By this I mean those books you think of often, the ones you know you need to read. Those books that sit on a special shelf, looking down at you and wondering when you’re finally going to crack them open.
Philosophy, literature, history, whatever — tell me about these books.
Funny enough, Moby Dick! It is so influential, but I have never gotten around to finishing it (though did have a fun start while on vacation in Nantucket).
This is mine also! I actually finished it two days ago too (after working at it for 4 months). Admittedly, not sure how much of it I really understood, but was still a fun read, and has definitely felt like it's influenced my own writing.
Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics). I inherited them from my father-in-law thinking I'd read them during my retirement, but now, two years into retirement I have yet to crack them open.
I'm finding that I reading some of the same books like the Greek and Roman authors, but as individual volumes that I feel okay to write in. The Twain in the series I found I prefer the Modern Library volumes as a more complete set that I enjoy reading. My annual re-reads, Melvile and Cervantes, are well-worn versions that I've carried with me so long I don't remember where I bought them.
So I may end up donating the Five-Foot Shelf in other to give space for the other books I find I actually read.
I know that if I read the first one, I'll feel even more obligated to read the next two. It's a topic I'm always ready to learn more about, but I never feel ready to commit to the 2,000-page deep dive.
I began the trilogy having read several books on Midway and Guadalcanal already, and I found the three books so absorbing that I think I got through them all in under a month. So just jump in — you’ll love it!
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have started Fellowship several times, but when they keep not leaving the shire I keep putting it down. At age 46, I now feel more guilt than desire about reading them. Two years ago I bought a handsome boxset of the trilogy hoping it would woo me. Nope. Now I feel guilt for spending the money when I could have bought more copies of James Marshall's The Complete Stories of George and Martha for all my friend's kids now having kids.
Jared, I own 2,992 books. They're ALL white whales at this point. I think I've only read about 120 of them and I'll be knocking out about a half dozen for the semester but nearly the entire collection has been staring at me for my lifetime demanding to be read (or at the very least dusted off).
The Complete Works of Primo Levi. Three volume boxed set with his face across the spines. Sometimes I fancy he looks disgusted as I read everything shelved around him.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, another multi volume set. It was a gift 40 years ago. I promised myself I would read it when I retired. No surprise, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Loving the Christopher Ruocchio’s series you recommended so my reading hours are well employed.
I've been thinking and writing about Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, published almost two decades ago, and I need to read the sequel he published earlier this year, The Singularity Is Nearer, to get an update on his ideas. I find Kurzweil a brilliant techie but a lazy thinker philosophically. I wonder if he's grown more alert to the risks and dangers in what he proposes.
As research for my novel, I read parts of Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. I was intrigued by Harari's ideas but found him long-winded. It wouldn't have mattered if the book were not 464 pages long. I'd like to get back to it sometime, though.
Another door-stopper I never finished was Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. 624 pages. Didn't these guys' editors ever tell them, "Say it in half as many words"?
Current reads: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking; Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar.
Fiction TBR soon: Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark.
Fiction TBR but not so soon: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall; Guy Gavriel Kay, The Sarantine Mosaic (duology); Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory; and several others.
Forever waiting for me to get to it: Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is often considered a challenging read, as it delves deeply into themes of rationality, irrationality, determinism, free will, and human behavior. Because of this, I feel somewhat reluctant to start it.
One is The Divine Comedy. I feel I am not prepared to enjoy it yet. I have been reading more poetry and stuff about poetry (close reading etc.). Hopefully, will pick up Dante soon. Another is a series of books on Philosophy. From Plato to Kant. Plato is done. Aristotle I began with the read-along. But I really wish I could read philosophy like I read literature. One day.
One thing that helped me dive into The Divine Comedy (I'm almost out of the Inferno), was thinking about it as a medieval cathedral. I can't remember who made the comparison, but the idea is to try to take in the sheer magnitude and beauty the first time around and then do closer readings with future readings. Just as you would approach the cathedral from afar and work your way inwards looking at details after you've seen the whole thing. It becomes a long term literary companion. I decided to run through the whole thing reading several cantos at once to get a feel for the work, and then start over and do a closer reading of one or two cantos every Thursday for the foreseeable future :)
The sheer breadth and depth of the wisdom buried between its (many) covers. Aquinas also may have been one of the most industrious humans to ever live.
The biggest one staring me down is Nietzsche - The Aristocratic Rebel by Domenico Losurdo. 1K pages of dense Nietzsche analysis, yes please but also...not today.
There are others like Leon Trotsky's autobiography "My Life" which I used a lot in my MA thesis but haven't actually sat and read through cover to cover for pleasure. Part of me wants to get the Russian copy to really soak up all his wit, part of me wants to continue to delay gratification since I already know it's one of my favorite books.
Ulysses. I’ve made it through some big ones such as Infinite Jest and Gravity’s Rainbow, but starting Ulysses has been daunting. I have read Portrait and Dubliners so far though. I just feel that so much other stuff has to be read first to get the most out of Ulysses.
Also on my list. I just need to get "in the mood" for it, which fall is definitely that time. Thinking Thanksgiving break or something, when I have 4 days off from work to spend time making a solid dent in it for the first pass. Also just read The Odyssey again earlier this year so the time feels ripe.
Trust me if you pick up Ulysses right now you won't regret it. It blows both Infinite Jest and GR out of the water imo:) But I can really understand this feeling of having so much more to read before one is prepared for THE book.
Interesting. I read Ulysses as a teenager, and loved it. I look again at it in my 40s, and didn't find it as engaging. Perhaps it dances best, avoiding feet made slow by years of semiotic tradition, when read at a young age.
This would contrast nicely with Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", which I would not recommend be read by anyone still in their 30s. It requires being safely past any sophomoric philosophical sentimentality.
Despite loving five of the nine Dickens novels I've read, and writing my MA thesis on three of them, I want to read more of his stuff. I don't know that I want to read all of the novels - but maybe that itself should be my white whale!
The Hebrew Bible translated by Robert Alter as well as the New Testament translated by Richard Lattimore (who is perhaps best known for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey).
The Count of Monte Cristo & East of Eden. Somehow TCOMC never made it to my desk in all my years of education. East of Eden did, but I’m pretty sure I Sparknoted my way through it.
Read Middlemarch 50+ years ago. Purchased the large print edition about two months ago. Been eyeballing me ever since. Also, The Tale of Genji has been giving me the eye.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I quite liked The Fountainhead and the opinions online about Atlas Shrugged are really devisive. So I think I should read it myself. I already own a copy but the thin paper and miniature letters are discouraging.
The Phenomenology of Spirit. Everyone talks about how hard it is to understand, I feel like I need to prepare for it but I don’t know how much I should bother to before just going for it.
“The Recognitions” by William Gaddis… it feels like I’m just waiting for the mood to strike me, but it hasn’t done so yet… I’ll get to it eventually 🤷♂️
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison. One of Tolkien's favorite books, but boy is it long and dense and one of those books where you can't just read snatches of at a time because you'll lose your place.
The Divine Comedy, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These. I haven't made the time for myself that I feel Divine Comedy and PI deserve. Funnily enough, I started On the Shortness of Life and Seneca has yelled at me enough, I'll make the time
For me it’s Ulysses by James Joyce and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I brought these earlier this year along with Thomas Pynchon’s Gravities Rainbow which I read straight away but the other two have just sat on the shelf looking at me.
Oh, there are many of them. The ones that carry the weight of a white whale though? Off the top off my head Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, the Odyssey and fittingly Moby Dick. I could effortlessly extend this list with other books on my tbr list, but those ones I feel have the gravitas of „white whale“ books, that make me take a step back thinking about them. Honourable mention: House of Leaves. It has been living in different iterations of my shelf for a whopping 12 years now.
I conquered one of my "big ones" this year: Crime and Punishment. So glad I did. Next would be The Brothers Karamazov and then Dante's Divine Comedy. I'm intrigued that so many people are commenting that Ulysses is their white whale. I have read some novellas/short stories by Joyce this year but I know Ulysses is quite different from his other work. Maybe that should be higher on my list as well.
Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence. I have had the massive paperback omnibus judgmentally staring at me from the top of my shelf for the better part of two years at this point.
The City of God (Saint Augustine), The Republic (Plato), Ulysses (James Joyce), The Divine Comedy (Dante), A la recherche du temps perdu (Proust).
I finally got around to starting Saint Augustine’s Confessions, so maybe I’ll then move on to The City of God.
Do you read Proust in French or English translation?
Funny enough, Moby Dick! It is so influential, but I have never gotten around to finishing it (though did have a fun start while on vacation in Nantucket).
This is mine also! I actually finished it two days ago too (after working at it for 4 months). Admittedly, not sure how much of it I really understood, but was still a fun read, and has definitely felt like it's influenced my own writing.
Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics). I inherited them from my father-in-law thinking I'd read them during my retirement, but now, two years into retirement I have yet to crack them open.
I'm finding that I reading some of the same books like the Greek and Roman authors, but as individual volumes that I feel okay to write in. The Twain in the series I found I prefer the Modern Library volumes as a more complete set that I enjoy reading. My annual re-reads, Melvile and Cervantes, are well-worn versions that I've carried with me so long I don't remember where I bought them.
So I may end up donating the Five-Foot Shelf in other to give space for the other books I find I actually read.
The Pacific War trilogy by Ian W. Toll.
I know that if I read the first one, I'll feel even more obligated to read the next two. It's a topic I'm always ready to learn more about, but I never feel ready to commit to the 2,000-page deep dive.
I began the trilogy having read several books on Midway and Guadalcanal already, and I found the three books so absorbing that I think I got through them all in under a month. So just jump in — you’ll love it!
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. I've read it once but I don't think I grasped even 10% of it. Also I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have started Fellowship several times, but when they keep not leaving the shire I keep putting it down. At age 46, I now feel more guilt than desire about reading them. Two years ago I bought a handsome boxset of the trilogy hoping it would woo me. Nope. Now I feel guilt for spending the money when I could have bought more copies of James Marshall's The Complete Stories of George and Martha for all my friend's kids now having kids.
Jared, I own 2,992 books. They're ALL white whales at this point. I think I've only read about 120 of them and I'll be knocking out about a half dozen for the semester but nearly the entire collection has been staring at me for my lifetime demanding to be read (or at the very least dusted off).
The Story of Civilization by Will & Ariel Durant
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R Hofstadter
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro
The Complete Works of Primo Levi. Three volume boxed set with his face across the spines. Sometimes I fancy he looks disgusted as I read everything shelved around him.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, another multi volume set. It was a gift 40 years ago. I promised myself I would read it when I retired. No surprise, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Loving the Christopher Ruocchio’s series you recommended so my reading hours are well employed.
I've been thinking and writing about Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, published almost two decades ago, and I need to read the sequel he published earlier this year, The Singularity Is Nearer, to get an update on his ideas. I find Kurzweil a brilliant techie but a lazy thinker philosophically. I wonder if he's grown more alert to the risks and dangers in what he proposes.
As research for my novel, I read parts of Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. I was intrigued by Harari's ideas but found him long-winded. It wouldn't have mattered if the book were not 464 pages long. I'd like to get back to it sometime, though.
Another door-stopper I never finished was Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. 624 pages. Didn't these guys' editors ever tell them, "Say it in half as many words"?
Current reads: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking; Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar.
Fiction TBR soon: Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark.
Fiction TBR but not so soon: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall; Guy Gavriel Kay, The Sarantine Mosaic (duology); Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory; and several others.
Forever waiting for me to get to it: Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is often considered a challenging read, as it delves deeply into themes of rationality, irrationality, determinism, free will, and human behavior. Because of this, I feel somewhat reluctant to start it.
Reasons and Persons. I've read parts of it, but I haven't read it in its entirety.
One is The Divine Comedy. I feel I am not prepared to enjoy it yet. I have been reading more poetry and stuff about poetry (close reading etc.). Hopefully, will pick up Dante soon. Another is a series of books on Philosophy. From Plato to Kant. Plato is done. Aristotle I began with the read-along. But I really wish I could read philosophy like I read literature. One day.
One thing that helped me dive into The Divine Comedy (I'm almost out of the Inferno), was thinking about it as a medieval cathedral. I can't remember who made the comparison, but the idea is to try to take in the sheer magnitude and beauty the first time around and then do closer readings with future readings. Just as you would approach the cathedral from afar and work your way inwards looking at details after you've seen the whole thing. It becomes a long term literary companion. I decided to run through the whole thing reading several cantos at once to get a feel for the work, and then start over and do a closer reading of one or two cantos every Thursday for the foreseeable future :)
The Republic! I occasionally dip my toes in but can't quite sustain the energy and focus to work through it.
Aquinas' entire Summa Theologica
What draws you to it?
The sheer breadth and depth of the wisdom buried between its (many) covers. Aquinas also may have been one of the most industrious humans to ever live.
Plato, "Collected Dialogues."
For a while it was Malazan, but then recently I tried again and I realized i was probably never gonna like it, so why bother trying?
Nowadays, it's Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota, which also intimidates me, but with this one, i think it's way more likely for me to enjoy.
The biggest one staring me down is Nietzsche - The Aristocratic Rebel by Domenico Losurdo. 1K pages of dense Nietzsche analysis, yes please but also...not today.
There are others like Leon Trotsky's autobiography "My Life" which I used a lot in my MA thesis but haven't actually sat and read through cover to cover for pleasure. Part of me wants to get the Russian copy to really soak up all his wit, part of me wants to continue to delay gratification since I already know it's one of my favorite books.
Ulysses. I’ve made it through some big ones such as Infinite Jest and Gravity’s Rainbow, but starting Ulysses has been daunting. I have read Portrait and Dubliners so far though. I just feel that so much other stuff has to be read first to get the most out of Ulysses.
Also on my list. I just need to get "in the mood" for it, which fall is definitely that time. Thinking Thanksgiving break or something, when I have 4 days off from work to spend time making a solid dent in it for the first pass. Also just read The Odyssey again earlier this year so the time feels ripe.
Trust me if you pick up Ulysses right now you won't regret it. It blows both Infinite Jest and GR out of the water imo:) But I can really understand this feeling of having so much more to read before one is prepared for THE book.
Interesting. I read Ulysses as a teenager, and loved it. I look again at it in my 40s, and didn't find it as engaging. Perhaps it dances best, avoiding feet made slow by years of semiotic tradition, when read at a young age.
This would contrast nicely with Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", which I would not recommend be read by anyone still in their 30s. It requires being safely past any sophomoric philosophical sentimentality.
I think I’m going to start it this fall thanks. I also feel the same regarding your comment about The Divine Comedy
If you need resources for Ulysses hit me up. Happy reading :)
Middlemarch. I read a very large excerpt and was dumbfounded by the language. I am ready to take it on.
Despite loving five of the nine Dickens novels I've read, and writing my MA thesis on three of them, I want to read more of his stuff. I don't know that I want to read all of the novels - but maybe that itself should be my white whale!
The Hebrew Bible translated by Robert Alter as well as the New Testament translated by Richard Lattimore (who is perhaps best known for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey).
This is embarrassing to say. Ok? Ok.
The Count of Monte Cristo & East of Eden. Somehow TCOMC never made it to my desk in all my years of education. East of Eden did, but I’m pretty sure I Sparknoted my way through it.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman right next to my Study Quran lol
That poor thing has been there for YEARS now but I just don’t have the endurance for such heavy reads…yet.
Joseph and his brothers by Thomas Mann; Annals by Tacitus; A la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust; Confessions by Augustine.
The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Politics by Aristotle
Not sure if this qualifies but the Woman in White by Wilke Collins.
A Thousand Splendid Suns. Honestly this applies to all Khalid Hosseini book but specifically this one for the immense effect it had on me.
Escher, Gödel, Bach is looking at me with pity in this very moment...
Facing Antichrist Today
by Peter Attwood
I still haven't gone beyond Swann's Way 😔
Being and Time and Phenomenology of Spirit. Have read a fair amount of philosophy, but not sure how to tackle these in a meaningful way.
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Read Middlemarch 50+ years ago. Purchased the large print edition about two months ago. Been eyeballing me ever since. Also, The Tale of Genji has been giving me the eye.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I quite liked The Fountainhead and the opinions online about Atlas Shrugged are really devisive. So I think I should read it myself. I already own a copy but the thin paper and miniature letters are discouraging.
I often think about Oryx and Crake by Margret Atwood
Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism."
A Critique Of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.
I read part of it then decided to put it aside until I’m more read in philosophy.
Tolkien's Sillmarillion
Vikram Seth's Equal Music
Nietzsche's Thus spake Zarathustra
Lenin's State & the revolution
Many, many, many more...
The Phenomenology of Spirit. Everyone talks about how hard it is to understand, I feel like I need to prepare for it but I don’t know how much I should bother to before just going for it.
“The Recognitions” by William Gaddis… it feels like I’m just waiting for the mood to strike me, but it hasn’t done so yet… I’ll get to it eventually 🤷♂️
Saint Augustiine's Confessions, and The count of Monte Cristo. As per a re-read that haa been staring and calling my name: The brothers Karamazov.
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison. One of Tolkien's favorite books, but boy is it long and dense and one of those books where you can't just read snatches of at a time because you'll lose your place.
Middlemarch. God knows I’ve tried! I know I’m supposed to like it, or at least appreciate it. But I can’t get through more than a couple of chapters.
Finite and infinite games
Finite and infinite games
The Divine Comedy, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These. I haven't made the time for myself that I feel Divine Comedy and PI deserve. Funnily enough, I started On the Shortness of Life and Seneca has yelled at me enough, I'll make the time
For me it’s Ulysses by James Joyce and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I brought these earlier this year along with Thomas Pynchon’s Gravities Rainbow which I read straight away but the other two have just sat on the shelf looking at me.
Oh, there are many of them. The ones that carry the weight of a white whale though? Off the top off my head Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, the Odyssey and fittingly Moby Dick. I could effortlessly extend this list with other books on my tbr list, but those ones I feel have the gravitas of „white whale“ books, that make me take a step back thinking about them. Honourable mention: House of Leaves. It has been living in different iterations of my shelf for a whopping 12 years now.
I conquered one of my "big ones" this year: Crime and Punishment. So glad I did. Next would be The Brothers Karamazov and then Dante's Divine Comedy. I'm intrigued that so many people are commenting that Ulysses is their white whale. I have read some novellas/short stories by Joyce this year but I know Ulysses is quite different from his other work. Maybe that should be higher on my list as well.
Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence. I have had the massive paperback omnibus judgmentally staring at me from the top of my shelf for the better part of two years at this point.