some favorite things that I haven’t read in at least 20 years, for whatever reason

*The Odyssey

*The Tempest

*Don Quixote

*Human, All Too Human

*War and Peace

Plato’s Ion had been on the list until last Christmas. Before then I hadn’t even looked at it since 1985. No, wait… it’s not one of my favorite dialogues, and this is a list of things I especially like.

The Tempest would be the quickest reread of all these, and I have the complete Shakespeare within 10 seconds’ walk of where I’m sitting.

But Don Quixote is the one that sounds most appealing at the moment. Enough time has passed that I’d probably have forgotten many of the incidents by now. Come to think of it, I did plan to reread Quixote about three years ago, picked it out of the library, read about 30 pages and then was sidetracked by distractions, and in those 30 pages most of it seemed unfamiliar. It’s really very funny, in case you’ve never read it.

I’ve spoken on this blog before about War and Peace. I loved every minute of it. If you had asked me if I think of myself as a Tolstoy person or a Dostoevsky person, well, every self-respecting intellectual person should say Dostoevsky.

But I’m sorry to say that, proud as I would be to claim citizenship in Dostoevsky’s universe, he always leaves me a touch disappointed. I’m not saying you should agree with me, I’m just saying he never quite closes the deal for me as a reader. Always a magnificent atmosphere, flashes of amazing dialogue, and of course wonderfully bizarre characters. But things are always tied together less effectively than I want them to be, and I’m afraid D.’s spiritual reflections often leave me yawning.

But as for Tolstoy (at least for this reader) he always seems to deliver as promised. I would never have predicted this on an a priori basis, but it’s my honest conclusion from experience.