The Story of Mankind
|
||
Books are one of the defining aspects of the transition between prehistory, when our stories were only passed on by word of mouth and modern history where our stories and thinking were captured in a written form. One of the world’s oldest books is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh which was written on clay tablets almost 4000 years ago. Until the 15th century most books were in some form of a scroll. These scrolls
|
|
Robert McCrum
There are many definitions and all of them seemingly in contradiction to each other. But there are certain threads they share. Italo Calvino defines a classic “as a book that has never finished what it wants to say”. Ezra Pound defines it as “a certain eternal and irresponsible freshness”.
According to Robert McCrum one necessary, characteristic of a classic is that it should remain in print. This aspect obviously talks very much to us as book sellers.
To quote Robert McCrum, “Thereafter, the issue becomes subjective. Classics, for some, are books we know we should have read, but have not. For others, classics are simply the book we have read obsessively, many times over, and can quote from. |
The Gutenberg Bible |
The ordinary reader instinctively knows what he or she believes to be a classic. While our preferences Therefore forgive me dear reader but this discussion on book knowledge is very much couched within my own realm of book knowledge.
So the route I am suggesting that we take on our journey to acquiring some book knowledge is as follows.
Fiction starting with the classics by looking at a chronological development of influential books from antiquity
We will then examine those non-fiction titles that booksellers really should at least know about. |
See Also: | Related Topics: | |