Ten Hard Books I Will Read (But You Don't Have To)

hey book so I watched recently two book videos one by Brian at bookish and also uh a sort of response by my grics and uh you can check out their channels I'll try to link to their videos below but they both did videos on 10 big books that you don't have to read but grics changed his up a little bit and said did 10 big books that he wants to read but you don't have to well uh Bish's Bri Bish's video was just 10 big books that he's read but he doesn't think you don't have to if unless you're interested so because usually people have this idea of you know there's this list of books where they feel like they have to read and especially if you're into older and more classical Works where they feel like you just you have to try them at least once in your life um gricks went off the board more with his and uh he chose a lot of big books that he would want to read even even uh if you don't have to and uh so I went I thought that was a great idea and I went through my shelves and I picked out 10 books to follow along uh gx's line where I I picked out 10 books where uh 10 hard books that I don't think you have to read but I will I want to read and I certainly will be reading them or at least trying and I have big stacks on each side of my camera and uh I'll get into it starting off with a whopping three 1300 Pages the tale of Genji and the tale of Genji is a bit of an Infamous book at least from what I can tell on book um because it's so massive uh and uh because of the very structure of the book I've heard a lot of people have dnfed this book which means did not finish and considering how long it is and considering how the book is largely plotless from what I understand it it really makes sense why this defeats a lot of people but all the same I'm very very interested and very intrigued especially why Steve donu uh considers this to be one of his favorite novels and he seems to he really really loves it like not just you know considers it a great work it's a a deep love for him and um from what I know about this book it's written like a thousand years ago in uh ancient Japan and it's just following the the going on of a high Japanese court and uh a certain figure name Genji I believe it's a yeah a certain character named Genji who and all his um escapades in in his society and in his uh high rank and uh one another another U notorious part of this book that I've heard is that the names can be very opaque especially in different translations because the Apparently in the original she does not actually name people she gives them their title and so trying to track certain characters can be difficult if they're given a same a different uh the same title or or their title changes and so especially if you read this in a different translation where or different uh because this is the Norton CR or this is the Norton translation by Dennis Dennis wasburn and if you notice there's also a open letters monthly review blur on the back and if you know then you know who that's from and uh even though it's 1300 Pages uh I've always had a sweet spot for really large books and books that are considered challenging and this is right up my alley it seems like and um I hope I don't get bored but even if I did I think I would still plow through because I want to experience this to to its fullest and getting bored during a a book when I'm reading it doesn't really deter me I still keep on reading and um I hope to finish this I don't know when but I hope to finish it and moving on to the next one I have them separated rather in roughly fiction to roughly non-fiction though it doesn't it isn't as neat as I as I thought it would be and this next uh work is three volumes three volumes you might think that it's the same three volumes from uh gricks when you see that it's three penguin volumes but as you see with that picture there this is actually the three volume penguin translation of the Arabian Knights Tales of a,1 knights and this is the complete three volumes from penguin we get this is volume one of that cover we got volume two and volume three and these this translation is done by m sea lions and Ursula lions and this is a fairly modern translation I believe this was translated yeah 2008 for a big big project like this that's fairly recent and I've had this on my shelf for quite a while and it really really interests me because just how influential that the tales are and you see volumes a bridged volumes all the time like even even big bricks of a thing like where they can be thousand pages but this is the the full complete work of at least one manuscript tradition there's multi like all old works there's multiple manuscript traditions and this is just this is based off of a certain manuscript so even some like nerdy Scholars would consider this incomplete and I have I've flipped through this I have not actually started read this but I've gone through it and um they actually have uh included some famous tales that were not part of this main manuscript and they included them in the very back uh like the the famous story of Aladdin which Disney made a film out of was is not actually part of this normal manuscript tradition because Asa as the manuscript goes through time and is copied down people will add more stories you get you get something like that in the Bible where you have or in the New Testament but and where you have scrubs who will add Their Own Line or add a couple of verses or they will be translated differently uh in the in the Arabian Knights a lot of the famous Tales show up later in manuscript editions and so they didn't actually make it into the original the original Three volumes so they they at the very back of volume three they include those um you can call them Apocrypha almost Apocrypha araban knite translation or stories and I find that really interesting and it's very compelling and this is not even the first three volume or at least complete Arabian knights in English there is there is a one that's 100 years old you can find it in public domain and I believe it's what Richard Richard Burton something something like that he was an Explorer a famous Victorian Explorer and he they actually mentioned him in the in the uh introduction where they they say that his translation is is a classic but yeah Richard Burton his famous translation from 1885 to 180 uh 1888 they call it a great achievement in its time Britain's translation nonetheless contains many errors and even his 1880s English read strangely so over 100 years later you get an update there's that one next is another novel and this is Joseph and his brothers by Thomas man Thomas man is a bit of an interesting author for me I've read one of his novels and I've read a lot of his short stories including um his famous Death in Venice I loved his Death in Venice when the first time I read it and I have not reread it since but I really really really need to because I've forgotten why I loved it even though I still remember the story and it's only like 70 pages so it shouldn't take that long to read but I do remember Thomas M being more of a complex slow writer where he builds uh builds his stories up he's not giving you like a quick impression in his short stories or in his novels uh he's really um he's very I don't know how else to explain that he's he's um a dense author but he's not so dense that you don't understand him if that makes any sense so I've read his novel uh Dr Fess and I believe that was a wrong place to start for his novels because I loved his short stories and then I really was excited to get into his novels and I read do Dr Fus and that was very dense and very very difficult I did not understand a lot that was going on in that novel even though I did enjoy it because it was Thomas man uh so this year I'm hoping to read his uh Magic Mountain but here I have his uh Joseph and his brothers which is actually a collection of novels that runs all the way to just just about 1,500 pages and it's under the it's basically four books and this is a new translation by John E Woods in the uh Every Man's Library Edition and yeah includes the stories of Jacob young Joseph Joseph in Egypt and Joseph the provider and as you probably guessed this is his take on the biblical story Genesis and that's what I first got as my impression but as I've heard other people talk about this book and as I've dipped in and out I haven't read large chunks but kind of I've explored and I've also read the very short introduction provided by the translator because the translator says something really weird he says he he does not recommend you start at the very beginning he recommends you start well over 100 100 or so pages into the book where here because Thomas M spends the first 50 or 70 Pages actually making his own take on the beginning of Genesis so it starts it's like a philosophical uh pasti of Genesis and that can be throw a lot of readers off and so the the translator says uh he recommends that you you read this you start with the actual story where where we actually start following Joseph and and his brothers or Jacob and yeah cuz like look here listen L to this first line deep is The Well of the past should we not call it bottomless indeed if we indeed if we we should if in fact perhaps only if the past subjected to our remarks and in inquiries is solely that of humanity and of this an enatic life form that compromises our own naturally Lusty and preternaturally wretched existence and whose mystery is quite understandably the Alpha and Omega of all all our remarks and inquiries leading urgency and to all our speech insisten sees to all our questions you see how philosophical and dense that is because the author is immediately posing um questions and he doesn't introduce anyone except for some ideas which is not usually how you start a novel and so I really want to read this but before I do that I would like to reread uh chunks of the New Testament and the Old Testament because from what I understand Thomas man is doing a uh is pulling pulling in a lot from the Bible into this obviously not just because of the story the title story of Joseph and his brothers but just pulling from all aspects of the Bible and just Mi mixing mixing it together into his own story and that fascinates me and I want to be able to follow along with his all his biblical references and understandings like for example the alpha and a mango that I just read if you don't know uh the be the beginning of Revelations The Book of Revelations where it says I'm the alpha and the Omega which is a reference to something Jesus said in the Book of Revelations anyways enough blabbering about that next is another novel this is a novel I've talked about on my channel before I believe when I hauled it like a year ago we got the kindly ones by Jonathan latell and the reason why this is a hard book is well not only is it a big chunkster how long is this almost 1,000 Pages not quite it's about 975 and it's a pretty big Hefty hard cover but not only is it a really long novel but it's also a very controversial novel uh from what I understand this novel takes a the perspective of um a former Nazi soldier who was like a high up in Hitler's regime so he was involved with all of the disgusting and morally reprehensible aspects of the Nazi regime and he writes and this book is written from his perspective trying to not not only trying to um explain explain himself but also describes everything that goes on so in these these Pages you get a lot of torture and a lot of brutal treatment of humanity and just a lot of evil is in these pages and he get it from someone who's telling their own perspective so it's in first person and so you're basically taking on the mind of this reprehensible Nazi figure for almost a thousand pages and from what I understand I I wasn't a I found this at a thrift store and I've heard Steve Donnie who talk about it but from what I've got so I wasn't around or wasn't seriously reading books when this book came out in 2009 but from what from what I understand this was uh very when this came out in America or in the English-speaking Market it was received quite lukewarmly because uh because of the brutality and it and it didn't really it had a lot of moral ambiguity to it which is not something that you would want and something like this from the perspective of a Nazi or a former Nazi uh you know perpetrator and though this was highly praised in French when it first came out because this was published in French in France first before it came over to America despite the author actually being an American and that's the kindly ones this one really has tempted me because I don't know I'm I'm sickly fascinated by it and I don't think I'd get queasy reading it even if he does get really explicit in some of his details but um I want to see what he does with it and and if the outrage was justified and and I believe it was Steve that said that there were large section of this book that are actually brilliant so we'll see uh I believe that's it actually for fiction so now we move on to a lot of non-fiction though this next book is very tox it's non-fiction about fiction so it's the novel U biography by Michael Schmidt is it Schmid Schmid Schmid the novel and this is a big fat hard cover of exactly what the title says well about the novel this is a a book that's about books literally uh him going through author by author just discussing books or authors and their and their books like if you see the table of contents he lists roughly by theme then he lists all the authors underneath that theme that he will discuss so like if I so the first chapter is called literature is ADV in literature is invention and then he talks about some really old literature so that wasn't a good example let's see if I go here at the very bottom he has a chapter 19 is called thought divers where he talks about Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville and Harriet beer stow and it just goes through that for 1100 pages and as you can tell this book is larger than your average hard cover like if I take Thomas man and you can roughly line it up this is a lot lot wider as a hard cover and it's also quite heavy like I can it it is very heavy to hold and I don't know how comfortable this will be to read especially for 1100 pages but I picked it up because it's very it's a very literary work where he's just talking about all these authors that he's read and all these and all these authors that he's loved and discussing their work Al together and he's got all his ideas just put him put them into this book called the novel and I don't I think the subtitle of biography is rather misleading because how can you write a biography of the novel and he's not really tracking uh the development of the novel from what I understand at least he might be doing that but I I don't get that impression it's more just him thinking doing a lot of reading and thinking about that reading and uh writing about it in this big book and the thing is if if you are aware Michael Schmidt actually wrote another book like this from 1999 I believe it's called the lives of The Poets and it's a thousand page brick on poets which is exactly uh this model on poetry uh yeah but just on poetry and then this book came out I believe in 2014 So within 15 years he had done enough reading to actually I can't seem to find the page but yeah so this is from 2014 I believe but yeah it's 1100 pages of just him writing a wrot books and usually people want to spend those 1100 Pages reading books like reading actual novels instead of reading someone who's talking about novels but here I am with this book it's quite expensive I believe I bought this it was $50 I hope it's worth it and um you don't have to read it but I am I'm very interested and uh now we get into some more difficult Works more non-fiction and as you see this is another penguin this is St Augustine's city of God this is a penguin Edition as you can see it's another big fat book so this book is notor for being a difficult book usually everyone reads his confessions cuz that's short and um more accessible I want to say even though I haven't read it myself but the city of God is a book that has really tempted me because of the subject matter and also uh I was inspired from Steve Don's video on St Augustine for his march with the Penguins all those years ago I was following them as they came out and I remember the very first video was on St Augustine's confessions and he just spoke about spoke about this book as the smartest mind of his day trying to come to grips to a tragedy and and so he's taking all of his secular and all his uh theological knowledge and trying to Grapple with it grapple with the uh fall of Rome and the or at least the actual uh Barbarian takeover of Rome at the time and uh so he's so what St Augustine is doing doing is he's saying that even if Rome is taken over over which is the the city of the Vatican even if Rome is taken over it doesn't just take away from uh God's glory because God's glory is based in the city of God not not in or at least in the Heavenly sphere so a Heavenly City not on a physical actual City so Rome could be flattened and it wouldn't wouldn't diminish God's light in the world and he goes on for yeah well over a thousand Pages almost 1100 Pages talking about that very thing so he so as you imagine this book is full of not only Christian references so a lot of the Bible and and I guess other Christians that came before him St Augustine but also a lot of Roman literature and Roman poetry and Roman writing like Cicero and and U also the neoplatonists because that's um St Augustine was very much influenced by the neoplatonists so it's basically a catchall book of him just thinking about these religious issues and political issues of his time and so yeah I don't know how many people can read 1100 pages of that or or would want to they might see that as torture but uh I'm perfectly fine with it I find it exciting um I'm going to pause this for a second okay I'm back I just wanted to get a little bit more light from the uh lamp here as my books were blocking it and the next book as you probably saw the neats by platinus and this is a relatively modern Edition translated by George boy Stones John M Dylan Lloyd p garon r a r a King Andrew Smith and James Wilber wilberding that's a lot of translators for this book and uh if you're not familiar at all with platinus or the ANS this is uh platinus was a what second century uh Greek Greek religious figure or a Greek religious writer and philosopher and uh if you've heard of the neoplatonists platonist was considered the last Pagan great Pagan Neo neopl neoplatonist and which is like Plato's ideas but reformed and rethought through and and uh reconsidered throughout uh since the time of Plato to you know first or second ad when you have uh the beginning of Christian influence so Christian Theology and and U Christian thought really took off of a lot of NE platonist ideas which going back to St Augustine he was very much influenced by those very figures so uh and the Enad and platinus is one of the most famous ones of that of the neoplatonist school and he's also considered the last non-Christian person of uh or at least of significance of that school of thought and basically the it's 800 books or 800 800 Pages or 800 900 pages of him just going through spiritual and philosophical ideas that relate to uh reality and relate to the soul and to how the world Works um and what makes this book especially difficult is that it's not actually it was not actually compiled in order I don't know if you can see that but what this book does is um they put they put it they print it as the the manuscript tradition has come down to us but we also have but we know that this book was reformulated early on by potus's own what what would you say his study or his Protegé you know when platinus died his Protegé which whose Name Escapes me but yeah propery I think that I don't know Prof and then why are why propery so once uh platinus dies prery takes all his writings of plotinus's writings and puts them into this book but he admits himself that he put them he didn't put them in order it was more and uh so what this book does is it puts puts the order in as propery put them in because that's how we know the book today but they also include with as you if you should see in Brackets there's a number there and that's 40 that means that's the actual proper um order of the book so if I were to read this from one till whatever the last number is I'd be starting in the middle of the book I'd be jumping to here to here to here to here if I want to read the uh presumably what the actual order is that platinus wrote this book I don't know the rationale for why the order was switched up maybe it's by sub subject matter I don't know I have not read this book but I know that it's very difficult and a dense book to get through because it's uh well it's a book of philosophy so philosophy and like theological discussions mix so of course it's going to be very dense and um so that's what this book is moving on I'm I know I'm getting quite long here next book is actually three volume work that I have and can you guess what this three volume work is nope it's not the same one that grics had either it's the goag archipelago by Alexander saniton s Sol saniton H but anyways this is his famous Gulag archipelago where in three volumes he basically exposes but also wrestles with um what all happens in the Russian Googs during the Soviet Union and he himself was a was a Soviet soldier who was put in the GOOG and the experiences of being in the Googs and incorporating the experiences of other people and all the stories and whatnot you basically compiled into this big Vol three volume work I believe this is the only English translation I don't think there's any other translation and I did look to see if there was a big one volume but uh I couldn't find it and so I swallowed up swallowed and just spent $30 per buck so yeah this was quite expensive to buy and um but they're they're wellmade paperbacks but as you can see that's volume one volume one with like a reddish pinkish cover which itself is quite long yeah over 600 pages in that volume and then we got volume two which with a black cover which is a bit shorter and then we got volume three with a white cover but they all incorporate all the other colors so we got some black and some white and some pink and I'm quite looking forward to that even though I know it's a difficult book because similar to the kindly ones but not in the same way cuz this is non-fiction so this is actually real this is what happened um he's is talking about a lot of human brutality and a lot of human suffering and and but he has a lot of very interesting realizations and very interesting human Insight that uh and a lot of wisdom that he comes out uh that he comes out with because there's a lot of soul searching that goes on in these books as well I'm saying this from what I've heard from other people and what I've and uh a little bit of what I've read about this book myself I have not actually started these books but um if you haven't if you can't tell I do like to research my books quite a lot and just I'm curious about them and and knowing why they're influential because that's why I picked this up I'm not going to spend a ton of money if I on uh just a chance that these would be uh terrible to read They're Classics for a reason Classics of the uh 20th century for a reason so that's the gulag archipelago it's not for everyone one because I don't blame people if they don't want to read that kind of brutal experiences for over 1300 Pages or so next is another non-fiction this is the house of government a saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri seskin Yuri seskin and as you can see another hard cover and another big book this is actually the most recent book on this list this is from 2017 and this is from from what I yeah this is thousand Pages for sure and from what I understand this is a book that follows um the story of a massive apartment Block in the Soviet Union I don't know if it's in St Petersburg or if it's in um Moscow but uh it either way this um apartment block held a lot of important people during the Ser the uh Soviet Union or during the Russian Revolution not the Soviet Union the Russian Revolution and it follows apartment by apartment to all the people that were in that apartment and what happened to them what their Fates were um and in a way that how that reflects on the experience of the Russian re ution and maybe the Soviet Union as a whole and that's my Impressions that I get from it like as you see with this this cover here you get different apartment blocks or different uh apartments and um so I believe that's what he does I'm not entirely sure exactly how he does that but I just know that this was um heavily praised when it came out also by Steve donu but by others as well because because Des despite it being so thick um this book apparently is very well written and just a fascinating look at the Soviet regime and the Russian Revolution as a as a experience so this is on my list and I don't it's as you can tell this is more brutal history and um not everyone is going to be want to read I mean not everyone reads history to begin with but a thousand thousand pages of this kind of History especially if you don't see how the re the relevance of a apartment block has to do with with anything you might you wouldn't be willing to take a flyer on this if you didn't know anything about it or if you hadn't come recommended by anyone that you uh who's opinion you trusted what's sad though is as you can tell too my hard cover I found used for very cheap and when it comes to used books I had to compromise because there's only this one used copy there it's kind of falling apart as right there the this front there's a weak spot right there where I believe it's only held by one page onto the actual block here or El the book would unfold but I'm quite careful with my books so despite as you can see with that over there that shouldn't be a problem when I read this but it is quite heavy so I I will have to be careful we're on to the last book and at 35 minutes good Lord 35 minutes we got the grand finale this book would almost certainly be on no one else's list unless you're crazy and unless you're smarter than I am because I don't know how much I'll actually comprehend from this book but I'm very excited for it and this is Charlos Taylor's a secular age and as you see common theme thick book this book though is not as long as all the other ones this one's less than 800 Pages uh but there's a lot of lot going into this book one Charles Taylor is a philosopher that I largely like I really find him interesting um and fascinating have not actually read a full book of his but I've watched a lot of his lectures online and I know a lot of other people who I've read and who I find interesting who are very much influenced by Charles Taylor if you don't know who Charles Taylor is he is a Canadian philosopher but he and who's very um highly lauded like a very well praised philosopher in the Continental tradition so if you know your philosophy designations he's a continental philosopher and which means he doesn't deal in very precise like an analytical reasoning he's more of a big overall picture sure thinker and um so some of some of his other books I would like to read are uh his sources of the self which came out in like the late 80s and then he also and I also have another book of his on the Shelf here somewhere which is a very thin thing which is uh based on a lecture series that he did and I listened to most of those lectures but this book came out in 2007 and it's his pH philosophy of soci philosophy of Sociology yes that is an actual discipline even though he's not like a formally trained in that discipline it's just a what you would designate this book what it's trying to do and what he's trying to do is he's trying trying to take that concept of the uh of SEC secular or the fact that we live in a secular age which is and as most people would Define it as an age in which spirituality or religion is going on a drastic downline and how that's uh and how that that's um that's affecting every aspect of our lives today and he wants to study that he wants to see like is that really true but not only is that really true how does how did we get there and this is what this book tries to do he and uh because he's so well read not only in philosophy but in literature and in history he he takes like a an approach where he's pulling in from all his knowledge from that that he's read and his previous ideas that he's articulated in other books and just brings them together into this focus of secularization in this Modern Age and what does that actually mean because um I don't I don't have it here but I have a thin book by James Ka Smith which is a Protestant uh philosopher which is called how to read how not to be secular which is a an actual book a little tiny like 160 page book summarizing the major ideas from this book so that he can have other like religious people read it because this book basically Dropped a Bomb in religious circles at least in more well read more intellectual religious circles because a lot of his ideas in here are quite novel and quite um very interesting very thought-provoking and very influential especially in so like in sociology of religion or philosophy of religion or any look at secular secularization will'll have to contend with this book and those are ideas that all very fascinate me and I don't expect them to Fascinate You So I won't go on for much longer considering I'm almost 40 minutes so a secular age by Charles Taylor and uh yeah that's about it that's my list so I'll make sure to leave the link to those videos that I talked about below and I would love to see anyone else make a video like this what kind of what uh big books uh hard books that you would like to read but you don't expect anyone else want to want to read them let me know okay have a good day great evening book

Channel: That Reading Guy

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Length: 40min 18sec (2418 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024