Chaos Reading discussion

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Jorge Luis Borges
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Borges' "A Personal Library" List
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Turns out a publisher asked him to compile this list of 100 great works of literature and he only got to 75. Not a single female author on that list. That's kind of crazy.
Cheryl wrote: "I've read a grand total of 6 books from that list, although I've read other books from some of the authors."
I've only read 1 (and probably half of another). Seemed like a very personal and atypical list with many titles/authors I'd never even heard of. Which of your 6 stood out the most for you?
I've only read 1 (and probably half of another). Seemed like a very personal and atypical list with many titles/authors I'd never even heard of. Which of your 6 stood out the most for you?
Marc wrote: "Turns out a publisher asked him to compile this list of 100 great works of literature and he only got to 75. Not a single female author on that list. That's kind of crazy."
The almost total lack of female characters in Borges' own writing came up in another group.
The almost total lack of female characters in Borges' own writing came up in another group.

There are a few I haven't any familiarity with that all seem to be late 19th or early 20th Century Spanish language writers. Will I pursue the 'unread' selections? Probably not.
The question was asked by Marc which 6 stand out. For me the half dozen I'd encourage anyone to read are:
1. Gulliver's Travels
2. Hedda Gabbler
3. Heart of Darkness
4. The Glass Bead Game
5. Tales by Kipling
6. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(get an early to mid 20th Century printing)
My choices are as eclectic as Borges I will confess.
Regarding Borges and the topic or lack thereof about women and women authors, is anyone really surprised with the culture he inhabited? Certainly not a defense, but the root of his and Marquez's disputes and mutual dislike was reportedly in part a macho culture fight over a woman. Female authors? Well this was a list of books that he, Borges, found entertaining/worthwhile/, and not the greatest literature ever. His views on English language female writers is not secret.
I appreciate you both sharing your favorites (many of which were already on my to-be-read list, but not Gulliver's Travels--it is now). Good points re: Borges's own gender biases/predilections. Apparently, I know nothing about his relationship or disputes with Marquez...

Just curious.... it's been a very long time (about 40 yrs.) since I last read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall..."
Do the various printings (you suggested early to mid 20th century) vary greatly ? If so, may I ask in what way?
Thank You,
Bob

Just curious.... it's been a very long time (about 40 yrs.) since I last read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall..."
Do the various printings (you suggested early to mid 20th century) vary grea..."
Bob,
There are some one volume versions of Decline and Fall that are obviously 'edited' and/or 'condensed'. Also are some limited printing (i.e. probably academic or scholastic) that I've seen in sales that have sub chapter heading such as 'The Visigoths arrive' or other near nonsense.
There is a three volume edition from the Everyman's Library that appears to be quite good and is fairly recent. The early 20th Century versions are mostly well made books and won't fall apart as many of the paperback versions that came later. A work this long you don't want to have the binding splitting or pages falling out before you finish!
Books mentioned in this topic
Selected Non-Fictions (other topics)Hopscotch (other topics)
Blow-Up and Other Stories (other topics)
The Apocryphal Gospels (other topics)
Amerika (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Julio Cortázar (other topics)Franz Kafka (other topics)
G.K. Chesterton (other topics)
Wilkie Collins (other topics)
Maurice Maeterlinck (other topics)
More...
(I also found a blog post giving a little more background to this list and some opinion on certain selections .)
1. Stories by Julio Cortázar (not sure if this refers to Hopscotch, Blow-Up and Other Stories, or neither)
2. & 3. The Apocryphal Gospels
4. Amerika and The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka
5. The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mystery by G.K. Chesterton
6. & 7. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
8. The Intelligence of Flowers by Maurice Maeterlinck
9. The Desert of the Tartars by Dino Buzzati
10. Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
11. The Mandarin: And Other Stories by Eça de Queirós
12. The Jesuit Empire by Leopoldo Lugones
13. The Counterfeiters by André Gide
14. The Time Machine and The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
15. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
16. & 17. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
18. Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner
19. The Great God Brown and Other Plays, Strange Interlude, and Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
20. Tales of Ise by Ariwara no Narihara
21. Benito Cereno, Billy Budd, and Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
22. The Tragic Everyday, The Blind Pilot, and Words and Blood by Giovanni Papini
23. The Three Impostors
24. Songs of Songs tr. by Fray Luis de León
25. An Explanation of the Book of Job tr. by Fray Luis de León
26. The End of the Tether and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
27. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
28. Essays & Dialogues by Oscar Wilde
29. Barbarian in Asia by Henri Michaux
30. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
31. Buried Alive by Arnold Bennett
32. On the Nature of Animals by Claudius Elianus
33. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
34. The Temptation of St. Antony by Gustave Flaubert
35. Travels by Marco Polo
36. Imaginary lives by Marcel Schwob
37. Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, and Candide by George Bernard Shaw
38. Macus Brutus and The Hour of All by Francisco de Quevedo
39. The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts
40. Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
41. The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
42. The Lesson of the Master, The Figure in the Carpet, and The Private Life by Henry James
43. & 44. The Nine Books of the History of Herodotus by Herdotus
45. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
46. Tales by Rudyard Kipling
47. Vathek by William Beckford
48. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
49. The Professional Secret & Other Texts by Jean Cocteau
50. The Last Days of Emmanuel Kant and Other Stories by Thomas de Quincey
51. Prologue to the Work of Silverio Lanza by Ramon Gomez de la Serna
52. The Thousand and One Nights
53. New Arabian Nights and Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson
54. Salvation of the Jews, The Blood of the Poor, and In the Darkness by Léon Bloy
55. The Bhagavad Gita and The Epic of Gilgamesh
56. Fantastic Stories by Juan José Arreola
57. Lady into Fox, A Man in the Zoo, and The Sailor's Return by David Garnett
58. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
59. Literary Criticism by Paul Groussac
60. The Idols by Manuel Mujica Láinez
61. The Book of Good Love by Juan Ruiz
62. Complete Poetry by William Blake
63. Above the Dark Circus by Hugh Walpole
64. Poetical Works by Ezequiel Martinez Estrada
65. Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
66. The Aeneid by Virgil
67. Stories by Voltaire
68. An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne
69. An Essay on Orlando Furioso by Atilio Momigliano
70. & 71. The Varieties of Religious Experience and The Study of Human Nature by William James
72. Egil's Saga by Snorri Sturluson
73. The Book of the Dead
74. & 75. The Problem of Time by J. Alexander Gunn