Pleasure Reading

For some people any reading is a chore. For most, I think, it falls into a couple of categories: “work” and “pleasure.” Work Reading is things people feel they “should” read even if they're not that interested . Maybe it's dry material relating to one's employment or school, but often it includes news, non-fiction, and even the classics. Pleasure Reading then is filled up with the latest fiction best-sellers, summer-fun suggested reading lists from the Today Show, and magazine subscriptions. I'm not saying those are bad things, just that it is such a shame that reading for pleasure has become a) so limited and b) so scarce. I found recent data that says the average American spends between 2-6 hours each day watching television and spends as little as 10 minutes a day reading. Whoa.

That is something I just don't understand. Much as I like a few good shows, I am driven by insatiable curiosity that can only be satisfied through books. I fall into a third category to which all reading is a pleasure and so I'm a voracious reader who dabbles in every topic and genre, eclectically reading whatever grabs me at the moment. So I think I know wherewith I speak when I say that too often the most popular books are inarticulate and even offensive (whether in subject or as in "to my intelligence") and it pains me that those are the books people are spending their meager 10 minutes perusing. Though the plot may be quite gripping, they tend not to have anything to gain from the reading – no horizon to expand, no lesson to absorb, no application to real life, no moral to disseminate. For me, there is ultimately little pleasure in reading something so easily tossed aside and it is disturbing to me how little people seem to care with what they are filling their time and their precious brain.

With all this floating around in my mind, I came across a BBC's 100 Best Books list via Facebook this week. Now, we all have our personal opinions about what should be considered a “good” book, but this list really had some issues. In particular it bugged me because it contained REPEATS! I mean, there are way too many great works out there to waste precious list space on something repetitive like “Collected works of Shakespeare” followed further down by “Hamlet.”

Annoyed, I set out on a hunt to find all (or at least most) of the Best Books lists on the Internet. There were two “best” lists created by Modern Library (one was a decided by panel, the other by public vote – like the BBC's original list), one from a panel conducted by Time magazine, one from Entertainment Weekly, one from Radcliffe publishers, one from Penguin Classics, and of course many lists created by various educator's groups, message boards, and blogs. Most lists were of “modern” novels, defined as published since 1923. I did find a couple of non-fiction lists and an excellent resource for lists of classics suggested by age group (links: children and youth)...

What I did with that info was paste as many as I could onto a spreadsheet, then I cleaned it up, alphabetized it, and deleted the duplicates... I ended up with 504 titles! Why did I do all of this? To create a true catch-all BEST list for conscientious adult readers. A place to go to when we're deciding what's next for our “pleasure reading” or how to make the “work” of reading more pleasurable by having truly the best choices.

In the end, I decided one ginormous list was overwhelming, so what I now have to share with you is (each in their own post):
1. Classic Works that Really Should Be Read (the best "classics" both old, modern, fiction, and non) 135 titles,
2. Best of Classic Literature (oft-ranked classic lit not represented in #1 and older than #3) 75 titles, and
3. Best Modern Titles (some truly great and some merely popular) 294 titles (there's a sprinkling of non-fiction in there)

Please let me know if you spot any straggling duplicates or mis-categorized titles (modern vs. classic). Children's and Juvenile lit were not included. Maybe I'll work on those another day. (But with my current bleary-eyed state, I'd say that day is not too near.)

Happy Reading! And be sure to leave a comment with your favorite book(s) if it is missing.