Hello there, people. I had an idea, or at least I thought about stealing an idea. I'm on another forum, "Ultimate Guitar.com," but I noticed that in their forums they've got sticky threads for suggested listening in every genre. I thought a similar thing could be done here, I'm not sure how this would be done. I thought along the lines of creating a thread in which people could debate (argue) about what the defining pieces of work are in a certain genre, then once a conclusion had been reached a finished compilation of suggested reading could be posted up in a new thread and then stickied (is that the right term? you know the blue threads at the top of each subforum.) Just a suggestion, I hope there isn't already something like this that I've just not seen through sheer blindness. Also, I noticed there is a forum for suggesting new forums but it seemed quite old, and I assumed all the changes suggested in that forum had taken place.
Another member, @Lemex, started a thread with a list of influential books. That's just one man's opinion of course, so it's not exactly what you're suggesting. It's better than nothing, however. The problem with this idea is that members have different tastes and different opinions on what is good and what is bad (there are several threads about this issue scattered throughout the forum). I doubt we'll ever reach a consensus on most works. Perhaps you could post a blog entry with your list of suggested reading, and people could discuss the issue there.
Thanks for mentioning me, @thirdwind. My list is very much geared towards 'Classic' literature, and the development of good literary taste, if you can forgive the pomposity of that sentence. There are of course canons specific to genre, if you want to try working on something like that we could make one great monster thread of canons.
Well you see, I'm a bit of a noob. I haven't read nearly enough books to even begin putting a list like this together (Though I plan to change that now 'cos I'm out of High School and I've got free time for a while) Really I'm just kind of holding the baton aloft and going "Yeah, you could run with this if you want... or not, I don't mind."
I've been doing that alot lately, and it's not been intentional. But still, no one will ever convince me that the great books are as good/not as worth reading over our untested contemporaries. And I say that as no way a classic novel snob, some of our contemporary writers I am a huge fan of.
@HelloThere, since people will usually disagree when it comes to recommending specific readings, I'm not sure the formate of having a debate on genre classification and then creating a community list in the same thread is the best approach - I almost think making the recommendations list might cause more disagreement than defining a genre. Plus I'm not sure defining a genre is necessary to recommend books in the genre unless it was about a specific book. If you'd like to try this approach, feel free. I'd instead suggest creating a discussion thread about what elements are necessary in a piece to define it as a specific genre in the genre development forum. I think a general thread on this and any genre-specific threads would be a fun discussion, even though we'd be unlikely to reach a conclusion. As for recommending books, as mentioned, a blog post might be appropriate if it's just your recommendations, or perhaps as a thread in the book discussion forum. You could create a list of recommend readings in a specific genre by the community, but there's no guarantee it would end up stickier (that doesn't mean it has to die and disappear though). If a community consensus was somehow reached, a sticky thread could possibly be warranted, though that'd be more likely in making recommended readings for writing in a specific genre (in the by-the-genre forum). I think a thread on the community's recommended readings for learning to write in a specific genre would be really cool.
I can quite believe that most of those great books are great books, but I can't feel undiluted enthusiasm for a list that, as far as I can tell, represents almost no female writers. Yes, I realize that that's certainly not your fault. If you go any substantial number of years into the past, hardly any women would have been allowed to write, hardly any of those would have been able to get published, and hardly any of them would have been treated with a any seriousness by the literary establishment. I can't expect you to find what can't be found. But all the same, the list doesn't reflect the art of humanity, it reflects the art of men. It's unbalanced. So current literature, which is closer to balanced, is of more interest to me. The old great works have meaning as a foundation, but I don't see reading/mastering them as an end in itself, for me.
Whatever gender inequality might have existed in the past, it's to me not the focus. I've tried to include more female, Asian (though Asian literature isn't something I'm fantastically knowledgeable about) and homosexual writers, but if it isn't there it isn't there. Theognis is to the best of my knowledge our first openly gay writer, and Sappho is our first female writer - and I don't particularly go for the idea she too was gay either. I have also the beginnings of Feminism in Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Women writers are there, and they are named, but for a multitude of reasons, not many before the 1700s are really commonly known to be of such high quality. It's just a fact that previous eras did not focus on the education of women - and that is terrible, but the focus of my list is purely literary. I'm sorry, I'm not placing unknown names in the list just for the sake of gender equality - it's not a political project, it's a historical project for me. There are more important women writers in Japanese literature, and those I'll be adding once I know a but more about Japanese literature.
Absolutely--I wouldn't expect you to. The great writers of the past were primarily male, because women weren't allowed to be great writers. If you have a project dedicated to the great writers of the past, it's going to be mostly about male writers. That's just how it is. (I'd be delighted to find that "that's just how it is" is wrong and that there are hidden caches of great female writing, but I doubt that that's true. There's a limit to how much a person, no matter how great a genius, can create in direct opposition to every expectation of their society.) But that's why I, personally, am not going to be strongly focused on appreciating the great writers of the past, as an end in itself. I am interested in them as a background and foundation for the writers of the present.
Yeah, don't get me wrong. What you are saying is not wrong, and I've made an effort to represent things that are a little less traditionally 'dead white men', especally with including Aphra Behn, England's first successful female writer too.
