The Positives of a Reading List

Being an avid reader, I’m fond of booklists from those in the know as to their verdict on the best out there. Every New Year’s Day, I post my own favorites for the ensuing year, as much for myself as for others, as a way of disciplining my reading.

With booklists in mind, I couldn’t resist getting Swiss researcher Chiareto Calò’s well-received book, The Library of Humanity: The Most Influential Books. Besides, at just $1.99, how could I go wrong?

Calò lists 300 books, fiction and non-fiction, poetry and plays, across several continents and timelines, including our own.

I like how he succinctly previews each selection with a page or two, giving readers more than a mere listing.

But mind you, he surprisingly lapses in omitting writers like Cicero, Heraclitus, George Eliot and works like Goethe’s Faust.

He also makes some selections I think might be questioned.

Still, he makes up for such lapses, with inclusion of important works most of us have probably missed, to which I plead guilty and fervently hope to make amends.

For example, though I knew of the Epic of Gilgamesh, pre-dating Homer by 1500 years, I had never read it.

At least until yesterday, coming away dazzled by the splendor of its poetic rendering of the human journey.

And I’ve yet to read the Vedas, Hesiod’s Theogony, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, or that great Indian epic, The Ramayana. And so it goes.

But as I said, I mean to mend my ways.

Next stop, ancient Egypt and the Story of Sinuhe.

–rj