00:00 Intro 00:37 Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (1818 vs. 1831) 02:42 Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin) 06:58 The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (Oscar Wilde) 10:55 Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) 12:15 Flush (Virginia Woolf) 13:12 Nikolai Gogol (Vladimir Nabokov) 14:22 Beowulf (Alexander translation) 16:25 In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) 17:30 Persuasion (Jane Austen) 18:59 Symposium (Plato)
I remember, in college, how I lusted after the Penguin books in the bookstore that I couldn't afford. Now, so much later, I read them with endless delight. What a great company and collection of riches.
the fact that mary shelley was only a teen when she wrote frankenstein will forever be astounding to me. i remember reading it for the first time in high school and it instantly becoming my favorite book....still is and forever will be. she was truly ahead of her time
it's like listening to professor Snape doing book reviews and recommendations luv it! thank you for making this vid, looking forward to more book vlogs soon...
Omg this is the best comment ever. Gonna pin it. I knew I was nasal but was unaware I’d reached final form aka Professor Snape 🤣 🤣🤣maybe the hair plays its part too?
Comparing Beowulf to a war-drum is such a rich description. It perfectly evokes the brutality of the epic but also the melancholy that comes after the fighting, and especially after the ending, with the war looming over the people. Lovely video.
One can store more books if they are kept in a horizontal stack instead of upright ... I have four Ikea Billy bookcases for my books ... all double stacked. Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when she wrote Frankenstein ...
In Cold Blood had a huge impact on me when I was young. It was the realization that anyone could be a killer. I had mixed feelings about how Capote inserted himself into the lives of the murderers especially the extremely damaged Perry Smith. The first movie based on the book starring Robert Blake was chilling.
Many of these books I read back in high school or college. Your discussion of them brings me back, serving as a reminder of their literary merits beyond assigned reading. I love your consummate appreciation of literature. You're so often reminding us of books lost or so-known-as-to-be-simplified. Thanks for always reinvigorating book-ish care in such an articulate fashion. Funny timing here, too, as we both discuss two of these works in videos released on the same day, a nice complement of each other's thoughts (though you deserve credit for my discussion of Moby Dick in the first place).
Ah your words always mean the world to me! Thank you! What a lovely serendipity re Moby Dick! Going straight to your channel now. I appreciate your encouragement immensely!
My top 5 or 6 Penguin classics I can't live without. Just in alphabetical order. I'll try to do another 4 or 5 later if I have time. Thanks for your video, this is fun to think about! 😊 * The Bible (KJV). I don't include this for any religious reasons, but simply because the King James Bible sings in an utterly beautiful and memorable English literary style, and of course the KJV is a tremendous influence in the history of English literature. The Penguin edition has been edited by the scholar David Norton so that we have the best available version of the King James Bible, and it has been formatted in paragraphs which makes it eminently readable, unlike verse by verse formatting. If one has never read the King James Bible, then one is missing out on a mountain of literary magnificence. * Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). The Oliver Ready translation with Penguin is superb. I think it's the best available translation of C&P, though Michael Katz is also as good but he's not with Penguin. Basically, Ready is the best if you prefer British English, but Katz if you prefer American English. Both are outstanding translations. And C&P is, in my view, Dostoevsky's greatest work, perhaps even more so than The Brothers Karamazov, though both are obvious classics for good reason. C&P is also funnier (black comedy) than one might expect given Dostoevesky's reputation. And I think the 19th century (or roughly the Victorian era, which I don't limit to the UK) is arguably the greatest single period of human flourishing in history on all levels - literary, artistic, musical, scientific, philosophical, economic, political, etc. More so than, say, ancient Athens, the Renaissance, etc. Perhaps this biases my list as one can see! * Divine Comedy (Dante). Rivin Kirkpatrick is the current translation for Penguin. It's s good translation, though it would not be the translation I would recommend if this is the first time one has read Dante since Kirkpatrick makes Dante sound more like Dante filtered through Shakespeare and Milton and other English poetic greats. Penguin has a fascinating history of translations in Dante. Mark Musa preceded Kirkpatrick, and before Musa there was Dorothy Sayers who helped put Penguin on the map as a publishing house. Sayers's translation of Dante's Commedia is still well worth reading today. It has famously superb if dated notes which are very much necessary when it comes to reading Dante. Sayers's Dante and Rieu's Homer in prose were the translations that turned Penguin from a relatively small publisher in the wake of the Second World War and into the publishing giant it is now. Abd Dante is a universe unto himself. Thr Italian is beautiful, terza rima scheme, etc. Italy's greatest poet and some even say the greatest poet of any language. (I'd say Italy's greatest prose writer is Manzoni who wrote The Betrothed.) * The History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides). I think the popular historian Tom Holland did a more recent translation for Penguin, which I haven't read, but I have the older Rex Warner translation, and Thucydides's power shines through even in the older translation. I believe Hammond with Oxford World's Classics is the best translation of this great work, and the Landmark Thucydides has the best supplementary material but a subpar translation, but since we're talking about Penguin classics, then Warner is just fine. Thucydides is distinguished from, say, Herodotus in that he took a more "scientific" approach to history, and Thucydides writes with a pointed and poignant message that still resonates today. * Moby-Dick (Melville). I agree with what Bren said! It's arguably one of the great American novels, and certainly the greatest of American novels in the 19th century. In fact, it may even be the greatest novel in the English language in the 19th century, though this latter point is quite debatable (e.g. Middlemarch, Dickens). * The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Grant). Of course, Grant famously won the U.S. Civil War, and then served as a U.S. president, but who knew he was also a literary man? His memoirs are a masterpiece of prose, and one of the best memoirs of a general ever written, in the vein of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, though I think superior even to the great Caesar's account of his wars. If Moby-Dick is the greatest (American) fictional work of the 19th century, I think Grant's memoirs may be the greatest non-fictional work in English of the 19th century. Although there are other fine contenders in the English language (e.g. Darwin's Origin of Species, Ruskin's Praeterita). Plus Grant's memoirs take on a more elegiac air to know he wrote it as he was dying of throat cancer and in dire financial straits in the hopes of ensuring his wife and children weren't left destitute after his death. Grant completed it then died a few days later. Mark Twain published Grant's memoirs and it became a bestseller that left his wife and family very well off indeed.
Wow, thanks for sharing this! Eclectic and magisterial list. Had my eye on the Penguin KJV for a while! Your recommendation has convinced me. Thanks for sharing!
what a fun list! i like the distinction of choosing not necessarily your all-time favorites but the ones that you either return to or simply keep thinking about over the years. My list wouldn't include many surprises to most, probably To the Lighthouse for its musings of time, memory, and inner consciousness, 100 Years of Solitude for its themes of history, family, and the cyclical nature of life (might as well add East of Eden for those same reasons), and some non-fiction classics like Meditations for its timeless wisdom and Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning for its emotional affirmation on the significance/fragility/magic of life. If I had to pick just one that lives rent-free in my head that I think about more than others and that i could yap about forever (!), it's probably Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It's endlessly re-readable, you could sink deeper each instance into the various themes of time, illness, and the intellectual currents of early 20th-century Europe. There's so much to talk about for each character, each plot point, and each thematic exploration. I remember when reading it i was so immersed that I had to touch a wall and my surroundings just to not feel like I was in the sanatorium or experiencing a near-death fever dream during the snow storm, and I'll still be randomly walking down the street and thinking about Hans Castorp's journey and how often the messages of the novel apply to real life. Its depth and complexity make it a book I keep coming back to and can't seem to get out of my head. Cheers!
What a wonderful mini-essay. Thank you for sharing your own reading journey! Comments like this make doing this RUclips thing so rewarding. Rereading To the Lighthouse was incredibly satisfying. Sublime book. I’ll be discussing Mann and Steinbeck quite soon on the channel! I can’t match your delightful description though. I think my expectations before reading 100 Years of Solitude were too high. I liked it (especially that ethereal floaty ending) but didn’t feel enraptured by the book as a whole. Due for a reread I think! Thank you for sharing.
@@brenboothjones I’ve heard that about 100yrs a lot which makes sense! I read it in its original language in Spanish so I wonder how much of a role translation plays. I recently found that to be the case when re-reading a book I had only ever read in French and feeling like, while still good, something was lost in the English translation (Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes by Belgian author Jacqueline Harpman). One of my favorite parts of 100Yrs was how utterly mesmerizing the prose was, the rhythmic and cyclical language mirroring the multigenerational themes, often fluidly and surreally blurring imagination and reality. At least in its original Spanish, the prose often has a playful quality within its disorientation. I’m realizing typing this out and connecting it to Magic Mountain again, that I might be attracted to dreamy, incantatory, hallucinatory prose - It’s the best feeling when you’ve sunk so deep while reading that you need to reach out and touch something tangible to anchor yourself back to your world. Excited to hear your upcoming thoughts on Steinbeck! happy reading 🙌
For me it's Les miserables. But it's not because of the edition itself but more because of the amazing translation by Christine donougger. It's so good and I don't how she was able to translate 19th century French so flawlessly into modern English
@@MYMOTHERISAFISH-ci2ts you want to feel at home in the translation, especially with such a mammoth of a book! I’m not sure off the top of my head which translation of les mis I have-now I’m curious to look when I get home later! Thanks for your ever-lovely feedback :)
@@brenboothjones Thanks For your kind comment! And I agree you need to feel at home in a translation. That is why I always prefer Innovative translations over accurate ones.
For me my essential classics have to be Orlando: A Biography, To the Lighthouse, Moby-Dick, The Sound and The Fury, Jane Eyre (I have a feeling that once I read Wuthering Heights that’ll come to the list) and Ariel (by Sylvia Plath). But there are so many authors I need to read or read more of that I’m still adding to the list like I just finished to the Lighthouse for instance, I’d like to read more Latin American writers like Clarice Lispector, French, Russian and Japanese literature, more poetry and philosophy (I love John Donne and Marianne Moore and I’ve started with the republic but I’m only 1/3 into it and I put it on the backburner to focus on reading novels)
Read a chapter a day you'll do it in a year that way. It's not as difficult as you think there are some parts that take a bit of time to understand but chapters are short.
Let's see if I can narrow it down to 10 authors, I have read at least two works by these authors: Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Melville, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Dumas, Hugo and Cather, in no particular order.
Definitely. There were many Penguin Classics to choose from. I had to leave some out but will be covering Don Quixote sometime soon. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Bren , really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with more Quality Editing in your videos and also make a highly engaging Thumbnail and also help you with the overall youtube strategy and growth ! Pls let me know what do you think ?
00:00 Intro
00:37 Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (1818 vs. 1831)
02:42 Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin)
06:58 The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (Oscar Wilde)
10:55 Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)
12:15 Flush (Virginia Woolf)
13:12 Nikolai Gogol (Vladimir Nabokov)
14:22 Beowulf (Alexander translation)
16:25 In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)
17:30 Persuasion (Jane Austen)
18:59 Symposium (Plato)
Thank you!
I remember, in college, how I lusted after the Penguin books in the bookstore that I couldn't afford. Now, so much later, I read them with endless delight. What a great company and collection of riches.
I know the feeling! Endless delight is very apt! Thanks for sharing.
the fact that mary shelley was only a teen when she wrote frankenstein will forever be astounding to me. i remember reading it for the first time in high school and it instantly becoming my favorite book....still is and forever will be. she was truly ahead of her time
Well said! :)
It's not that difficult, really. I was writing before this RUclipsr and many subscribers watching him were born. Good story though.
it's like listening to professor Snape doing book reviews and recommendations luv it! thank you for making this vid, looking forward to more book vlogs soon...
Omg this is the best comment ever. Gonna pin it. I knew I was nasal but was unaware I’d reached final form aka Professor Snape 🤣 🤣🤣maybe the hair plays its part too?
That was a great list. I’m looking forward to a few of those 😊
Happy to hear it! Thanks for watching :)
Awesome selections ❤
Thank you!
What an engaging & disparate collection of classics. Really enjoyable video. I'm hooked!
In Cold Blood is a phenomenal read. My favourite penguin classic is an edition of Last Exit to Brooklyn with a foreword by Irvine Welsh.
Love a good foreword from a brilliant writer!
Comparing Beowulf to a war-drum is such a rich description. It perfectly evokes the brutality of the epic but also the melancholy that comes after the fighting, and especially after the ending, with the war looming over the people. Lovely video.
This kind of encouragement means the world to me. Thank you so much!
The importance of being earnest is my favorite Oscar Wilde, I can't get enough of his satire and sharp wit.
Same! It’s a masterpiece of comic social critique. All of his plays are exceptional, really.
I enjoyed listening to this video and the books you found important.. I am now going to read James Baldwin's Go Tell it On The Mountain
Thanks so much, Renee! I hope you enjoy that fantastic novel!
One can store more books if they are kept in a horizontal stack instead of upright ... I have four Ikea Billy bookcases for my books ... all double stacked. Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when she wrote Frankenstein ...
Wuthering Heights....always!
And 'The Symposium' just has a such a majestic backstory with Alcibiades - it is unforgettable!
In Cold Blood had a huge impact on me when I was young. It was the realization that anyone could be a killer. I had mixed feelings about how Capote inserted himself into the lives of the murderers especially the extremely damaged Perry Smith. The first movie based on the book starring Robert Blake was chilling.
Ooh need to see that adaptation! Thanks for the rec
Many of these books I read back in high school or college. Your discussion of them brings me back, serving as a reminder of their literary merits beyond assigned reading. I love your consummate appreciation of literature. You're so often reminding us of books lost or so-known-as-to-be-simplified. Thanks for always reinvigorating book-ish care in such an articulate fashion. Funny timing here, too, as we both discuss two of these works in videos released on the same day, a nice complement of each other's thoughts (though you deserve credit for my discussion of Moby Dick in the first place).
Ah your words always mean the world to me! Thank you! What a lovely serendipity re Moby Dick! Going straight to your channel now.
I appreciate your encouragement immensely!
Watching the film Knock Knock...I love to collect penguin books
Haven’t seen it! Going to look it up :)
My top 5 or 6 Penguin classics I can't live without. Just in alphabetical order. I'll try to do another 4 or 5 later if I have time. Thanks for your video, this is fun to think about! 😊
* The Bible (KJV). I don't include this for any religious reasons, but simply because the King James Bible sings in an utterly beautiful and memorable English literary style, and of course the KJV is a tremendous influence in the history of English literature. The Penguin edition has been edited by the scholar David Norton so that we have the best available version of the King James Bible, and it has been formatted in paragraphs which makes it eminently readable, unlike verse by verse formatting. If one has never read the King James Bible, then one is missing out on a mountain of literary magnificence.
* Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). The Oliver Ready translation with Penguin is superb. I think it's the best available translation of C&P, though Michael Katz is also as good but he's not with Penguin. Basically, Ready is the best if you prefer British English, but Katz if you prefer American English. Both are outstanding translations. And C&P is, in my view, Dostoevsky's greatest work, perhaps even more so than The Brothers Karamazov, though both are obvious classics for good reason. C&P is also funnier (black comedy) than one might expect given Dostoevesky's reputation. And I think the 19th century (or roughly the Victorian era, which I don't limit to the UK) is arguably the greatest single period of human flourishing in history on all levels - literary, artistic, musical, scientific, philosophical, economic, political, etc. More so than, say, ancient Athens, the Renaissance, etc. Perhaps this biases my list as one can see!
* Divine Comedy (Dante). Rivin Kirkpatrick is the current translation for Penguin. It's s good translation, though it would not be the translation I would recommend if this is the first time one has read Dante since Kirkpatrick makes Dante sound more like Dante filtered through Shakespeare and Milton and other English poetic greats. Penguin has a fascinating history of translations in Dante. Mark Musa preceded Kirkpatrick, and before Musa there was Dorothy Sayers who helped put Penguin on the map as a publishing house. Sayers's translation of Dante's Commedia is still well worth reading today. It has famously superb if dated notes which are very much necessary when it comes to reading Dante. Sayers's Dante and Rieu's Homer in prose were the translations that turned Penguin from a relatively small publisher in the wake of the Second World War and into the publishing giant it is now. Abd Dante is a universe unto himself. Thr Italian is beautiful, terza rima scheme, etc. Italy's greatest poet and some even say the greatest poet of any language. (I'd say Italy's greatest prose writer is Manzoni who wrote The Betrothed.)
* The History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides). I think the popular historian Tom Holland did a more recent translation for Penguin, which I haven't read, but I have the older Rex Warner translation, and Thucydides's power shines through even in the older translation. I believe Hammond with Oxford World's Classics is the best translation of this great work, and the Landmark Thucydides has the best supplementary material but a subpar translation, but since we're talking about Penguin classics, then Warner is just fine. Thucydides is distinguished from, say, Herodotus in that he took a more "scientific" approach to history, and Thucydides writes with a pointed and poignant message that still resonates today.
* Moby-Dick (Melville). I agree with what Bren said! It's arguably one of the great American novels, and certainly the greatest of American novels in the 19th century. In fact, it may even be the greatest novel in the English language in the 19th century, though this latter point is quite debatable (e.g. Middlemarch, Dickens).
* The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Grant). Of course, Grant famously won the U.S. Civil War, and then served as a U.S. president, but who knew he was also a literary man? His memoirs are a masterpiece of prose, and one of the best memoirs of a general ever written, in the vein of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, though I think superior even to the great Caesar's account of his wars. If Moby-Dick is the greatest (American) fictional work of the 19th century, I think Grant's memoirs may be the greatest non-fictional work in English of the 19th century. Although there are other fine contenders in the English language (e.g. Darwin's Origin of Species, Ruskin's Praeterita). Plus Grant's memoirs take on a more elegiac air to know he wrote it as he was dying of throat cancer and in dire financial straits in the hopes of ensuring his wife and children weren't left destitute after his death. Grant completed it then died a few days later. Mark Twain published Grant's memoirs and it became a bestseller that left his wife and family very well off indeed.
Wow, thanks for sharing this! Eclectic and magisterial list. Had my eye on the Penguin KJV for a while! Your recommendation has convinced me. Thanks for sharing!
Ps. Got a Dante video in the works!
@@brenboothjones Thanks so much Bren, I love your content, can't wait for Dante video and hope you enjoy the KJV! 😊
what a fun list! i like the distinction of choosing not necessarily your all-time favorites but the ones that you either return to or simply keep thinking about over the years.
My list wouldn't include many surprises to most, probably To the Lighthouse for its musings of time, memory, and inner consciousness, 100 Years of Solitude for its themes of history, family, and the cyclical nature of life (might as well add East of Eden for those same reasons), and some non-fiction classics like Meditations for its timeless wisdom and Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning for its emotional affirmation on the significance/fragility/magic of life.
If I had to pick just one that lives rent-free in my head that I think about more than others and that i could yap about forever (!), it's probably Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It's endlessly re-readable, you could sink deeper each instance into the various themes of time, illness, and the intellectual currents of early 20th-century Europe. There's so much to talk about for each character, each plot point, and each thematic exploration. I remember when reading it i was so immersed that I had to touch a wall and my surroundings just to not feel like I was in the sanatorium or experiencing a near-death fever dream during the snow storm, and I'll still be randomly walking down the street and thinking about Hans Castorp's journey and how often the messages of the novel apply to real life. Its depth and complexity make it a book I keep coming back to and can't seem to get out of my head. Cheers!
What a wonderful mini-essay. Thank you for sharing your own reading journey! Comments like this make doing this RUclips thing so rewarding.
Rereading To the Lighthouse was incredibly satisfying. Sublime book.
I’ll be discussing Mann and Steinbeck quite soon on the channel! I can’t match your delightful description though.
I think my expectations before reading 100 Years of Solitude were too high. I liked it (especially that ethereal floaty ending) but didn’t feel enraptured by the book as a whole. Due for a reread I think!
Thank you for sharing.
@@brenboothjones I’ve heard that about 100yrs a lot which makes sense! I read it in its original language in Spanish so I wonder how much of a role translation plays. I recently found that to be the case when re-reading a book I had only ever read in French and feeling like, while still good, something was lost in the English translation (Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes by Belgian author Jacqueline Harpman).
One of my favorite parts of 100Yrs was how utterly mesmerizing the prose was, the rhythmic and cyclical language mirroring the multigenerational themes, often fluidly and surreally blurring imagination and reality. At least in its original Spanish, the prose often has a playful quality within its disorientation.
I’m realizing typing this out and connecting it to Magic Mountain again, that I might be attracted to dreamy, incantatory, hallucinatory prose - It’s the best feeling when you’ve sunk so deep while reading that you need to reach out and touch something tangible to anchor yourself back to your world.
Excited to hear your upcoming thoughts on Steinbeck! happy reading 🙌
Nice video
Great books mentioned Ben. I would answer your question but maybe in a few years after I have read more. Best wishes.
Amazing review, i found the connection between john milton and shelly really interesting! You earned a sub bro!
Thank you so much and welcome! 💪
Just discovered your channel. Amazing content! 👍
Thank you! Good to have you here!
As you talked about Beowulf, I was wondering what you thought about Seamus Heaney’s translation?
I have the Heaney translation too (in the Norton anthology)! Exceptional-like almost everything Heaney’s done!
My brain has been conditioned to associate Penguin = good books.
They have certainly set the bar very high! Thanks for sharing :)
Persuasion the book that in a roundabout she way calls someone a dick😄
Guapo!! 😘
What are your essential classics?
For me it's Les miserables. But it's not because of the edition itself but more because of the amazing translation by Christine donougger. It's so good and I don't how she was able to translate 19th century French so flawlessly into modern English
@@MYMOTHERISAFISH-ci2ts you want to feel at home in the translation, especially with such a mammoth of a book! I’m not sure off the top of my head which translation of les mis I have-now I’m curious to look when I get home later! Thanks for your ever-lovely feedback :)
@@brenboothjones Thanks For your kind comment! And I agree you need to feel at home in a translation. That is why I always prefer Innovative translations over accurate ones.
I also have Beowulf, In Cold Blood, and Breakfast at Tiffany's is fantastic too as well as all of Austen's canon
For me my essential classics have to be Orlando: A Biography, To the Lighthouse, Moby-Dick, The Sound and The Fury, Jane Eyre (I have a feeling that once I read Wuthering Heights that’ll come to the list) and Ariel (by Sylvia Plath). But there are so many authors I need to read or read more of that I’m still adding to the list like I just finished to the Lighthouse for instance, I’d like to read more Latin American writers like Clarice Lispector, French, Russian and Japanese literature, more poetry and philosophy (I love John Donne and Marianne Moore and I’ve started with the republic but I’m only 1/3 into it and I put it on the backburner to focus on reading novels)
Man you look way too good to pass as an intellectual. Thats what I hoped first. I was wrong.
I would love to read Moby Dick but I am scared 🙈💗
It’s a behemoth but the final chapter are sublime and make it worth the struggle
Read a chapter a day you'll do it in a year that way. It's not as difficult as you think there are some parts that take a bit of time to understand but chapters are short.
@@shanefelle9385 👌 thanks :) good tip
@@shanefelle9385 good tips
A chapter a day is also a great way to read my all-time favorite book, War and Peace.
Let's see if I can narrow it down to 10 authors, I have read at least two works by these authors: Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Melville, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Dumas, Hugo and Cather, in no particular order.
A stellar list, Karen! Thanks for sharing :)
Don Quixote ??! Is it worth mentioning ?
Definitely. There were many Penguin Classics to choose from. I had to leave some out but will be covering Don Quixote sometime soon. Thanks for sharing!
Ulysses x 10
Good call! Joyce will be coming up on my channel soon!
South african?
Hey Bren , really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with more Quality Editing in your videos and also make a highly engaging Thumbnail and also help you with the overall youtube strategy and growth ! Pls let me know what do you think ?
I’m good for now, but thank you for the offer.