Well Jon, they don’t call me head librarian for nothing [list]
Bruno
Globetrotter
[/list:u]
Kidding. I don’t wanna ever sound that arrogant. Seriously, though: no, I haven’t read that many books. Especially, I haven’t read a whole book about naskh! It was just mentioned and explained in a couple of “History of the Arabic Peoples” ish books I have home. Even the books I just recommended, haven’t read all of them. (Hell, I don’t feel I’ll be reading Proust anytime in the next 50 years!)
From that list, I read Blake and Huxley, some of the Beats, Burgess, Homer, Dostoevsky, Calvino, Cortázar, Rosa and Eco. That’s not really groundbreaking, is it?, I don’t think so. Homer aside (I had to read him for my “Introduction to the Study of Classics” classes), I know at least two people who have read all these authors—in the School of Economics! And the whole class is only 50 people. (In Fine Letters, I probably know some five or six others, but students of Letters don’t count. )
As for Ulysses, Grande Sertão and Berlin Alexanderplatz, there’s a one–year reading circle project in the School of Fine Letters in which, in the first semester, one reads the Odyssey and Ulysses, and in the second, they read Grande Sertão: Veredas and Berlin Alexanderplatz. I’m joining that group, if not next year, in the following one.
I’ll have a look at Atlas Shrugged, when I have some free time. Thanks for the recommendation.