Reading the best of the best should be expanded throughout the centuries
Although I have my hands full already I wish to have ALL of the best of the best in the current mix. If I hurry in a panicked way it might be all there in a week!!
So the Greco-Roman period was the 1st to the party with an emphasis on thought, tis a wide field, and so a decision is to be made not to be exhaustive, and indeed, the best of the best infers that exhaustiveness isn't what is being done, which would be the most ideal way, if time stretched infinitely forth. But the best of the best is the 2nd best plan.
There is for me an inclination towards the Western tradition, which is why the Eastern will be so underdeveloped when I reach the full best of the best mixture, with a manageable amount of no more than 100 names, or when authorship is unknown, or an anthology under titles.
So the next immediate inclusions would cover the pillars of the Western Canon, we're talking after Homer and Virgil --
Dante -- now with Dante I can't separate him in my mind from Petrarch, and so Dante will be joined with him and after much coaxing by the 2 Boccaccio will be a long for the ride.
Throughout the middle Ages, the grouping i'm singling out here is silent, but there has to be something here and there, Tale of Gengi a Japanese novel from something like the 1100's is available, and I think that's what a superb classic film by Kenji Mizoguchi was based on, at least in part. Ugetsu, is a shimmering black and white enchantment, where there is 2 couples in hard times, the men try to make a buck to put food on their tables (there's actually no tables for their dinners, but I lack the verbiage to accurately describe), one who is a little on the slow witted side wants to be a soldier kind of person, and goes about it without a sliver of honor, and the other guy gets more film attention, he makes his specialty ceramic cups and stuff, with a sparkle to them, a lady invites him over as she is impressed by his ceramic prowess, and so he thinks shucks, she looks rich, there'll be more money for my poor starving family. Well he ends up being smitten by her, so I won't spoil anymore of it but it gets freaky there, and the visual compositions are so painterly and serene in that unmistakable Japanese style. The ending is one of the best in all the cinema I ever saw too. //// And then there's Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, I have the audiobooks of that, I can for sure spend 20 to 30 minutes a day with that, it'll be a good workout, and it has to be at a normal speed, Seneca convinced me in one of his Letters to Lucilius that a teacher cannot expect to teach if he rushes forth too quickly in his speech, and that is what audiobooks are speech, I have to hear them at the normal speed always, except for Will Durant's The Story of Civilization volume 1, I have to speed it up for that reader who drives me insane at a normal speed, and obviously now that i'm thinking of it I would love to get back to Durant's whole 11 volume work which has two great readers alternating the rest of the volumes Stefan Rudnicky and Grover Gardner!!
Next up is Shakespeare, for me I'd want to focus on just the Tragedies, because there's a classic book on them I have which cost something. King Lear, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, just those with many editions for them and books about them. And on YT there is bound to be some performances. /// but accompanying the bard will be Cervantes' Don Quixote, a pillar of the Western Canon for sure!!
Then is Milton's Paradise Lost, it's rough going my last few attempts, I have an edition with a footnote for every line, there's just too much to ponder on every word almost.
Finally in this grouping I remember from some source which must have been corroborated in my head by other things, to have it mentally approved as fact, or as a basics of the basics is Goethe's Faust, as with Milton, there's much to feast on in almost every line in this.
But rounding it out in the noggin' post-Goethean material should include:
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is to provide some magic into it all.
Besides the ones mentioned in previous posts, this should allow me to grasp the horns of the altar, I mean the reins of the thingamajig, and be zooming in hither and yon, like Doctor Who episodes on shuffle mode.
So the Greco-Roman period was the 1st to the party with an emphasis on thought, tis a wide field, and so a decision is to be made not to be exhaustive, and indeed, the best of the best infers that exhaustiveness isn't what is being done, which would be the most ideal way, if time stretched infinitely forth. But the best of the best is the 2nd best plan.
There is for me an inclination towards the Western tradition, which is why the Eastern will be so underdeveloped when I reach the full best of the best mixture, with a manageable amount of no more than 100 names, or when authorship is unknown, or an anthology under titles.
So the next immediate inclusions would cover the pillars of the Western Canon, we're talking after Homer and Virgil --
Dante -- now with Dante I can't separate him in my mind from Petrarch, and so Dante will be joined with him and after much coaxing by the 2 Boccaccio will be a long for the ride.
Throughout the middle Ages, the grouping i'm singling out here is silent, but there has to be something here and there, Tale of Gengi a Japanese novel from something like the 1100's is available, and I think that's what a superb classic film by Kenji Mizoguchi was based on, at least in part. Ugetsu, is a shimmering black and white enchantment, where there is 2 couples in hard times, the men try to make a buck to put food on their tables (there's actually no tables for their dinners, but I lack the verbiage to accurately describe), one who is a little on the slow witted side wants to be a soldier kind of person, and goes about it without a sliver of honor, and the other guy gets more film attention, he makes his specialty ceramic cups and stuff, with a sparkle to them, a lady invites him over as she is impressed by his ceramic prowess, and so he thinks shucks, she looks rich, there'll be more money for my poor starving family. Well he ends up being smitten by her, so I won't spoil anymore of it but it gets freaky there, and the visual compositions are so painterly and serene in that unmistakable Japanese style. The ending is one of the best in all the cinema I ever saw too. //// And then there's Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, I have the audiobooks of that, I can for sure spend 20 to 30 minutes a day with that, it'll be a good workout, and it has to be at a normal speed, Seneca convinced me in one of his Letters to Lucilius that a teacher cannot expect to teach if he rushes forth too quickly in his speech, and that is what audiobooks are speech, I have to hear them at the normal speed always, except for Will Durant's The Story of Civilization volume 1, I have to speed it up for that reader who drives me insane at a normal speed, and obviously now that i'm thinking of it I would love to get back to Durant's whole 11 volume work which has two great readers alternating the rest of the volumes Stefan Rudnicky and Grover Gardner!!
Next up is Shakespeare, for me I'd want to focus on just the Tragedies, because there's a classic book on them I have which cost something. King Lear, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, just those with many editions for them and books about them. And on YT there is bound to be some performances. /// but accompanying the bard will be Cervantes' Don Quixote, a pillar of the Western Canon for sure!!
Then is Milton's Paradise Lost, it's rough going my last few attempts, I have an edition with a footnote for every line, there's just too much to ponder on every word almost.
Finally in this grouping I remember from some source which must have been corroborated in my head by other things, to have it mentally approved as fact, or as a basics of the basics is Goethe's Faust, as with Milton, there's much to feast on in almost every line in this.
But rounding it out in the noggin' post-Goethean material should include:
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is to provide some magic into it all.
Besides the ones mentioned in previous posts, this should allow me to grasp the horns of the altar, I mean the reins of the thingamajig, and be zooming in hither and yon, like Doctor Who episodes on shuffle mode.
