[John Whitworth]

Orwn, you haven't read any Dickens? That is bad at any age. begin 'Great Expectations' at once. Today! You are allowed to watch the film when, and only when, you have read the book through.

You can also read 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien, but I expect you have done that. I confess that I had not until a month or two back. Shocking admission!

[Andrew Frisardi]

The gap is the main part for me; with some erudition to trip on. That said, one of my most glaring gaps is not having read the Qu'ran all the way through, only bits and pieces. If I had my druthers I'd do it in Arabic, but the Arberry translation will have to do. Or can anyone suggest another?

I loved Proust, although I read only the first (which brings me back to that gap-erudition ratio . . .).

A poet I used to know, whom I met when he was very old, was one of the most learned people I ever met. Numbers of languages, knew literature, philosophy, science, etc. But he told me once: "Learning is like an expanding circle; the more you learn the greater the circumference is, so there is an ever greater area outside that circumference, which is the stuff you don't know. So the more I learn the more ignorant I am."

This consoles me in my gap-existence.

[Michael Juster]

Andrew, I like the 2008 Tarif Khalidi translation put out by Viking. The idiom is neither archaic nor fully contemporary.

[Gregory Dowling]

I second John on recommending Great Expectations as the best place to start Dickens. Hard Times is certainly worth reading but is a little uncharacteristically earnest (it was F. R. Leavis's favourite). After that just dive in pretty well anywhere; the later novels tend to be more thoroughly plotted but the earlier ones perhaps have more energy. Martin Chuzzlewit, for example, has some of his funniest writing (although some of it did cause offence to American readers at the time...).

For those diffident about starting in on Proust, there is a wonderful unabridged audible version, read by Neville Jason. I'll admit that I've only listened to the first two novels so far, but am ready for more.

[Kevin J MacLellan]

To all once and future Moby Dick fans:
on this day in history, 173 years ago, that great book began to write itself in the imagination of the young seaman, Hermn Melville, as the Acushnet set sail from New Bedford, Massachusetts.

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://w...DpgF2MzQz1IwEg

Funny, I don't remember the voyage starting out in a snow storm!

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Curtis Gale Weeks

But I'm glad I did wait, for both. I've been working from a hypothesis, ever since, that both should be avoided until around the age of 35. This is only because I know that, for myself, knowing myself, way too much would have been misread or overlooked by me if I'd attempted either while in my 20s or younger.

Curtis, this comment really resonates with me. I'd read about half of Shakespeare's plays by the time I was 20 or so, and enjoyed them. Then this past year I was in a course on Shakespeare's tragedies, which required two close readings of each play. It's amazing how much deeper my understanding and appreciation of literally ALL of those plays is now that I'm 34. It also knocked Hamlet off of being my "favorite" Shakespeare play, with Coriolanus supplanting it (a play that many of my considerably younger classmates notably hated).

[R. Nemo Hill]

Yes, Coriolanus is a marvel.

I solidly agree with Curtis that no wine should be drunk before its time--that is until the drinker ripens (as opposed to the grape). Being self-educated, I never had a lot of stuff shoved down my throat too early, but rather came to it at the various bends of a road that I myself had forged through the thicket with my own two feet. Religion is like that too, it works better if it is not taught too aggressively, if it is discovered.

And Andrew hit the nail on the head, the circle just keeps expanding, as does the book collection. Alas there does come a point where one has to begin to just let it go. I don't read nearly as much as I used to because I have reached the stage of knowing that I can never know everything, or even most things. I tend to not read things now that I feel will not linger long in memory. As one ages one likes to believe that there is something called wisdom that supplants knowledge, but the jury is still out on that one, ha!

Nemo

[Gail White]

Dickens is still my favorite novelist of all time, though he goes in and out of fashion (and is currently in, with many biographies in the last 10 years.)

I first read "David Copperfield" in junior high school and have read it at intervals ever since (I'm big on re-reading). Someone once asked me what I would recommend if I could get everyone I know to read one novel, and I named Copperfield without hesitation. Even though I think the greatest novel ever is "The Brothers Karamazov."

My opinions on Shakespeare are numerous and eccentric...for instance, I don't like Hamlet much, it seems to be a failed effort to write a revenge play by a man who preferred forgiveness to revenge. I think the most profound play is Lear, the best written probably Antony and Cleopatra, and agree with Derek Jacobi that the best part in Julius Caesar is Cassius.

[Gail White]

And a further note to all those who jumped on me for not reading Conrad (especially Kevin, who is thirsting for blood). I will admit that in college we had to read - and I enjoyed - "The Nigger of the Narcissus", probably banned nowadays, or called "The Person of Color of the Narcissus."

Also, I note how many people recommend not reading great authors too soon, but in my own case, I started reading Shakespeare on my own at about age 12. What surprises me now is how much of it I thought was funny, such as large chunks of "Timon of Athens". I think if I had been older, I would have been too solemn.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, Gail, I do agree that the child reader will always be a reader. I read much in my childhood and youth that I didn't understand (notably the Greek, Roman and Old Norse myths; Les Miserables made an indelible impression) but that reading grounded me. It is IMO a disservice that great works are simplified for children. The "story" of the Illiad and the literary presentation of the Illiad itself are two different things.

Mary, you will have so many suggestions of where to start with Dickens that you might as well not have asked, but I think my three favorites (though I love them all) would be (not necessarily in this order) The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities). Dickens is an author that I have returned to (like Shakespeare and the Greek plays) in various decades of my life. Always something new there, no matter how many times one reads them.

If I may suggest a gap that some may not know they have (at the risk of making the thread take a sharp turn from its topic) I'll suggest five books that everyone should read some time in their lives but which haven't been mentioned.

Gilgamesh
Froissart's Chronicles
The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon
An Outline of European Architecture - Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

That last may surprise you if you haven't already read it, but it is a brilliant book, beautiful prose and relevant in myriad ways. Anyone contemplating a trip to Europe next summer should read it--and then take it with them.

I want to thank everyone who has taken part in this thread--which hopefully is not ended and to which even new members are welcome to contribute. I've certainly got some new pegs to hang my hat on and,--oh, yes, Montaigne, anyone? Herodotus?

To horse, to horse!