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Monday 30 January 2017

Essential Reading

When I was at school (when they still had flogging) there was a teacher  who opined that any boy who had not read 20 books in a term was by his own fault a dullardand a cretin (the B*****D'S favourite term of dissapprobabation) . Now this old bugger was out of date even in the 1970s and didn't specify what kind of books these should be though he did quiz us on what we had read... so I kept quiet about my "Victor Book For Boys" and told him about  Rosemary Sutcliffe, Arthur Ransome and R. F. Delderfield (this last chap not only being a quite tedious novelist wherein  I spent a tedious couple of days as an extra in a TV adaptation of  his "To serve them all my Days"  but a not half bad Napoleonic Historian- Try "Imperial Sunset" and "The March of the Twenty- Six"  a bit dated now perhaps but worth a read.) The point her of course being that I got away with it unlike some of the less literary members of 3E who - poor slobs- had to endure a bawling at which if it happened today  might have involved the appearance of Child Protection !

 Ah Happy Days .... 

B******s.

However the other point is that even at that tender age (13)  I read books that didn't always have pictures in and I didn't use my fingers to follow the long words. This has stayed with me. The literary side of our hobby is important to me but not only within the hobby.
 What started this train of thought was  re-reading Helene Hanf's splendid  84 Charing Cross Road a wonderful little book made into a splendid film with Anthony Hopkins . It caused me to ponder upon essential Reading that did not include wargaming or even military history.
 Shakespear is obviously near the top of that list and a bit of Jane Austen can do you no harm.. I love the precision of the language. I may get pilloried for this but I could never get on with Dickens you can shove " A Sale of Two Titties" where Rev. Spooner  would not want it to go! I do quite like Dorothy Parker- again brittle humour combined with pathos and on our side of the pond Evelyn Waugh- though it has been a good few years since I read any. I still look in at P.G. Wodehouse- I have 4 volumes of his stuff  with more to get- for light relief.  Of poets T.S.Eliot, W.B Yeats and Robert Frost spring to mind. All these dudes are of course "SERIOUS LITERATURE" as distinct from the more popular sort that most of us read
 So a question.
 What serious literature do chaps read if any  and also therefore what do you consider to be serious literature 

17 comments:

  1. It a serious literature selection, more a similar tale when I was not yet a teen. I had been given The Hunt for Red October to read and pretty much got through it on a wet weekend. When asked by my English teacher, and replying honestly, the comment was "I'd much prefer it if you read Dickens!"
    Point being, at that age, then as now, any reading of more than a glossy mag should be classed as a good thing. And no, I can't stand Dickens. I do, however, have a soft spot for George Eliot, Austen, Aldous Huxley (The Island is extremely good!) and M R James.

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    1. I have been know to fancy a bit of Trollope

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  2. At 13 it was Sutcliffe, Henty, Trease and Treece, Ronald Welch and Arthur Ransome... I seem to remember I read a fair amount of Orwell (Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London were favourites), and I also remember reading Alexander Solzenhitsen's "Day in the Life of..".. nowadays I would class O'Brien as "classic", also Mallinson.. the rest of what I read would almost certainly be classed "popular"....

    PS. I like Dickens (especially/only at Christmas)...

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  3. Dickens at O level put me of for life of reading classics. Too much dissection and discussion when all I wanted to do was read a story. So for me it was Howard, Burroughs, Ashton-Smith, Lovecraft & Poe. Migrating then to Julian May & Stephen Donaldson (although he was hard work).

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  4. Having had 'serious' literature inflicted on me at school - after English Lit classes it was not my favourite reading material. However over the years I have wandered wander round its periphery some of my reading - a variety of Poetry (Keats, Blake, Tennyson, Rosetti…), the works of Hermann Hesse, the novels of Colin Wilson, the books by Tolkien and C.S.Lewis. I have also read lots of Science Fiction (Asimov, Bester, P.K.Dick, Simak, Van Voght …). Most of my reading is factual on science, maths, history, philosophy, psychology and art.

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  5. Hmmm . . . . seems to be a grammar school flavour to all this and just as I make a return to the blogosphere after a respectable lay off. I thought I'd escaped the world of Pope, Sterne and set readers; impenetrable poetry and bloody Shakespeare. It took me years to discover that you can read what you like as long as you avoid stuff like The Sun and Marvel Comics, which are pretty much the same thing anyway. I asked one girl fi she liked Dickens, but she said only at parties - there, that's another one out of the way.
    So, I 'do' the books with long and/or arcane words in them (though some of them seem rekarkcably conteporary), Sci-fi, the mandatory fantasy like Tolkein and Peake and more 'popular' stuff like the Rivers of London series. Oh yes, history (more than military) and philosophy etc.
    Poetry? The last refuge of the underemployed writer and the oxygen thief - except for Dr John Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford.

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    1. Gary- Not averse to a bit of John Cooper Clark myself- saw him live once many years ago and yes some poetry IS impenetrable- Ezra Pound for a start and John Dryden (both dead)
      What I find funny from almost all of the replies is to a greater or lesser extent is the adult aversion to the books they were "made" to read at school. I actually discovered Shakespear through film and going to see it at the theatre in the 6th form. After being put off early but the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd!
      Oh and I still have some Marvel comics somwhere.

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  6. Very interesting selections there chaps one and all. I didn't discover Henty until adulthood- though Trease and Treece were both denizens of my childhood library- likewise Welch- though I had forgotten him. I perhaps should have mention my love- hate relationship with Orwell. liked Homage and Burmese days never got around to Down and Out.
    As for Fantasy and SF Still have a bundle of Donaldson, Hienlien and Harrison together with a fair bit of Howard- all this on the more popular side though to be fair these days the line is a lot more blurred than in my school days. I dabbled with Solgynitsyn- though never tried to spell it. I'm never sure if philosophy is actually a factual subject especially after having had to dip into Nietche.. and always remembering that Hiedegger, Hiedegger was a boozy begger- an opinion voice by that fine philosopher M Python....

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    1. This may be of interest - the reprints are simply superb and I've been using them to plug holes in my library where they are missing... no need to buy the full set, but if I win the lottery.....

      https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/a-full-set-of-the-carey-novels-ronald-welch/

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    2. Steve- Wow they want some brass!

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    3. Speaks a Yorkshire man.. :o)) At £16 a volume I would say they are an absolute bargain as he's been so long out of print before this that books were going for silly prices.. I saw a late 70's ex library book copy of Mohawk Valley on eBay for £50.. and it sold... good quality paper, good print, and those truly excellent William Stobbs illustrations, worth it I think.. treat yourself to "For the King" - it was the book that probably lit those ECW fires of mine almost 45 years ago...

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    4. Steve the only bit of that I object to is being referred to as a Yorkshire man ... Never was never will be. I have read for the King and it just may find its way into the library ....

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    5. LOL - I apologise unreservedly.. by way of an apology - no need to be apaologetic about the Cornwell non-fiction - I have read all of them several times, however formulaic his historical stuff is getting (will someone PLEASE shoot Uhtred) he remains a top notch "story teller"

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  7. My parents had a book called "100 books in outline" (did what it said on the tin) which introduced me to things I wouldn't have touched otherwise - Pilgrim's Progress, The Scarlet Letter, The Nibelungenlied (from whence comes my little General, Hagen Von Tronek) and others. I gained a reputation for reading anything with print on it, including the toilet paper! - "Izal Medicated - Now Wash Your Hands" for those interested. we had shelves full of the old Everyman Library and Nelson Classics titles, and I still get through four or five books a month. My current reading choice is classed as Cozy Mystery, with Simon Brett and the recently republished British Library Crime Classics. Variety is the spice of life.

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    1. I remember IZAL though not with affection Have a few Everyman editions myself- the Diary of John Evelyn is one I recall and my Pepys may be.
      However as you say variety is the spice

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  8. Andy,
    Reading for leisure - Ian Rankin- the Rebus books. Ursula le Guin - probably the best sci fi and a wonderful perspective on fantasy. When travelling I must admit to the guilty pleasure of Carl Haiss - he has the worlds least competant criminals

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    1. Scott Read Leguin back in the 70s and 80s and agree- never tried Rankin Though as for Crime novels try Jake Arnott. I'm about to go Nordic and try Stig Larsen.
      For guilty pleasure I do like Bernard Cornwell non - historical stuff such as Wildtrack and Crackdown.

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