{"id":434,"date":"2010-03-19T21:06:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T04:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/9010abc4e5891a9e"},"modified":"2010-03-19T21:06:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T04:06:04","slug":"favorite-literary-works-nassim-n-taleb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/favorite-literary-works-nassim-n-taleb\/","title":{"rendered":"Favorite Literary Works -Nassim N Taleb"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Shared by  JohnH<br \/>\n<br \/>\nLinks to full list.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am often asked by journalists for a list of my &#8220;favorite<br \/>\nbooks&#8221; &#8211;I don&#8217;t know what &#8220;favorite&#8221; means for a<br \/>\njournalist. I treat books as friends; you miss them when you don&#8217;t<br \/>\nsee them for a while. Perhaps the best test of one&#8217;s appreciation for<br \/>\na novel is whether one craves it at times, enough to reread it.<br \/>\nRereading a novel is far more enjoyable than reading it for the first<br \/>\ntime. Many I have read more than twice, some (like <i>Il deserto dei<br \/>\ntartari, un taxi mauve, Paulina 1881,&#8230;<\/i>), more than five times.\n<\/p>\n<p>Up to the age of 25, you read wholesale &amp; in a mercenary way,<br \/>\nto &quot;acquire&quot; a possession, to build a &quot;literary<br \/>\nculture&quot;, &amp; do not tend to re-read except when necessary.<br \/>\nAfter 25, you lose your hang-up and start re-reading &#8211;and it is<br \/>\nprecisely what you re-read that reveals your literary soul, what you<br \/>\nlike.\n<\/p>\n<p>As with friendship: you do not judge friends, you do not mix<br \/>\nbusiness &amp; friendship; I even physically separate literature from<br \/>\nmore functional books (different libraries; I feel I am corrupting<br \/>\nliterature by having scientific or the philistinic &quot;nonfiction&quot;<br \/>\nin the same area).\n<\/p>\n<p>Books written after c. 1900<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Dino Buzzati <i>Il deserto dei<br \/>\n\ttartari (<\/i> As a child, I viewed the world into two types of<br \/>\n\tpeople: those who read the <em>deserto<\/em> and were therefore<br \/>\n\tmarked by it, and the rest. Francois Mitterand, who was not my cup<br \/>\n\tof tea, seduced me when on the literary panel <em>Apostrophes<\/em><br \/>\n\the went on and on passionately talking about the book &#8211;&#8220;j&#8217;ai<br \/>\n\t\u00e9t\u00e9 marqu\u00e9 par ce livre&#8221;, he said, his eyes gleaming).\n\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Albert Cohen <em>Belle du seigneur<br \/>\n\t<\/em>(A Proust, but with a Levantine soul and personal manners, and<br \/>\n\taggressively heterosexual. )\n\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Valdimir Nabokov <i>Marenshka<\/i>,<br \/>\n\this (first?) novel, when he was an exile in Berlin, before he became<br \/>\n\tcomplicated. I reread &amp; reread the final scene.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Patrick Modiano <i>Villa triste<\/i><br \/>\n\t(&#8220;Je m&#8217;attachais \u00e0 elle comme un noy\u00e9&#8221;).\n\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Graham Greene <i>The End of the<br \/>\n\tAffair<\/i><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shared by  JohnH <\/p>\n<p>Links to full list.<br \/>\nI am often asked by journalists for a list of my &#8220;favorite<br \/>\nbooks&#8221; &#8211;I don&#8217;t know what &#8220;favorite&#8221; means for a<br \/>\njournalist. I treat books as friends; you miss them when you don&#8217;t<br \/>\nsee them for a while. Perhaps the bes&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}