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Summary: Lifetime Guide to imperishable excellence
Review: Buy this book and share it. It is itself a classic.
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Summary: This 3rd edition is a Must for every Bibliophile's Shelf!
Review: Clifton Fadiman shines in this edition. He mentions the Companion Work, Adler & Van Doren's "How To Read A Book" to go along as you read for yourself. This book attempts to cover not only Literature, but Art, Humanities, Science and Mathematics. Putting these two books with his Fourth Edition, "The New Lifetime Reading Plan" is what I intend to do. Should one also include a book on the topic of How To Lie With Statistics, you could really get going!!! P.S. - Don't forget Cliff's Notes for each book! They have excellent Bibliographies, and you might as well get "The Oxford Companion to Classical Liturature" lmd
Rating:
Summary: This 3rd edition is a Must for every Bibliophile's Shelf!
Review: Clifton Fadiman shines in this edition. He mentions the Companion Work, Adler & Van Doren's "How To Read A Book" to go along as you read for yourself. This book attempts to cover not only Literature, but Art, Humanities, Science and Mathematics. Putting these two books with his Fourth Edition, "The New Lifetime Reading Plan" is what I intend to do. Should one also include a book on the topic of How To Lie With Statistics, you could really get going!!! P.S. - Don't forget Cliff's Notes for each book! They have excellent Bibliographies, and you might as well get "The Oxford Companion to Classical Liturature" lmd
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Companion for the Intelligent Reader
Review: Each of these essays is a thought-provoking introduction to a major piece of world literature, and greatly enhances the reading experience. Perhaps its best features are its recommendations of which translations of foreign literature to read, which are particularly helpful when it comes to Russian literature. A real gem!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Excellent book for those who love to read. It is great to get ideas of what to read next and it gives nice descriptions of the books. I recommend this.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Recipe: Lacks Key Ingredient; Too Watered Down
Review: From one who has owned and used both the first and second editions over the past twenty years or more, this new "revised and expanded" edition is a great disappointment. The concept is undeniably attractive -- provide an incentive for the ordinary reader to embark on a noble life-long quest of self education and betterment. The dish is irrestible, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this recipe. Some complaints:1. As with the earlier editions, I cannot fathom how the Tanakh/Bible can be omitted from a list of the greatest works of Western Civilization. We've got Gilgamesh, Confucius and Mohammed. What's the deal here? This oversight is perhaps excusable in the first edition, but not in the third. How can you leave out the foundational document for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but include such "luminaries" as Mishima Yukio, R.K. Narayan and Kawabata Yasunari (anyone even HEARD of these, by chance?). 2. In the first and second editions the list of the best books stood at about 100. Now the principal list numbers 133 and an appended list of an additional 100 works of 20th century authors is recommended. How have these 130 additional works risen so rapidly into the realm of the immortal in a mere 20 or 30 years? 3. The strongest emphasis in the first edition was on the great works of antiquity, as echoed down the ages. The emphasis was on a "great conversation" which later writers entered into. Now the emphasis seems to be on narcicisstic 20th century fiction. My bet is that in 500 years there may be NO work of fiction from the 20th century which is deemed to have lasting value. 4. I wish the authors would disriminate a little more as to the RELATIVE value of the books presented. Lets face it -- there is a limit to the number of books we can read in our lifetimes. If you had to choose sight unseen between, say, Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll, how do you discriminate. A section of the short list of INDISPENSABLE works would be valuable; such a list might include the Bible as well as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy, for example. When all is said and done, this is still a valuable work, notwithstanding its many failings. It is merely a poor treatment of a great subject.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Recipe: Lacks Key Ingredient; Too Watered Down
Review: From one who has owned and used both the first and second editions over the past twenty years or more, this new "revised and expanded" edition is a great disappointment. The concept is undeniably attractive -- provide an incentive for the ordinary reader to embark on a noble life-long quest of self education and betterment. The dish is irrestible, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this recipe. Some complaints: 1. As with the earlier editions, I cannot fathom how the Tanakh/Bible can be omitted from a list of the greatest works of Western Civilization. We've got Gilgamesh, Confucius and Mohammed. What's the deal here? This oversight is perhaps excusable in the first edition, but not in the third. How can you leave out the foundational document for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but include such "luminaries" as Mishima Yukio, R.K. Narayan and Kawabata Yasunari (anyone even HEARD of these, by chance?). 2. In the first and second editions the list of the best books stood at about 100. Now the principal list numbers 133 and an appended list of an additional 100 works of 20th century authors is recommended. How have these 130 additional works risen so rapidly into the realm of the immortal in a mere 20 or 30 years? 3. The strongest emphasis in the first edition was on the great works of antiquity, as echoed down the ages. The emphasis was on a "great conversation" which later writers entered into. Now the emphasis seems to be on narcicisstic 20th century fiction. My bet is that in 500 years there may be NO work of fiction from the 20th century which is deemed to have lasting value. 4. I wish the authors would disriminate a little more as to the RELATIVE value of the books presented. Lets face it -- there is a limit to the number of books we can read in our lifetimes. If you had to choose sight unseen between, say, Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll, how do you discriminate. A section of the short list of INDISPENSABLE works would be valuable; such a list might include the Bible as well as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy, for example. When all is said and done, this is still a valuable work, notwithstanding its many failings. It is merely a poor treatment of a great subject.
Rating:
Summary: Great List of Books to Read in your Lifetime
Review: I found this book very useful in continuing not only my general education but also allowing me to read the better works of all time. I have started a book club to read all the books and discuss them...
Rating:
Summary: Informative and enjoyable even if you don't follow the plan!
Review: I passed this book by several times as I thought it was something different than it is! Although I've read many works included here, there are some I will probably never read. However, I enjoyed learning about those works, and I love the tone of this book---not overly serious, with the author's biases showing through on purpose---it has a real point of view! I wished that almost every entry was longer---the writing has a tone of being written by a real insider---almost gossipy, in a good way! Although I didn't intend this to happen, the book acheived part of its goal in adding several works to my lifetime "to-read" list. It also served as a great review of a lot of the reading I did as an English major. Really a lot of fun to read!
Rating:
Summary: good start ...
Review: Of course you should read this book. And add others like it. Call it a classics revival, or whatever, you will hardly be displeased by the benefits of reading the classics. You are sure to appreciate some guidance therein, if only to compare current perspectives. However, I offer a nuggetted point of view, in a few steps: 1. The main thing is, with or without a guide, to start reading the classics. The benefits of starting will alter the tone of your mind, as it sees itself embarking and staying on a profitable track. A healthy tone of seriousness and enrichment increases. 2. Some few classics are of great enough difficulty to warrant a preferred emphasis on, over time, whatever else one may elect to read along the way. These are: --Kant's Critique, (you'll need his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics to help you with the Critique, - and it will still take you five years to understand it!)
--Pascal, Pensees
--Joyce, Ulysses
--Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
--Dante, Divine Comedy
--Kierkegaard, all
--Hegel and Heidegger(you'll need a background in Kant, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to accomodate this duo. Add Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Descartes, and Spinoza. Still, H. & H. can take up to twenty years to fully apppreciate, so it is said, however one prepares for them.) 3. Problems with Shakespeare and Chaucer are best conquered by spending time with Christopher Marlowe's plays and Spencer's Faerie Queen. 4. Last but not least, it should be noted that there is a lament going about, over the neglect of Thomas Love Peacock. Novelist John Fowles himself has expressed his displeasure that Peacock is not read more widely today. I would second this lament, and recommend the pleasures of reading Peacock to anyone wishing to have a complete classics experience.
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