Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

This list and others of its kind have always felt a little off to me. If you read the most famous single book of three different authors I feel like you wouldn’t get too much out of it. I would rather die knowing I read Shakespeare and Faulkner than read Othello and As I lay Dying. This kind of list format takes what should be an organic exploration of other humans who are praised for their writing and turns it into a checklist of disconnected pieces. Maybe you read half a play and hate it, maybe you devour Shakespeare’s entire body of work?

I guess that is also why I dislike a lot of contemporary stuff, the aesthetic life of the artist behind the work is harder and harder to connect with. This all sounds super elitist but it’s hard to discuss books without straying into that territory haha. The breadth of genre is so vast as well, Roald Dahl and Richard Feynman on the same list? It just really lacks a depth of focus to feel like more than ticking boxes.

As a hardcore book lover, I have the deepest hatred for all lists of books. They are pretentious wastes of time, usually written to make the author look like an eclectic and well-rounded person and for no other purpose. This is just about my only strong opinion in the world. I would die a thousand deaths on this hill.

Publishing a list of books like this should be in the same category of social bad habits such as name dropping celebrities you have met, or casually mentioning the large amount of money you make per year ($two hundred Kay), or having a PO Box in a rich neighborhood so you can have an address that impresses people.

Ticking boxes is exactly what it is. If I can be a little overdramatic (yes, now is where that starts), it's a betrayal of the very soul of reading.

> As a hardcore book lover, I have the deepest hatred for all lists of books. They are pretentious wastes of time

How do you keep track of the books you want to read?

There are many books I've heard of, and heard people recommend, that I would really like to read. The only way I can keep track of them is by noting them down in lists.

I'd guess that person is talking about published lists of books.

Then I’d say to them, what is wrong with publishing your own list of books to read? Others might get something from it. Or your list of book recommendations?

I think it's totally fair to want to take a sampling of a lot of great authors to try out their work and then maybe follow up on more of their stuff if you find it compelling. True, they might not have the same level of appreciation for the book as if they'd been more familiar with all of their work, but if you try and tell people "you're not going to 'get it' without reading the 17 novels and 8 novellas he wrote before this", then if you're right you're going to just turn people off from trying.

Maybe this is the "plebian" opinion, but I see nothing wrong with wanting a taste of Dahl, Feynman, Homer, and Tolstoy rather than devoting your life to just one. He's reading for pleasure, not writing a dissertation.

I list like this can be taken as "books I want to read, amongst all those I end up reading" rather than "the books I must read to the last, before I read any others".

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