[I've updated the Bible and Homeric Epics paragraphs.]
Since this world cabal lockdown of the economy and people I've read the Enchiridion by Epictetus; the complete Grimm's Tales; the Iliad; and the Odyssey.
Back in January I set a goal to read 40 classic short stories I could find on the internet or get cheaply from Amazon Kindle. Achieving that little goal re-activated my ability to read long books; an ability that had become debilitated by years of flitting over computer screens of various sizes.
Now I've started into a goal to reread what I'm calling the Foundation Stones of my reading history. You can't know what they are when you start out, but you can know what they are when you've gone through the process and can see them in hindsight.
Everybody would identify different books (and a different number of them) from their life history of reading. I tend to go for summit level works (the Bible being beyond summit). I also tend to want a balanced list of them (imaginative literature, history, some kind of philosophy, usually practical or worldly philosophy, and maybe some important subject matter like liberty vs. tyranny or worldview analysis). I determined that my book list (of 12) IS my worldview. And I allowed Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws to be my liberty vs. tyranny book because he does cover that subject. (You have to make draconian editing decisions to fit everything into a 12 book list.)
Obviously the Holy Bible is at the top of my list. Cover-to-cover, complete readings are in order. Once, three times, seven times. The Holy Spirit rewards such dedicated readings the most. Taking it in like a child, yet with increasing understanding. Think of it as like a trek across the American continent, from one ocean to the other, with all the diverse terrain in between. You take one step at a time, (one page at a time).
Then I have the Homeric Epics (the Iliad and the Odyssey), in the still only perfect English translation of Lang, Leaf, Myers / Butcher, Lang. (Yes, I've read Alexander Pope and most of the good modern translations.) The Homeric Epics - in the reading order of the Iliad first, then the Odyssey - are higher visual language of inner, spiritual development. When you get the language into you with basic understanding you are then able to see things in yourself and in the world around you you couldn't see before. You need language inside you to see things. A child could walk to school 300 times passing a ballet school on the way and never notice it. Yet when that child learns the word 'ballet' from a dictionary suddenly on the next walk to school the child will notice the ballet school. That's just a simple example. With the Homeric Epics the higher, visual language is very powerful and complete. With these influences you just have to read them, or take them in. Almost innocently, yet getting understanding of what you're reading along the way. Multiple readings are in order for the highest influences.
Then I have a series of four practical, philosophical type 'bibles.'
On War by Carl von Clausewitz. This book is usually compared unfavorably to Sun Tzu's Art of War, but to those 'in the know' this isn't fair. I draw great and diverse metaphor from the subject matter of war. It's a big subject. You don't have to want to be a war monger to read On War. For instance you can draw metaphor from On War for internal spiritual warfare which isn't against flesh and blood.
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Again, a big subject that you can draw big and diverse metaphor from. The creation of wealth, the circulation of wealth, the laws of God's liberty, etc. You don't have to want to become an economist to read Wealth of Nations.
Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu. Another big subject - law - that affords deep and diverse metaphor for understanding many things not having to do with becoming a law professor.
Fourth Way by Ouspensky. This is the one book that will seem to not belong on my list if the list was part of an I.Q. test. Which one of these doesn't belong? It will seem too personal and less universal than the others. Yet it's the rare subject matter of ancient psychology. What we 'moderns' know of psychology is garbage. Sources for real psychology are the rarest of the rare. You have to go to the New Testament to find a real source, but even there it is all missed because nobody has a background language to see it. It's a book of raw data on its subject that has to be put together by the reader/student so that you can see the parts in relation to the whole. It's probably the most difficult book on this list to get anything of value from.
History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I include this book because it is a monument that delivers things you don't easily see. Nietzsche said this book will teach you about the subject of lying. Meaning not that Thucydides is engaging in subtle lies, but that he is engaging in objective non-lying. I just use that as an example of what the book brings. It is also history in its universal events and universal human nature so that you can see what Thucydides is talking about in pretty much any war or political struggle in any era of history.
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch. I call this book human architecture. It's a monument type book with impressions that will put your mind at the higher elevations. This is not a moral or ethical statement. Much of the subject matter is the usual events of war, but the human nature is seen from not only higher elevation but it's delivered in a massive, granite-like overall impression.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. The size of a book definitely will lend to the book a different quality, especially, of course, when the author really comes through in the execution of the tome. Tolstoy succeeded in that with War and Peace, obviously (and 19th Century Russian novel - primarily Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - was one of the items I had to axe from my list to get down to 12). It has to do, from the reader's side, with the effort required and dedication required to get through a thousand (or whatever) page unified work; and from the writer's side, when it is a successful work, as stated, the sheer volume of words forces a higher conception and forces a more inventive structural conception all of which enable a space for stronger impressions to reside within. That's how I see it anyway. Gibbon's work majors in the ways of the world, the nature of power, and the nature of human nature. His substandard understanding of Christianity doesn't even ruin the work because he unwittingly describes religion from a worldly point-of-view which is a real way to see it and a sort of practical way to see it. I.e. it's sort of in line with the rest of his material.
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. I include this because it provides stark visual metaphor for inner spiritual development that matches with biblical doctrine as-well-as the Fourth Way volume above. Grail Romance is both mysterious and popular deep language. The Grail knight being a cut above an everyday worldly knight. The riding into the trackless forest; the fights with mysterious foes; the rising in a sort of multi-dimensional way to the higher realm of the Grail castle (or mountain). These are events and stages of spiritual development in action. I think Wolfram's Parzival contains it all in a more compact delivery.
Human Nature in its Fourfold State by Thomas Boston. Some people who know this work might think it too lightweight to belong on this list, but it's not. It's a history of God's plan of redemption. It's a description of the four states man can or has found himself in at a practical, experiential level. Those four states being innocence (in the Garden); sin (after the fall); grace (after regeneration); and glorification (after physical death) or hell (after physical death). Boston writes at almost a Shakespearean level (mainly because his subject matter is foundational to everything). It's a tight, well-digested treatise (a horrible metaphor, well-digested, but I mean Boston knew his subject matter from long study and experience, even though he was remarkably young, I believe, when he wrote it).
Elements by Euclid. This is a foundational book if there ever was one, the only difference is its written in mathematical formulas. This is the one book on this list that is not just a little but totally outside my comfort zone. I wanted to include a book in the realm of science that was foundational as an influence in ways that go beyond its obvious utility or subject matter. Elements suffices. If it's too much (like it is for me) perhaps a secondary work on the Elements would be at least something. David Berlinski, a mathematician who likes to poke fun at evolutionists, wrote a book about Euclid and his great work the Elements titled The King of Infinite Space. Because Berlinski is a mathematician he gets into the math of the book and explains Euclid's definitions and what not. I should be able to explain better why I include this book, but it's mostly speculation on my part. I like the wisdom of things like the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That seems to ring with human nature in a splash of cold water way (even though the shortest distance may indeed not be a straight line, if we're talking about geography or some non-Euclidean environment, whatever that means, I'm just seeing it at a higher level, ironically).
