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Steph T.

For scifi, my Fahrenheit451 book is "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny

I'll see your "Lord" and raise you a "Jack" (of Shadows)... Zelazny (our own hometown boy) was awesome... I miss him. And his works.

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
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"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

Steve Smith

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck

Pamela -

Great reference... thanks! A couple of Trollopes! I'll mention it to
my wife, she probably has a copy somewhere or will find one within a
week (really, she is *that good*) ...
>
> Sigh. Not much of an option in Manhattan. You've gotta discard.
> Especially when you calculate what it's costing in rent for each book.
Yah! A friend of mine lived there a year (designing for Gap of all
things) and rented an apartment about the size of my kitchen for
$3K/month (probably a bargain today). But hairy-chested bibliophiles
*don't* live in Manhattan... for this very reason.
> Best of luck with the conversion from pulp to firewood!

I need to make a modification to the modern pellet stove that has a
little rasp-like grinding device on the north end of the south-driving
feed-screw so that you can toss books in the hopper instead of bags of
pellets. Or maybe couple a wood-chipper to the pellet stove. Though I
am a purist, I think pellet stoves are for sissies.

The next addition I think I'll build *from* books. Stack them like
bricks, drill holes and drive re-bar... throw a little mud-plaster on
the outside, some lime-plaster on the inside and "viola"!

Jim Rosenaeu of Berkeley has an angle on making bookshelves from
books... how self-referential is that?

http://www.thisintothat.com/secondeditions.php

- Steve

PS. Just asked... and damned if Suzanne doesn't claim to have one of
Anthony's books... I'll probably have it in my hands before bedtime...
but it is Fanny I want to get a shot at... next week I'm sure.

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Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Best 10 Fictional Works

In reply to this post by Leigh Fanning

On Oct 9, 2010, at 7:34 PM, Leigh Fanning wrote:

And I (also) say "Why English", why not World Literature or something
more expansive... and for the benefit of the women on this list... why
do we (mostly) read the words of "dead white men"? Really? Without
going all feminist, I'd really like to have more submissions here of
women writers. Until 30 years ago, there weren't that many published...

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, early 1800s, is a great book. Is it literature? I'm not
qualified to say, but it's a fantastic story with beautiful writing.

Yes, I certainly think of it as literature. If I were world literature czar (well, czarina) I would insist every budding scientist read it.

The male dominated Western educational experience is what most of us have had.
It's all we know, until we jump to other pools of thought and nonconform to
the establishment that nurtured (controlled?) us in the tender years.

Some of the most unusual and ground-breaking English literature has been written by women. I mean in particular, Jane Austen, who was first to understand that the age of reading aloud was dying, and it was time to write for the reader who reads alone and in his or her own head. Before Austen, English novels were written to be read aloud to a group. She is also killingly funny about human nature. On these grounds alone, Columbia University's core curriculum admitted to the canon its first female writer in Jane. If you read Charlotte Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," the novel not the movie, you will hardly believe your eyes. Astounding stuff. "Jane Eyre" is the grandmother of a thousand and one derivatives, but is a stunning piece in its own right.

So you see how futile a "top ten" is?

"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

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