Do you? What does it mean for someone to be well-read? Is there some list of essential works that one has to have read in order to be considered well-read?
Do you? What does it mean for someone to be well-read? Is there some list of essential works that one has to have read in order to be considered well-read?
1/10
Are you seriously posing this question to the LR community? That's like walking into an AA meeting and asking if they consider themselves strong on self-discipline and self-control.
Community/society doesn't exist you Communist!
~Maggie Thatcher posting from hell
smarty pants wrote:
Do you? What does it mean for someone to be well-read? Is there some list of essential works that one has to have read in order to be considered well-read?
Yes, but only of things that interest me. I've never read Atlas Shrugged for example and have no interest in reading what that horrible woman had to say.
I had to read a LOT of classics in college as an English major, and I've read just about everything Steinbeck ever wrote, but I'm not one who reads tons of novels every year. I'm not interested in garden-variety fiction.
So, well-read? Yep. Politics, economics, personal finance, sports, and Dick and Jane books, and that's about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Worldsmarty pants wrote:
Is there some list of essential works that one has to have read in order to be considered well-read?
I only read magazines, and only when eating and when on the toilet. Occasionally, I have to read stuff for work, but I don't like to do it. (Working on a Ph.D. now....ten years as a professional research scientist, too....don't let anyone tell you that you NEED to read to be a good person).
how about cosmology and particle physics? Subjects that tell
you more about the world than any philosopher has come up with over the centuries.
This will be an opportunity for:
1) People to talk about how they have read everything worth reading, even while running 13:55 for the 5k, making $250,000/yr, and having a hot wife.
2) The science and technology types to talk about how they are well read because they their subject is cooler than "liberal arts", even thought they don't even know who , say, Marcel Proust is.
I prefer to be thought of as well hung.
Being well-read means you know how to use Wikipedia. Read The Closing of the American Mind. That's all you need to read to understand what being well-read means.
32333 wrote:
I only read magazines, and only when eating and when on the toilet. Occasionally, I have to read stuff for work, but I don't like to do it. (Working on a Ph.D. now....ten years as a professional research scientist, too....don't let anyone tell you that you NEED to read to be a good person).
Well, that's a very sad reflection on our higher educational system if you are working on a PhD and worked as a research scientist and read as little as you indicate. Actually pathetic would be a better description.
No, I consider myself erudite.
Editor of the Chronicle of HEd wrote:
32333 wrote:I only read magazines, and only when eating and when on the toilet. Occasionally, I have to read stuff for work, but I don't like to do it. (Working on a Ph.D. now....ten years as a professional research scientist, too....don't let anyone tell you that you NEED to read to be a good person).
Well, that's a very sad reflection on our higher educational system if you are working on a PhD and worked as a research scientist and read as little as you indicate. Actually pathetic would be a better description.
As an extremely well-read person myself, I must ask why you think that? Why does a research scientist need to read anything outside his or her subject matter area? I'm a lawyer, and I just need to know about my particular area of the law; my deep knowledge of James Joyce's works or Roman history or whatever has never once helped me as a lawyer (although years of reading probably helped my writing).
Well, I read more than most people and I've been around for longer than most, so I might qualify as *comparatively* well-read.
But in any absolute, Platonic sense? Not a chance. Too disorganized. For instance, I'm *finally*--now that I've been a nonbeliever for nearly a half-century--working my way through the (Christian) Bible. I'd read a lot of it before, and parts of it many times; but I'd never gone through it systematically.
At the end of sixth grade, our teacher gave us a list of books that an educated person should have read. I made it through "Pilgrim's Progress" and then lost the sheet of titles. Too bad--I'd like to have that list now, and start filling in gaps.
OTOH: it's not clear how many years I have left for reading. Maybe I should just stick with my eclectic pleasure reading.
Does reading these boards that the BroJos provide count?
I look in the mirror every morning and regularly polish off at least one book of varying subject matter every 10 days. The reason for my comment was because of 32333's following statement:Occasionally, I have to read stuff for work, but I don't like to do it. (Working on a Ph.D. now....ten years as a professional research scientist, too....don't let anyone tell you that you NEED to read to be a good person).I'm sorry, but for a PhD candidate that is extremely poor. He clearly states he is forced to read "stuff" for work, but doesn't like it. If you're in a PhD program, you should be deveouring your speciality literature with abandon.
Look in the mirror pal wrote:
Editor of the Chronicle of HEd wrote:Well, that's a very sad reflection on our higher educational system if you are working on a PhD and worked as a research scientist and read as little as you indicate. Actually pathetic would be a better description.
As an extremely well-read person myself, I must ask why you think that? Why does a research scientist need to read anything outside his or her subject matter area? I'm a lawyer, and I just need to know about my particular area of the law; my deep knowledge of James Joyce's works or Roman history or whatever has never once helped me as a lawyer (although years of reading probably helped my writing).
I suppose, since I was able to read your question?
smarty pants wrote:
Do you? What does it mean for someone to be well-read? Is there some list of essential works that one has to have read in order to be considered well-read?
Editor of Chronicle of HEd wrote:
He clearly states he is forced to read "stuff" for work, but doesn't like it. If you're in a PhD program, you should be deveouring your speciality literature with abandon.
I figured that was what he meant by reading "stuff" for work. One of my buddies does is a tax guy; I don't think he likes to read the Internal Revenue Code but he knows it up one side and down the other.
Anyway, I thought I should mention this here. There is an old story about a group of college professors who met for dinner and drinks on a regular basis. One night they played a game where they went around and admitted what was the greatest, most significant work of literature that they hadn't read. One professor hadn't read "Hamlet"; he won the game but ended up losing his job.
Yes, there is wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
Limited to a western viewpoint of the world. To be well read means reading outside those limits.
I'm not well read, and I mainly read non-fiction, but I'll tell you the novels I liked the most (one by each author):
Frankenstein
Slaughterhouse-5
The Lord of the Rings
Animal Farm
The Rainbow
A Tale of Two Cities
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Day of the Triffids
The Call of the Wild
A Clockwork Orange
On the Beach
The War of the Worlds
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Dracula
As a kid
The Lord of the Flies
Moby Dick
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Wind in the Willows
Watership Down