That book meme thing?

I'm not doing it.

The list is pretty rubbish. Whichever genius thought that having "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" as two options whilst "the Bible" was one, should really reconsider their career choice. I've read a lot of the Bible but by no means all of it, likewise I've read a great many of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets but not all of them (and why does "Hamlet" have its own entry?). Furthermore there was no option for "started to read this but got bored/decided it was shit and stopped reading it" which covers pretty much all of the 19th century literature on the list for me. Also, who felt that it was reasonable to exclude the significant body of literature from the ancient world? Gods know how much tat from Dickens made it onto the list (did I mention¹ my dislike of 19th century literature?) but nothing by Homer or Virgil or Sophocles ... WTF?

I'm actually quite cross about it.

It's only a meme, calm down.

¹ *Glares at Clawbeast*

Read MeMe!

Hurrah to jfs for an elegant solution to the Big Read Meme nonsense:

"Pick one book from that list, and argue for or against it. Why should everyone you know read it, or why should all extant copies of it be pulped?

That's likely to be a lot more interesting than bolding, italicising and underlining 100 lines of text, neh?"

My choice is The Little Prince by Antoine de St Exupery. I believe that everyone should read this book because it is the most profound treatise on love and loss that I have ever read. It's a book ostensibly written for children and is very very short ... no more than a couple of hours reading. Surely you can spare a couple of hours to find out if you agree with my assertion that it is one of the finest books ever written?

Perhaps the best recommendation comes from the book itself:

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."