Two days before Christmas in 2012, my dad and I were sitting around our family room, and out of nowhere, he perks up with the question "What are the best books ever?" A little perplexed, I responded: "What do you mean?" He expanded a little further with "Like what are the best selling books of all time?"
Convinced that this conversation was going nowhere, I responded (half jokingly) "If you want the best selling books of all time, start with the Bible, move to Harry Potter, and finish up with the Hunger Games."
He still prodded a little more and said, "No, really. I'm curious what the best books ever are. Those are what I'd like to read," and that's how the conversation ended.
The thought continued to fester in my mind, though, and the over the next 24 hours I did some searching around online to see what "Best Books Of All Time" lists I could find. There were a bunch out there, some with different qualifications, some 10 books long, some 100 books long, some voted on by authors, some voted on my critics; you name it, the list exists.
Nothing really piqued my interest until I stumbled across thegreatestbooks.org. The list is put together by Shane Sherman, and is essentially a massive compilation of 43 other Best Books list from various publications.
Figuring this was probably the best place I could start from, I went back to my dad and said, "It looks like the best book of all time is Don Quixote. If you actually want to read it, I'm willing to read along with you, a few chapters a night, as long as we commit to exchanging commentary on the book as we go along."
At this point, I was really excited about the prospect that this held, and my dad was the same way. His response was "Yeah! When can we get the book?" I ran to the store the next day, picked up a copy for each of us, and we've been rolling since.
This blog is meant to be a repository of our daily communications regarding what we read. Neither of us have a literary background, but we do both enjoy reading, and we're both fully committed to this process. Each morning, one of us will send a brief summary/commentary on the reading from the night before, with responsibility for this alternating daily.
Ultimately, I expect this to be updated daily, but the frequency will be a little higher at first while the posts catch up to our current progress in the book. If you've found your way to the page, feel free to comment with any thoughts, reactions, or suggestions!
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