Which Classics Should You Read to Be "Well-Read"? [Teaser]
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And rarely, like rarely do I feel the gap of you have a PhD in English and I don't, but this was one where. Well, I actually, I think that may, I mean, depends on what we're solving for. Like, I think you may have a better sense of it because I think people, I think the idea of well-read is a more mainstream idea, right? And there's a lot of academics that aren't well-read in that particular field.

That's true. I have a lot more literary history, but I'm going to over-index on Thucydides. You hear what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah. I do remember slogging my way through the history of the Peloponnesian War. Yeah, you do. And I could not tell you anything that happens in that book. The Ring of Gyges, Solon, Croesus. You're just making sounds now. No, that's all real. That's all real. So I think you may have a better calibration for what people understand in the general sense, which is kind of the game here. Yeah, we'll meet in the middle. We'll meet in the middle. So I have 10.

We took Shakespeare off the board. And do we even need to say anything about that? Is that controversial at all to say that we would both have Shakespeare number one? We're not... Mine aren't power-ranked after this. No. Yeah, mine aren't ranked either, but I think...

Shakespeare is the mark of what we think about as literature. If you want to be well-read. And maybe it's the first thing that we all get a whiff of as like, that's what serious readers know about. Whether that's true or not for being a serious reader is...

My memory certainly of like becoming aware that people had this as an identity or as an aspiration was very tied to like that you could read and understand Shakespeare. Like the language is different. They're plays. They're not novels. There's going to be some work to do. And so many of the storylines have become foundational through fiction ever since Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, like I was joking on the main feed, maybe you need to read Hamlet to understand the Lion King. Maybe you need to have understood King Lear to watch Succession. You don't have to, but it certainly enriches it. Not to mention all the little turns of phrase that we use. If you ever said somebody's in a pickle, you owe that to Shakespeare. It's hard to think of something that's more...

Right. It's amazing. Yeah. The way I kind of thought about was this is like, I think for every other author book, if someone said, I consider myself well-read, let's say they said that. And I said, have you read X? Yeah.

And they answered, no, I wouldn't really bat an eye. If I said, do you consider yourself well-read? And they say, yes. I said, have you read any Shakespeare or seen any? They said, no. I'd be like, huh? You know, I'm not saying I'm right. I would be like, huh? I wonder about that. Yeah. That's an interesting way to think about it. And so you're indexing for the amount of well, what gets you the most bang for your well-read book? The most well-read, the most bang for your book. Yeah. And I think Shakespeare gets you the most. I thought...

I thought more about kind of a survey course in the greats and classics of what would get you a solid foundation, both for understanding kind of the geography of classic literature or what we think of as the canon, but also especially the things that I'll start with are things that works that...

are referenced in just tons of other work that comes after them and so having familiarity with the source gives you a deeper a deeper access to an additional work than someone who you know doesn't have that not that you can't enjoy other those books anyway but knowing that that's a reference and where it comes from will give you a greater understanding

And I also, so I used to do this thing for the site, which again, stay tuned. You may hear things like this in the future called Zero to Well-Read, where I said basically this. If you had nothing, you were an alien dropped in North America at this moment of time, I should say, the United States specifically at this moment of time. These are all contextual. This matters. There is no universal or even global or hemispheric or lingual sort of hegemony about it. What would be the hundred that would get you there the quickest? And I tend to over-index in that

There are more modern things and more popular things. And it depends on the moment. Like I had, I think, Fifty Shades when that came out. Or maybe there's Twilight. Or maybe both of them, right? Because what I was looking at was sort of a felicity with both the history of literature and what's going on right now.

This is probably more contemporary than a normal great course, a great books course would be. I've taught some of those things. I have many more modern things, but I don't have a lot of modern stuff. I don't have anything published in the last 30 years, I don't think, on my list. Yeah. That's kind of where I went as well. Since the question from one of the Patreon members, and I scrolled back through Patreon, I could not figure out who asked this. So if you asked us to do an episode on classics for being well-read-

Please raise your hand and we can thank you or blame you for it. But the question was specifically about classics. And I took a broad understanding of classics, but that it did, like Twilight does not qualify here, where if we were talking about what you need to have read to be grounded in an understanding of like modern reading, I would say you probably should read Twilight. All right. With that, let's do some. Mine are in chronological order.

Mine are kind of in chronological order. I can start. We can start with the oldies. All right, go. Okay. I think you need to read the Odyssey where you can cheat and pair it with the Iliad. Like template for the hero journey. Lots of mythology and...

tons of books and movies have built on this story. Like in recent memory, we got Cersei and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou built on the Odyssey, but there are elements of the Odyssey in so much fiction over the last several hundred years, really several thousand years. But like stuff you're reading today is drawing on the Odyssey. Jesmyn Ward's novel where it's a family is taking the road trip and I can never remember the

what the title of that one is. Right. Sing Unburied Sing. Yes, it's a loose retelling of The Odyssey and Sing Unburied Sing is a quote from The Odyssey. Like you could read that Jesmyn Ward novel and just enjoy what she's doing without knowing anything about The Odyssey and knowing that that's a line, but you get a little extra juice if you can make that allusion. I think it's

I think it's really foundational. And it was one of the, like I took this, one of the best course I took in college was my first two semesters was a like multidisciplinary seminar. And we read the Odyssey and I remember being like, this is so old. Like, what is this going to do for me? Here we are getting ready for hot Greek summer 20 years later.

Yeah, I agree. I didn't want to take the Iliad because I thought you would talk about the Iliad. I have a couple of choose one or the other. Okay, I have a couple of those too. I just want for the Odyssey or the Iliad. I think you pick one. I think the Odyssey has more illusions. So using your own rubric, that's so nice for you that you pick that.

Um, Iliad is the better book. It's the more, it's the more enduring. It has a few of my favorite, my, my single favorite moment in all of Western literature is book nine of the Iliad. I also will tear up thinking about Priam coming to Achilles to beg for his son's body at the end and the heiress, I have nicest and your Alice and Patroclus taking up Achilles armor and going like, there's just,

I think there's so much more interesting than most of the thing that happens in the bulk of the Odyssey, which is still interesting, but it's a lot of like, look at this weird thing. So it's a better read if you're like 14 or 15. It's easier to get through. And it certainly was for me. But as a grown person and more of a student and like coming from a different point of view. And again, it so much depends on the translation and state of mind.

The Iliad is, if I have to save one thing, I'm probably saving the Iliad. And I'm sorry, Billy Shakes, but I'm probably saving the Iliad there. And, you know, some of these have to stand in for a whole swath. Like this is essentially the entire ancient world. This is what stands in on my list. Like really 750 BC up until...

Well, depending on how you think about it, you know, for another millennia. Thanks so much for listening. Join us at patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast to hear the rest of this episode and get access to our full back catalog of premium content. That's patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast.