It might have happened several times to you that while…. watching a movie or drama or reading a novel…. Your parents have scorned you of wasting your times and have asked you to study some serious stuffs…. that help you in your career or you learn something out of them….. Frankly, sometimes when I watch a movie or read some novel type books, I scorn myself for wasted times…… Today, while looking to list of the……. “IntelliQuest- The world’s 100 greatest books”……. I got surprised by list as there were only one “Scientific Book”…The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin…. Even Origin of Species is more of descriptive and narrative book than a real scientific book… Some Philosophy books like,….. “Meditations – by Rene Descartes”…. “The Critique of Pure Reason –by Immanuel Kant”…..” World as Will and Idea – by Arthur Schopenhauer”…..” -Self-Reliance- and - Nature - both by Ralph Waldo Emerson”……” How We Think – by John Dewey”……” Walden – by Henry David Thoreau”…………” The Social Contract – by Jean-Jacques Rousseau”….. “The Republic – by Plato”…… There are one book on Politics, “The Prince – by Machiavelli” and one on economy, “The Wealth of Nations – by Adam Smith”…………………..
These are the list of the serious books out of 100… Everything else are story books especially books of legendary mythical heroes like those narrated in Iliad and Odyssey by Humor or fictional heroes in most famous novels….. What really struck me is finding the …..”Beowulf”…. It is a 6th century poetic collection of folk legendary stories of Northwestern Europe where legendary creatures like Dragons are villains… You might have watched the 3D movie of Beowulf….. that has nothing of scholarly nature…..
You might include ….” Candide – by Voltaire”…. and “The Divine Comedy –by Dante Alighieri” among serious studies but I am not sure if are really serious studies… ..
Finding story books dominating the list of greatest books ….(It is not necessary that I agree with lists as some of the books that have influenced me are missing among the list and I am sure that I am not alone in this regard)…..I was wondering that…. though we are scorned and sometimes we scorn ourselves on wasting our times by reading stories, listening stories or watching then …..why it is so irresistible…Why the reading stories are so common? … why the popularity of storytelling has not diminished by rapid scientific progress and increasing time crunching…. Is not a common addiction? … It is more probable that Stories have evolved in the course of human evolution as it is the greatest source of learning….. human might have adapted it to increase their survival chances…. I think it is more than addiction…. I don’t know any study for its genetic basis … but the commonalities of stories are indicating so…
If story telling have survival factor… then the list is not biased??
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