Big Intellectual Books You Own and Would Really Like to Have Read

Extollager

Extollager

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This might fetch some interesting comments...

Do you have a big (I'll leave that up to you) intellectual book that you do own, and would like to have read, but haven't -- at least not most of it?

We're talking here about some book that has a real reputation for intellectual depth and deep learning.

Maybe more than one?

I have had a copy of A. O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being for decades... and I would like to have read it. Probably I would like reading it, which isn't the same thing.

But how about you?
 
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When I was a teenager, I asked Father Christmas a couple of times to bring Das Kapital, but he never did. He didn't bring Satan and the Swastika by Francis X King, either, which I would probably have found more interesting. My parents might have worried a little about me at the time. :D

Aside from that, in my teens and twenties I read every major classic work I could get my hands on, with the exception of War and Peace - I cheated by watching one of the old TV adaptations.

I might have liked to have read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, but I've not found an appealing translation. I loved The Glass Bead Game, but the translation I have is over-complicated to the point of demanding a thesaurus be kept handy.

I do have the complete works of Dickens on my Kindle, and plan to slowly work through that. I read most of Shakespeare's plays when I was 16. I read the Bible over a few years by leaving it in the bathroom and reading a couple of pages every time I sat down (all except the Psalms). The Qur'an and Bhagavad Gita were much shorter and easier reads.

I've tried to read famous philosophers, but generally found them a bit dull and too abstract, and best left summarised. Except Nietzsche, who's good for a laugh and Also Sprach Zarathrustra is mercifully short. :)
 
The main book like this that springs to mind was The Ascent of Man by Professor Bronowski, which (optimistically) my grandfather gave me when I was about 12. The Ascent of Man was one of those big 1970s intellectual TV shows, effectively a set of lectures with illustrations and videos, like Civilisation or Life on Earth. I suppose it was a documentary, although it looks crude and slow by modern standards (insert comment about young people, attention standards and the internet here).

It sat on my shelf for a long time, looking worryingly as if it contained Maths.

I resolved to read the thing about three years ago and worked through it chapter by chapter. It was hard work. That is to say, it was well-written and very interesting, but complex. The earlier chapters were easier, because they dealt with simpler stuff like the invention of farming, but towards the end it moved on to mathematics and atomic science, where my brain doesn't really go. I am very pleased that I read it, though. It's rare to read something that suggests that its author is both hugely intelligent and an approachable, likable person. A fascinating and at points quite moving book.
 
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I acquired my copy of Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea on 6 May 1982. It's a Harvard UP paperback. The American Scholar blurb: "One of the great books of our generation." New York Times Book Review (which I take it is now a shadow of its former self): "Intellectual vigor, critical precision and an amazing knowledge of what mankind has thought and desired in other ages distinguish this book." Lovejoy taught philosophy at Johns Hopkins.

Then there's Pitirim Sorkokin's The Crisis of Our Age: The Social and Cultural Outlook, the front of my Dutton Everyman paperback saying :A prophetic view of the future by one of the masterminds of this generation." It seems the book was originally published in 1941, while the paperback edition was 1957. From the back: "...the whole of modern culture is undergoing a period of transition: the fine arts and science, philosophy and religion, ethics and law: our ways of thought and life." The author was chairman of the Harvard Dept. of Sociology. Acquired this 3 June 2008.

One more: Edwyn Bevan's Symbolism and Belief (1938, paperbacked in 1957 by Beacon Press). Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Got my copy 10 Nov. 1980.

I'm feeling like I should set a date and say that by then I will have read or at least tried seriously to have read these books. They should be really good, but it's so easy to put 'em off and read something else. Anyone able to relate to that? : )
 
I've had From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life from 1500 to the Present
sitting on my shelf unread for more than 10 years. I've taken a peck at it now and then, but it's never engaged enough to sustain my interest. I can't bring myself to give it away because I still feel I ought to read it.
 
Toby, that's the kind of book I had in mind fwiw. Brian, I personally wasn't thinking of works of fiction, but yeah, my impression is that Hesse's Magister Ludi (that's the title for the translation by Richard and Clara Winston, which, I understand, is the one to get) would be one to mention if one were listing works of fiction here. MWagner, yep, I don't have that book by Barzun, but that's certainly appropriate for this topic.*

A few more:

Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (picked this library discard up quite a while ago). Grosset's Universal Library, 1963.

Johan Huzinga's Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, just received this Saturday as a gift from a great reader in Philadelphia. Another Beacon Press paperback (1955).

Anyone have an interest in Toynbee or in Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (I don't have anything by these gents, but you seem to run across their names a lot).

More nominations, y'all?

*This

Barzun on the West

tempts me to get a copy of the Barzun you mention, MWagner.
 
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Extollager said:
Magister Ludi
Click to expand...

Sounds like it may have different titles in the US and UK, as the Winston translation is the one I have. Not sure why you thought books of "intellectual depth and deep learning" didn't apply to classics, philosophy, and religion, though. :)
 
Brian, I didn't say the books for discussion under this topic would exclude classics, philosophy, and religion. I don't think you could point to anything I've said that amounts to that.

When I threw out this topic for discussion, I personally wasn't thinking of works of fiction. Personally I would prefer that we didn't get into those here, since, for one thing, they might belong better in the Literary Fiction region of Chrons. I was thinking of the often rather thick, perhaps intimidating, nonfiction works whose composition evidently involved the digestion and synthesis of a great deal of learned reading, rather than narratives of the experiences of imaginary characters, etc. even if there's a lot of intellectual depth there (as I gather there also is in some of the massive novels of Thomas Mann, for example, none of which I own or have read).

Yes, I'm sure we have the same translation of The Glass Bead Game. My guess is that the US paperback publishers marketed their book with the other title to distinguish it from a competitor's paperback of the other translation.

Oh, btw, maybe I should retract Homo Ludens because it's not a big book (213 pages, plus index).
 
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Capital by Picketty - it's been on my shelf since Christmas - still haven't started it.
Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies
 
Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and three volumes of the Oxford History of England. All book-club purchases from when I was young and had yet to realise that my laziness was not a choice.
 
The Sleepwalkers by Koestler is absolutely brilliant - I think it's quite a nice read too. (Also his The Act of Creation which starts with analyzing humour, but is really about the creative mind is good too.)

No the 'Biggest'* intellectual book I've got is a translation of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I've read it, I remember that. But I really can't tell you it's conclusions. Or much else that was described in it. I'm not sure I have the brain cells left to attempt a re-read. I should probably just stick to pulp SF.

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* I think Roger Scruton wrote that most philosophy books are painfully worded and difficult, but thankfully most of them, like this one, are quite short.
 
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer - I've got an abridged version that just about works and is fascinating in its way, but the full 12 volume final set must be a real hard slog. About a billion examples to make his point. At least.
 
Not sure if it counts as deeper learning, but it's certainly broad -- I ran across my New York Public Library's Desk Reference recently, and left it where I'll see it every time I walk through the bedroom.

There are quite a few others that would qualify, in my boxes of books -- my book-purchasing has always been more optimistic than my book-reading.
 
The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan. Sitting on my shelves for years. Have attempted it countless times, but to no avail.

Also have a gorgeous, six volume set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This I dip into every now and again but I am horrified to admit that I have never fully read the work.

Melville's Moby Dick also sits there unread.
 
The Bible Honestly have tried to read it, but always crashed and burned. Possibly it's not a good idea to start at the start and go through it line by line?
 
Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel I bought paperback edition in the bargain section , I've skimmed it can't seem to get into it.
 
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I must try to find a remark about Gibbon that Evelyn Waugh made. It's somewhere in that big collection of Waugh's articles and journalism, I think; to the effect that Gibbons's style is so excellent that that's what is remembered, even when his animadversions against Christianity have been refuted repeatedly.

Ouch! aThenian, I've got a Penguin Classic edition of The City of God (8 Nov. 1993) and haven't read it. Yep, I'll have to put that with the other ones.
9780805207309.jpg

Also here's a Schocken paperback of John Lukacs' Historical Consciousness, or, The Remembered Past, which I bought 23 March 1987 at the Illini Union Bookstore on the University of Illinois campus, and really oughta read. I think that one goes to to top of the pile, so to speak.
 
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