Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (Michael Dirda)

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Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life, 18 Books

In his stimulating book of essays the Pulitzer Prize winning critic Michael Dirda proclaims the following:
"What should a person know of the world’s literature? It has always seemed obvious to me that the great patterning works ought to lie at the heart of any structured reading program. By “patterning works” I mean those that later authors regularly build on, allude to, work against".
“Know these well," he says, "and nearly all of world literature will be an open book to you.”

This list was originally published in 2007 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
2342 Bulfinch's Mythology Thomas Bulfinch 1855 British English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
332 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
5472 The Inferno Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
547 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
327 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
224 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
11313 Best Loved Folktales Of The World Joanna Cole 1982 Unknown English
12 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English