I've completed my Penguin Great Challenge! This one took over a year (fourteen months to be precise) and I've now read all forty of my Penguin Greats. Here's what I've read:
Penguin Great Ideas
01. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca
02. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
03. Confessions of a Sinner - Augustine
04. The Inner Life - Thomas à Kempis
05. The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli
06. On Friendship - Michel de Montaigne
07. A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift
08. The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
09. The Christians and the Fall of Rome - Edward Gibbon
10. Common Sense - Thomas Paine
11. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
12. On the Pleasure of Hating - William Hazlitt
13. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
14. On the Suffering of the World - Arthur Schopenhauer
15. On Art and Life - John Ruskin
16. On Natural Selection - Charles Darwin
17. Why I Am So Wise - Friedrich Nietzsche
18. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
19. Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud
20. Why I Write - George OrwellPenguin Great Loves01. A Mere Interlude by Thomas Hardy
02. A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov
03. Bodily Secrets by William Trevor
04. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
05. Cures for Love by Stendahl
06. Deviant Love by Sigmund Freud
07. Doomed Love by Virgil
08. Eaten Heart by Giovanni Boccaccio
09. Eros Unbound by Anaïs Nin
10. First Love by Ivan Turgenev
11. Forbidden Fruit by Peter Abelard
12. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
13. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
14. Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. Mary by Vladimir Nabakov
16. Of Mistresses, Tigresses and Other Conquests by Giacomo Casanova
17. Something Childish But Very Natural by Katherine Mansfield
18. The Seducer's Diary by Søren Kierkegaard
19. The Virgin and the Gypsy by D. H. Lawrence
20. The Women Who Got Away by John Updike
This one wasn't an easy one, but it was worth it. My point in reading them was simply to become familiar with some of these great authors, which I suppose I can now say I am. Some I loved: Seneca (a big surprise, and it led me to buy Letters from a Stoic), Bonjour Tristesse, which broke a month long reading rut back in October - November 2012, Giovanni's Room, which came out of nowhere, and The Social Contract, my first Rousseau, which I believe everyone should read in this Age of Austerity, none more so than David Cameron and George Osbourne (I'll try and post further on this one of these days). Some of these I hated: The Christians and the Fall of Rome took well over a month to read, and I do think it's one of the most boring books I have ever read, The Women Who Got Away was incredibly irritating, and Deviant Love was surprisingly nondescript as I do usually get on with Freud. Schopenhauer, if I remember correctly, wasn't a great success, but Orwell, as ever, really was. I'm now dreading reading On Origin of Species by Darwin, but very much looking forward to reading a little more Marcus Aurelius. All in all, I'm glad I did this one, although at various points over the fourteen months I wasn't so glad! But, it's done. I am introduced to these greats.
Congratulations! I'm giving you an imaginary pat on the back. Plus I'm now curious about Seneca (what is blogging doing to my wallet?).
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! You're a legend. In 10 years, if you still read, I pledge to get you into the Guinness Book of Records (and since I'll be a renowned journalist by then, you can expect worldwide fame. I'm serious) :) Any plans now to replace this with something new??
ReplyDeleteWell done!
ReplyDeleteI have the Great Loves set, but I'd really like to get the Great Ideas one too (and read them all... somehow).
I'm glad you liked Marcus Aurelius!
Well done! Also, I've heard that Darwin's book is a surprisingly good read.
ReplyDelete