Response Video: Top 10 Classics You MUST Read!

Did Steve call my video “wonderful”? That’s clearly worth 20 beans, surely?!

I have read and continue to Dantes Inferno. I love it. I started reading it while I was homeless and I kept the book in my bag which was the only thing I owned. I kept the book in my locker at the shelter for 3 1/2 years and now i am housed its on my night stand. i bought it Commonwealth books. Believe it or not it got me through a very difficult journey which is really kind of symbolic to the book.

My list would be: 1) Oresteia by Aeschylus 2) Iliad by Homer 3) Metamorphoses by Ovid 4) Augustine's Confessions 5) Bede's Ecclesiastical History 6) Canterbury Tales 7) Shakespeare (At least King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Midsummer Night's Dream) 8) Don Quixote 9) Gulliver's Travels 10) Moby Dick

The problem is 10 books isn’t sufficient to go from the ancient world to the 19th century. There have to be huge gaps. What someone leaves out is just as import as what someone puts in. Let the headshrinkers play ball with that.

What a wonderful response to Kierans video. I love that you went through his list in detail here. I have already recorded mine and it will be out in a few weeks. I personally really liked many if the books he out forward and thought it was a nice change of pace from many classic top 10s.

I must say, that cover for The Odyssey is that story in a whole new light.. 😳😂

These kinds of list are always fun. Mine would be: 1) The Iliad (the Odessey is more important, but I just enjoy the Iliad more) 2 Old testament (KJV) 3) Mahabharata (J. A. B. van Buitenen's partial verse translation is still easily the best. Been waiting for a great full translation but for an easy to read modernized translation there is Debroy's loose but complete one) 4) Plato's Dialouges 5) Dante's divine comedy (Robert and Jean Hollander translations) 6) The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (the new penguin classics editions, translators: Ursula and Malcolm Lyons) 7) Canterbury Tales (in the Middle English if you can) 8) Shakespeare's complete plays 9) Tale of Genji (all 4 full translations of it are good, but my recommendation is for an easy to read and beautiful translation Edward Seidensticker and for the most subtle (as far as I can tell) translations so far Royall Tyler) 10) Brothers Karamazov (this was the hardest choice: it came down to this, War and Peace, Leaves of Grass, Wordsworth and Moby Dick)

I have always loved the part in Hamlet where Shakespeare writes about Hamlet donning his Gymshark tunic!

00:00 Intro 01:15 Steve starts with KDbooks's list 01:20 Oedipus Rex (Sophocles) 01:52 Inferno (Dante) 03:10 Everyman (anonymous) 04:04 Dr. Faustus (Marlowe) 04:54 Hamlet, Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 05:40 Paradise Lost (Milton) 06:59 The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe) 08:12 Castle of Otranto (Walpole) 09:19 Frankenstein 1818 version (Shelley) 10:14 Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) 11:00 Steve's list begins 11:50 Pentateuch/Bible 13:55 Odyssey (Homer) 16:07 Confessions (Augustine) 17:52 Beowulf (anonymous) 20:37 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 21:57 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 23:45 A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Wollstonecraft) 25:10 Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth, Coleridge) 26:40 Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 27:35 Jane Eyre (Bronte) 28:30 Outro

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I recognize the value.

I finally got around to reading the Heaney translation and it was wonderful.

Ah...Jane Eyre. Having to explain to my other half why I needed to purchase two more copies of that book late last year (despite it being an old favourite that I already own and also have on Kindle) was kind of difficult...until I compared it to him wanting to own every single model of the same steel-framed Honda 600cc motorcycle ever made. That seemed to make my little fascination make sense in his eyes, lol.

Thanks Steve. I just DL'd most of the works on your list (and a few from KDBooks) that I haven't already obtained, from Project Gutenberg.

Also now that i finished the video i am surprised and delighted at our overlap!

No Quixote?? Very surprising

I enjoyed this video very much. I have been wondering about Seamus Heaney and his translation of Beowulf. I love Heaney so I don’t know why I have dithered, suffice to say I just ordered it. Ps Postscript might not be Heaneys best poem but however many times I read it, it still brings a tear to my eye with the last line

Hi Steve, greetings from Toronto! Do you have any recommendations for books that take place in New Orleans? Or books on the history of New Orleans? I am thinking visiting the city in late February.

I don't know if I'd feel qualified to do a list like this. There's so much I've not read. And all the non-Anglo classics I've only ever read in English - with some exceptions from Ancient Rome from doing Latin at School. I love the Seamus Heaney translation. I really want to have a party where a group of people sit around, drink beer and read it out loud. Have you read Clive James's translation of Dante? Someone bought it for me years ago as a present knowing I like his criticism/journalism but I've not picked it up.

Jane Austen. Jane...all the time. Anywhere. Anytime. I think that these books are just a small portion of books you MUST read. Before, I would have read the book, not caring who translated it or what year was the best edition. Now I know it can make a difference.

I like your top ten, but wonder whether there shouldn't be more titles by the ancient greeks on the list, such as Aeschylus' Orestaia (esp. the Agamemnon), Euripides' Medea, or Ovid's Metamorphoses. And aside from Beowulf, what about the tale of Gilgamesh? Also heroic fantasy, right? I think one other commenter had it right, that over a period of several thousand years, ten titles is simply inadequate (to put it mildly) to represent the enormous volume of creative thought expressed by both men and women.