Reading Rat

A collation of recommended reading

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What to read:: 1926 on < 1901-1925 < 1876-1900 < 1851-1875 < 1826-1850 < 1801-1825 < 1751-1800 < 1701-1750 < 1601-1700 < 1401-1600 < 1101-1400 < 301-1100 < 300 B.C.-A.D. 300 < through 301 B.C.


Index of Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


Bibliography


Most recent additions, revisions, and annotations: Hammerton, Hauptmann, Hofmannsthal, Machado, Rimbaud, Russell, and Schweitzer,

This list of recommended reading is in reverse chronological order by the year of the author's birth, or of the work's publication when there are multiple or unknown authors. In other words, it starts with the latest recommended author and then goes back in time.

To create the list, I consulted books that consisted of or included book lists for the general reader. These were also consulted for rating works as shown by the star graphics to that precede some works.

Authors and works are sometimes also annotated as indicated by these graphics.
(etexts) (bookseller) (study guides) (references) (criticism) (Humor) (comment) (note)
that are found either with the author or work. If no text appears next to it, the text of a note or comment appears when your cursor is over those graphics.

The major sources of recommended works and annotations, to date, are listed in the Bibliography.

Some annotations, particularly if numerous, have been moved to a post on my weblog linked from that author's name in the chronological list or from that category or categories of annotations at the author's entry. Some newer annotations are in other posts on my weblog.

Considering so many sources can lead to what some think anomalous results. For example, some of Shakespeare's plays are rated lower than Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. This results from the lack of consensus over which of Shakespeare's works to recommend. Almost everyone recommended Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

Given that the authors of the works consulted for ratings were published in English, works not widely available in English are rarely recommended. The recommending works include some older ones that lean toward English-language writers, and some others specifically indicated they confined their recommendations to European (Western) works. Later authors and editions generally included works from Eastern civilizations. The net effect is that there are more Western works and they include the highest-rated works.

This graphic in the listing indicates progress so far on a particular revision.

The title comes from Peter Drucker's collection of autobiographical essays, Adventures of a Bystander. Miss Elsa, one of his fourth grade teachers in Vienna, called him a "reading rat." (In Drucker's native German, leseratte [readingrat] is a synonym for buchenwurm [bookworm].) "You're reading under the desk when you think I'm not looking," she observed. I may be inventing a distinction, but we reading rats are in more of a hurry than bookworms. That is why we do not just browse, we take a list.

Hypertext by Terrence Berres.
Dedicated to the memory of George Berres (1901-1974).
Revised November 11, 2011.

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