Dr.Johnson is my favourite author. I taught his RASSELAS,LONDON,and THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES. In his LIVES OF THE POET'S, he is hard on Milton. Thanks for your video Steve. Best wishes from Mesopotamia Iraq

Ok, I've only read 2/20 so far. I've ordered Germinal, and I've gotten Darwin off the shelf. Love this series!

The Once and Future King is delightful. It's one of my favorite books. Your little review of it in this video is spot on, too.

Loved your explanation of evolution, shame many still don't believe it. I want to read Origin of the Species but I do struggle with the Victorian authorship style.

Loving this series! Thank you, Steve.

The Once and Future King is one of my all time favorites.

I was trying to explain Boswell's "Life of Johnson" to my sister just the other day, and why it's such enormous fun. I doubt I sold her. The Everyman's Library is indeed unabridged; I picked up one because, even though I have only read the book once all the way through, the paperback I read was in pretty poor shape. I read "On the Nature of Things" just two years ago for the first time. I did so largely because my very favorite poet once compared my second-favorite poet to Lucretius.

My favorite! Thank you Steve

Keep em coming!

Once again my TBR list is becoming as long as my leg))))) Currently reading and loving Plutarch's Lives by the way (thanks to you😊) but doing it all around Cicero, which in my edition is the third volume)))) reading all the greek lives as well (of course).

Love to see Doderer on a list like this. Any thoughts on Vincent King's recent translation of The Strudlhof Steps? An even finer novel than The Demons imho.

Quite a few of these are on my TBR! Paradise Lost and The Once and Future King are toward the top of my TBR. I really enjoyed The Prince.

I have a boxed set of The Demons. So intimidating.

Another 3/10, so that's 6/20 so far. Good in baseball, not much else. Thank you for this Steve.

looking forward to rest of list. So far I read only Germinal which I rate much much higher, but then lots of competition here.

I'd like to think that mitteleuropean lit is a passion of mine and I have NEVER heard of Heimito von Doderer. How does he compare to the other Viennese monsterpieces like Man w/o Qualities or The Sleepwalkers, or is he more nostalgic like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig?

Opened Boswell to suicidal scorpion in the fire experiment. Made me laugh as you promised.

I'm 2/10 with this selection regarding ones I've read. Somehow I've never even heard of The Demons by Heimito von Doderer! How could that be?!?

Steve, I love this series already. I cannot wait to see Twilight at No1

My kid took a class on Milton. They wrote in an essay that Paradise Lost was Bible Fanfic 😂.

@Tolstoy111

2 ай бұрын

Gen Zers use that term for everything.

@jenniferr.9528

2 ай бұрын

@@Tolstoy111 actually they’re a millennial, and that phrase was in an essay good enough to earn them a scholarship to Berkeley.

@Tolstoy111

2 ай бұрын

@@jenniferr.9528 cool. It’s still a silly phrase with no bearing on Milton.

@jenniferr.9528

2 ай бұрын

@@Tolstoy111 very true, but I still think it’s kind of funny.

@treeforged9097

2 ай бұрын

@@Tolstoy111 Its incredibly accurate. I think Steve himself referred to it as fan fiction. Most works of mythology are the same thing, they are the author playing around with preestablished mythological characters they are writing about. Its not anymore a silly phrase then any other phrase that describes a type of writing. We need a phrase to refer to that type of writing considering how much writing is occurring that is actually fan fiction. All classic literature was written by the author to entertain himself or the people reading it, there is no categorical difference between Paradise Lost and The Shining by Stephen King. There is nothing profound or special about these books. No need to pretend to be pretentious.,

How does von Doderer’s Demons compare to Dostoevsky’s?

Now review Darwin's other book "descent of man" 😃

@John-cf5im

2 ай бұрын

For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to get the same amount of attention.

" Walt Whitman says I celebrate myself, I sing myself. That is aloneness. This man Whitman is really a mystic, not just a poet. He should be counted with the ancient RISHIS of the Upanishads. America has not given birth to many great mystics; Whitman is really one of the most precious gifts of America to the world. He says: I celebrate myself, I sing myself. That’s what a mystic has always been supposed to do, that’s what a mystic’s function is: to celebrate himself. But how will you celebrate? You will have to invite others. You will have to ask others to come and participate. SAIL FORTH - STEER FOR DEEP WATERS ONLY, RECKLESS, O SOUL, EXPLORING I WITH THEE, AND THOU WITH ME, FOR WE ARE BOUND WHERE MARINER HAS NOT YET DARED TO GO, AND WE WILL RISK THE SHIP, OURSELVES AND ALL. O MY BRAVE SOUL! O FARTHER, FARTHER SAIL! O DARING JOY, BUT SAFE! ARE THEY NOT ALL THE SEAS OF GOD? O FARTHER, FARTHER, FARTHER SAIL! Walt Whitman is perhaps the only man in the whole history of America who comes very close to being a mystic. Otherwise, the American mind is very superficial. It is bound to be very superficial because it is only three hundred years old. It is a child’s mind which is curious about everything: it goes on questioning this and that and even before you have answered it, it has moved to another question. It is not much interested in the answer; it is just curious, it wants to know everything simultaneously. It goes from one religion to another religion, from one master to another master. It goes on searching for answers at the farthest end of the world - but everything remains almost like a fashion. The psychologists have found that in America, everything lasts not more than three years. That is the usual limit for any fashion - a certain toothpaste, a certain soap, a certain shampoo, a certain hair conditioner, a certain guru - they all come into the same marketplace. SAIL FORTH - STEER FOR DEEP WATERS ONLY, RECKLESS, O SOUL, EXPLORING I WITH THEE, AND THOU WITH ME, FOR WE ARE BOUND WHERE MARINER HAS NOT YET DARED TO GO, AND WE WILL RISK THE SHIP, OURSELVES AND ALL. He is saying that a spiritual seeker needs to be aware that he is going into unknown waters where no mariner has ever dared to go. And the risk is not small because the challenge is “Steer for deep waters only”… leave the shallow waters for shallow minds. Those who want to know their own depths have to steer into deeper waters. SAIL FORTH - STEER FOR DEEP WATERS ONLY, RECKLESS O SOUL, EXPLORING I WITH THEE, AND THOU WITH ME, FOR WE ARE BOUND WHERE MARINER HAS NOT YET DARED TO GO… Our goal is where no one has ever dared to go. “And we will risk the ship” - if the worst comes to the worst, we are ready to “risk the ship, ourselves and all.” But we are determined to explore the unknowable. It is a tremendously beautiful passage for every seeker of truth, every searcher for the ultimate mystery of existence: shallow waters won’t do. People want everything without risking anything, and because of this, there are so many exploiters."

Mr. Steve, are there any books, if you were lord of the universe, you'd have EVERYONE read no matter their personal interests or goals?

@spicerc1244

2 ай бұрын

He’s kind of already telling you lol

Still no King. Hmmm. I guess 90-81 is too early for him. Yep.

Steve, I greatly admire your undertaking this task, but your use of the word "Greatest" has me perplexed. Do you mean the the most influential books, the best written and memorable books, the books that have stood the test of time or all three of these? The question arises because of your placement of On the Origin of Species in the 80s. As you say quite rightly, this book, along with The Descent of Man, created a bombshell in our prior view of the cosmos and our place and the place of god or gods in it. Like Einstein's special and general theory of relativity, it opened the door to a new climate of thought that remains with us to this day. From the point of influence, all four of these books I would place in your top ten books.

I disagree with you on The Once and Future King, but that’s okay. You can be wrong once in a while. 😜 -T

@AnEruditeAdventure

2 ай бұрын

That being said, I do think everyone should read it and decide for themselves.

Egads! What is up w/the ghastly light on your face?!

Species don't evolve, individuals do. Even your own attempts to explain it suggest that is the case. Maybe you should stick to books and leave the evolution explanations to someone else. As an evolutionary biologist, your description made me cringe. Have a nice day Steve.

@saintdonoghue

2 ай бұрын

There’s no ‘have a nice day’ after personally insulting somebody - as you know, since you’re going out of your way to be an asshole. If you’re going to claim that individuals evolve, then a) here’s hoping you’re not teaching such idiocy to students (who’ll then be expecting what, exactly? To grow wings? To develop immunity to lethal radiation?), and b) maybe there’s a chance you’ll evolve some basic interpersonal skills.

@davidgagen9856

2 ай бұрын

I cringed too.... Starts with individual and small adaptation. I'm with the evolutionary biologist.

@John-cf5im

2 ай бұрын

Populations evolve, not individuals, and I doubt you are a biologist.

@joelaw13

2 ай бұрын

Bro, Steve laid the absolute smack down on you

@larrymarshall9454

2 ай бұрын

@@John-cf5im I'm not going to debate the level on which natural selection operates. This was beat to death decades ago and "individual" is the level. As for me being a biologist, my PhD says otherwise. My publications say otherwise. But that, too, I will not debate here. As I said to Steve, have a nice day.

The Demons does have a 1-volume English edition. It was published by Douglas Messerli's Sun & Moon Press a few decades ago. They're pretty rare but I have a copy 🙂

Samuel Johnson's biggest claim to fame is breaking his toe on a rock when he decided he could disprove Berkley's idealism by kicking it while yelling "I refute it thus!" and creating the fallacy of the stone in logic 🪨 😂

@spikedaniels1528

2 ай бұрын

Rock on! 🥸