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ficbot · 06-08-2011, 07:24 AM

Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I am in Canada so have avoided B&N

ATDrake, good point about the chronology. Not vital, as you say, but helpful perhaps for certain subjects. I suppose I'd go at the non-fiction that way.

Purple Fishy, I did check out the Kindle excerpt of the book you mention, but it was over $15 so I didn't get it. I got a book called Book Smart instead which has several suggestions for each month of the year. She suggests you can just pick one book a month and start from there.

DMB, my university degree was structured in such a way that there were ten categories, roughly corresponding to time periods, and they were put into groupings. You had to take X number of classes from each of the general areas. For example, one of the groupings was Beowulf/Chaucer/Shakespeare/The Restoration and you had to take two of the four. So I managed to take Shakespeare and The Restoration (which was the most boring class I ever took) and managed to avoid Old English all together. I also enjoyed the Victorians, so I took the poetry class from that era and managed to avoid the Romantic Poets, who struck me as overly flowery

We also had one obligatory theory course, and I believe there was some Plato there, but the only part of it that stuck with me was Aristotle.

Just for fun, I did a little chart placing all the classics I've read (and also the modern books that I feel might someday BE classics) into chronological order. Link. There are a few I didn't put on there---I've read the other Bronte stuff, for instance, but didn't find it as good as the ones I listed---but it should give you a general idea of my tastes and of where some of the gaps might be. As you can see, it's heavy on the 1800s and 1900s, and there isn't much before that except for Gulliver's Travels and Shakespeare. I didn't list most of the poetry, but I'm pretty comfortable and familiar with anything in the 1800-1900 era.

I have just started 'Inferno' by Dante---the Harvard Classics one was very dense and flowery, but a book I'm reading had an excerpt that was very different, so I found a different translation (the Longfellow one) and am finding it better going. I also picked up the Bible in One Year book for $2.99 for the Kindle.

06-08-2011, 07:24 AM	#10
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I am in Canada so have avoided B&N ATDrake, good point about the chronology. Not vital, as you say, but helpful perhaps for certain subjects. I suppose I'd go at the non-fiction that way. Purple Fishy, I did check out the Kindle excerpt of the book you mention, but it was over $15 so I didn't get it. I got a book called Book Smart instead which has several suggestions for each month of the year. She suggests you can just pick one book a month and start from there. DMB, my university degree was structured in such a way that there were ten categories, roughly corresponding to time periods, and they were put into groupings. You had to take X number of classes from each of the general areas. For example, one of the groupings was Beowulf/Chaucer/Shakespeare/The Restoration and you had to take two of the four. So I managed to take Shakespeare and The Restoration (which was the most boring class I ever took) and managed to avoid Old English all together. I also enjoyed the Victorians, so I took the poetry class from that era and managed to avoid the Romantic Poets, who struck me as overly flowery We also had one obligatory theory course, and I believe there was some Plato there, but the only part of it that stuck with me was Aristotle. Just for fun, I did a little chart placing all the classics I've read (and also the modern books that I feel might someday BE classics) into chronological order. Link. There are a few I didn't put on there---I've read the other Bronte stuff, for instance, but didn't find it as good as the ones I listed---but it should give you a general idea of my tastes and of where some of the gaps might be. As you can see, it's heavy on the 1800s and 1900s, and there isn't much before that except for Gulliver's Travels and Shakespeare. I didn't list most of the poetry, but I'm pretty comfortable and familiar with anything in the 1800-1900 era. I have just started 'Inferno' by Dante---the Harvard Classics one was very dense and flowery, but a book I'm reading had an excerpt that was very different, so I found a different translation (the Longfellow one) and am finding it better going. I also picked up the Bible in One Year book for $2.99 for the Kindle.