The most represented languages in The Western Canon of Literature™ - by the numbers

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Xmmm
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Re: The most represented languages in The Western Canon of Literature™ - by the numbers

Postby Xmmm » Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:26 pm

reineke wrote:Other lists. Culled from my log. Xmmm loves these:

J. Peder Zane
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books

"From David Foster Wallace (#1: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis) to Stephen King (#1: The Golden Argosy, a 1955 anthology of the best short stories in the English language), the collection offers a rare glimpse of the building blocks of great creators' combinatorial creativity—because, as Austin Kleon put it, "you are a mashup of what you let into your life."


What are my favorite books? When Eight Bells Toll, Running Blind, The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, Wolves in the City: the Death of French Algeria, and The Great Siege, Malta 1565. A couple of those aren't even fiction, but hey, they're my favorite books.

Those authors: MacLean, Bagley, Pelevin, Henissart, Bradford.

My list of what I think are the best authors I've read, is completely different (Melville, Greene, Mishima, Dick, Dostoyevsky).

Zane is taking a list of writers' favorite books, and transmogrifying that into a list of the world's best authors. And that. Is. Utterly bogus.
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reineke
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Re: The most represented languages in The Western Canon of Literature™ - by the numbers

Postby reineke » Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:47 pm

Index Translationum
Subject Literature
Source languages
(1979-2017)

ENG 656057
FRA 107526
GER 75474
RUS 38129
ITA 29038
ESP 28640

Swedish 24566
Japanese 16586
Danish 11147
Dutch 9325
Norwegian 9196
Polish 7381
Portuguese 6848
Czech 6387
Greek, Ancient (to 1453) 5910
Chinese 5209
Arabic 4958
Latin 4822
BSC 4176
Hungarian 4165
Hebrew 2857
Romanian 2643
Greek, Modern (1453-) 2528
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Re: The most represented languages in The Western Canon of Literature™ - by the numbers

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:04 pm

kanewai wrote:I wish Dumas had an appendix of what the 150 books were! I haven't even heard of some of the writers (Titus Livius, Strada, Jornandes, and Bossuet), and they aren't on any of the modern lists.
I think Titus Livius is "Livy".

I believe Mr Dumas used to write with a partner who would produce a first draft for him, he'd then add some pixie dust and send it off to the publisher.

On Monte Cristo his partner was Auguste Maquet, perhaps he was responsible for the list?
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