A couple of years ago I got, as a gift, a complete collection of the Penguin Little Black Classics. At the time I made a post about it, which I've updated below:
While I am familiar with most of the authors, the particular shorter works are often ones I've not read. Indeed, 62 I'd not read upon receipt of the collection. But when you instead look just at the authors I'd not ever read, it becomes a much shorter list, of only 28 (with two anonymous works):
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Gunnlaugs Saga
Pu Songling Planning to read work in full: Tales from a Chinese Studio
Baltasar Gracian
Guy de Maupassant
Suetonius Read his work in full: Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Apollonious Planning to read work in full: Argonautica
Petronious Planning to read work in full: Satyricon
Johann Peter Hebel
Henry Mayhew
Hafez
Thomas Nashe
Mary Kingsley
Elizabeth Gaskell
Nikolay Leskov
C.P. Cavafy
Samuel Pepys
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Christina Rosetti
Ryunosuke Akutagawa Planning to read work in full: Rashomon and Other Stories
Giorgio Vasari
Shen Fu Planning to read work in full: Floating Life
Richard Hakluyt
Catullus
Katherine Mansfield
Sappho
Basavanna, Devara Daismayya, Mahadeviyakka, and Allama Prabhu
Dhammapada Planning to read work in full
Other works still to be read in full:
Darwin - Voyage of the Beagle
Melville - The Enchanted Isles
Chekhov - Selected Stories
But, beyond these work to read in full, I have now read all of the Little Black Classics, including the many authors I was already familiar with (Dostoevsky, Wharton, Basho, etc.). It was a fun journey, lots of good short stories, excerpts, and poetry. Some of it forgettable, some of it mediocre - but there were some nice gems in there.
So, as things currently stand, I've read 71/80 of the Little Black Classics, and it will probably be a while until I polish of the remaining 9 works, since I'm going to read the complete texts of each.
I think I'll start with the Dhammapada - it's short, and I feel like I should've read it by now...
While I am familiar with most of the authors, the particular shorter works are often ones I've not read. Indeed, 62 I'd not read upon receipt of the collection. But when you instead look just at the authors I'd not ever read, it becomes a much shorter list, of only 28 (with two anonymous works):
Pu Songling Planning to read work in full: Tales from a Chinese Studio
Apollonious Planning to read work in full: Argonautica
Petronious Planning to read work in full: Satyricon
Ryunosuke Akutagawa Planning to read work in full: Rashomon and Other Stories
Shen Fu Planning to read work in full: Floating Life
Dhammapada Planning to read work in full
Other works still to be read in full:
Darwin - Voyage of the Beagle
Melville - The Enchanted Isles
Chekhov - Selected Stories
But, beyond these work to read in full, I have now read all of the Little Black Classics, including the many authors I was already familiar with (Dostoevsky, Wharton, Basho, etc.). It was a fun journey, lots of good short stories, excerpts, and poetry. Some of it forgettable, some of it mediocre - but there were some nice gems in there.
So, as things currently stand, I've read 71/80 of the Little Black Classics, and it will probably be a while until I polish of the remaining 9 works, since I'm going to read the complete texts of each.
I think I'll start with the Dhammapada - it's short, and I feel like I should've read it by now...
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