ext_6271 ([identity profile] wolfinthewood.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] bibliogramma 2007-04-07 11:40 am (UTC)

I got to number 54 before I found one I'd read - White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I think I might have read no 63, The Blind Assassin. The contemporary novel so much not my thing ... Now when you get to the last thirteen, I have read eleven and a half - the half being half of Rabelais. One day I'll finish it. And I probably haven't read the whole of Aesop. Modern translations of the fables are usually selections only.

On a quick glance, it seems the only poetry in all this list is Ovid's Metamorphoses, which the list-maker probably read in a modern prose translation. No drama at all. If there is any non-fiction I missed it.

If one excludes lyric and reflective poetry, the essay and drama (I wouldn't), where in any case is Homer? Virgil? Beowulf? Chaucer? the Gawain poet? Any of the Icelandic sagas? Tain Bo Cuailnge? Malory's Morte D'Arthur? Aleman's Guzman d'Alfarache?

I deduce a voracious reader of the modern novel who once did a univ module on fiction that took in the Aesop's fables, the ancient Greek romance etc. Who since that time has hardly read anything before the eighteenth century. And who is painfully keen to show off.

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