I can't remember Flaubert's exact words, but it was something like - one need only read 3 or 4 books in ones life

I can't remember Flaubert's exact words, but it was something like - one need only read 3 or 4 books in ones life.

5 books that are the pinnacle of literature, that sum up art, the human condition? Also provide some reasons if you can.

We already had this thread in September 2017

ok. link?

It was something like 'Imagine our critics if they dedicated themselves solely to three or four books'.

Schopenhauer echoed this sentiment as well, considering almost all books trash. Only very few books are worth reading, and worth spending time on.

I can't find it, but the actual quote is:
>What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.

One need to play only 4 video games in ones life. 4 that are pinnacle of video games, that sum up the art, human condition?
Ikaruga, Super mario world, system shock 2, planescape torment, okami?

I feel that great books, perfect and iconic and almost all-the-world-both-critics-and-public books are extremely rare, yet at the same time I feel that one can find scraps of beauty and excerpts of wonderful writing in several books, or songs, or movie quotes. The complete work might not be that much, but here and there among the crude and dusty soil one finds the gleaming of gold fragments. It’s the same with poetry for me. I find that only a small number of poets hit the nail in the head constantly (Shakespe, for example). Most of the time I enjoy a poem here, some verses there, but not much of such and such poets body of work. And sometimes one sees a non-poet having a sudden flash of inspiration and composing a poem that seems better than the ones from famous names. One example is Joseph Blanco White sonnet “To Night”.

I prefer not being a canon-slave.

Pleb
Here's your (You)

one might only look tv but with a godly intuition understand all there’s to be known

like embedded taosim. this was very common in traditional society, living that bucolic life.

what are your alternatives

Don Quixote
Hamlet
Ulysses
Metaphysical Meditations
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Everything else is derivative trash

ALL OF YOU ARE FUCKING BRAINLET PSEUD MY MAN FLAUBERT THOUGHT THE EXACT OPPOSITE WHEN HIS GF ASKED HIM HOW TO BE A BETTER WRITER HE SAID READ A LOT YOU DIDNT EVEN READ HIS ENTIRE OEUVRE IN THE FRENCH OR HIS CORRESPONDENCES AND YOU DARE SPEAK OF MY HOMIE GUSTAVE allez vous faire mettre à Micone saletés de fils de putain suisse

"What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books."

I think a writer should read books not really to copy another writer's technique or ideas, but to get a feel for how he thought like when writing and what motivated him to do it. I think that when you finally get an attitude and realize what you want to write, all other things come second. Very very few people actually managed to do that alone, with no inspiration (I can only think of Shakespeare, Cervantes and maybe Kafka).

>one need only read 3 or 4 books in ones life
_Madame Bovary
_Salammbô
_Sentimental Education
_The Temptation of Saint Anthony
He was right.

metaphysical meditations by paramahansa yogananda?
Jeez i bought that one when i was 13 or 14 and have had a pocket edition since

This guys right; Flaubert read obsessively - it's why he died before finishing Bouchard and Pecuchet, he (somewhat autistically you might say) felt he had to read every book the pair in the book read/mention. Which doesn't sound to bad until you actually consider how diverse and how obscure these books actually were/are.

Every (good/great) writer and critic read an awful lot

where's melee?

Shakespeare's complete works
In Search of Lost Time
Ulysses
Anna Karenina
Moby Dick

These fiction books should sum up art, literature and the human condition as much as humanly possible if you study these with the rigor they deserve. For any reading beyond that, just watch a fucking movie instead

Complete Shakespeare
Montaigne's Essays
Complete Cervantes
Complete Plato
(Complete works of your fav author, country, period, etc.)

Each one represents the pinnacle of human knowledge and each one treats a vast amount of topics concerning the human existence.

>Complete Cervantes
Absolutely not, P and S is a melodramatic scheisse.

Nimm die Scheiße nicht zu ernst. Change Cervantes for your Fav german author then. I propose Goethe.

The Recognitions
The Sound and the Fury
Invisible Man
The Man Without Qualities

Flaubert was talking about critics, which he wasn’t. You don’t accept that distinction, fine, but he did.