Ranking Some Novels I Have Read

I have always had a love of literature, and I consider myself a budding literary critic. In the past four or five years, I have read a fair amount of novels, most of them for school. I admit that I have not read nearly as many novels as I have, and I am familiar with many more than have read, and it is somewhat of a personal embarrassment. I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov, and I am working on my skill as a literary critic. Do I have some talent for it: yes? Am I good enough to be an English major at a good university: probably not. My grammatical skill before editing something that I have written is fairly weak and I am more passionate about philosophy, history, and even though I am not close to brilliant at it, mathematics. Regardless, below I have ranked SOME of the novels I have read. Those who have attended school with me will recognize many if not most of the titles listed below. However, I have read more than these, but these are most of the novels on my list of books I read, and I encourage comments on the order of it. Note there are hundreds of novels that ought to be on the list, and when one considers that The Short Reign of Pippin IV is on the list it is arguable that there are thousands of novels better (note I liked Pippin IV). Regardless, examine the list, and I encourage respectful comments.


The Great Gatsby; F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Joyce
The Trial; Kafka
Great Expectations; Dickens
As I Lay Dying; William Faulkner
The Stranger; Albert Camus
Candide; Voltaire
A Tale of Two Cities; Dickens
Slaughterhouse-Five; Kurt Vonnegut
The Scarlet Letter; Nathaniel Hawthorne
Animal Farm; George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms; Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men; John Steinbeck
Washington Square; Henry James
Ethan Frome; Edith Wharton
Cat’s Cradle; Kurt Vonnegut
The Return of the Native; Thomas Hardy
Deep River; Shusaku Endo
The Death of Ivan Ilyich; Leo Tolstoy
The Sorrows of Young Werther; Goethe
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime; Mark Hadden
The Time Machine; H.G. Wells
Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
Moira; Julien Green
Beloved; Toni Morrison
The Old Man and the Sea; Ernest Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451; Ray Bradbury
Billy Budd, Sailor; Melville
The Pearl; John Steinbeck
A Separate Peace; Knowles
Holes; Louis Sachar
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Twain
The Short Reign of Pippin IV; John Steinbeck
The Call of the Wild; London
The War of the Worlds; H. G. Wells

A Political Rant from Me?

Even though I am a person who is politically more conservative than liberal, and I believe that nations should function as independent bodies, but still have open communications and compromise with each other, I cannot help but feel that the current atrocities occurring over the world should have compelled America, or some other nation to act. My rant here is about the Sudan. Currently in the Sudan, the Darfur conflict is an immense problem. In the western part of the Sudan, the Janjaweed, a militia group, have been committing crimes against humanity such as genocide. It has been reported that anywhere from 70,000 to 700,000. However, the world is not well informed of this conflict; it is not on the news every day. We have a daily update of the goings on in Iraq and Iran, but we do not have updates form the Sudan. This is not to say that we should stop paying attention to Iraq, not by any means. However, when there is a GENOCIDE occurring in 2006, something must be done. Finally, American has sent some peacekeeping officials over to negotiate, and I am not saying that the United States has remained idle during this massacre. However, because there isn’t any oil in the Sudan, and (I hate to say it) the Sudanese are not white, America has not acted as powerfully as it probably should have. However, I am not one to say that a mother should have to send her child off to the Sudan to be killed. Yet something must be done. GENOCIDE!

This raises the question: should the US have to police the world? The answer is no. However, the United States has asserted itself as the policeman of the world, a role that with the United Nations, unfortunately, having no real power when dealing with militant persons the strongest nation in the world must take a stand. This has been for some time America. Yet in this role the good must be taken with the bad. So the strongest nation, police force of the world must be ready to fight for human rights, even when there is no need for economic gain. I am not really criticizing America, and I do support America, and America HAS STEPPED IN TO HELP. However, there have been atrocities done prior to this, and the war in the Sudan has been raging for years. I fear that the miscue in Somalia has made America afraid to go back to Africa and fight for human rights. Yet I believe that America will do something. Maybe I am too much of a naïve idealist and I do not understand politics and I should stick to philosophy and history, but I care about politics and I felt like writing something.

Note I claim to be and have been called politically conservative, socially liberal, and economically capitalist. Note my atheism, and I fear that my history teacher may be rubbing off on me in a negative manner, evinced by this post.

On Religious Epistemology

I must say that I like my ideas in this essay, but it is choppy and not very well written. Read the examples, and I really do hope to edit this.

A prominent issue in the philosophy of religion is the notion of religions epistemology. Is this term oxymoronic? Do religious truths exist? If they do exist, can they be known by humans?

To begin, the terms must be defined. Religious epistemology is the knowing beyond all doubt a truth about religion. In this definition, truth and religion must also be defined. Truth is a notion that is devoid of all falsity, has complete verity in all parts of the universe, and if something is deemed true, a contradictory notion must be false. This definition is far from succinct, and it is more of a description of a criterion that must be adhered to absolutely. The definition is not perfect, and any help I can get on defining truth is appreciated. Religion is anything dealing with the divine and supernatural, and is taken on faith. This is an even weaker definition, but a definition of truth and religion deserves its own post. I have listened to lectures over half an hour long on just what is religion and what is truth.

So a religious truth is a transcendent fact about a transcendent being, to put it succinctly. I am aware this is flawed, but I assume that most people have an idea about what religion is and what truth is, but that is not definite and it is neither a bad or a good thing if one does or not.

Can a claim to a religious truth be known? This is the central issue. It is best to begin with a religious truth. Let’s start slow, and go with God exists. Can this be known? It is clearly a religious claim, so can it be verifiable? Can I know that God exists? Well how would I know that God exists? (It is best to ignore radical skepticism for this entire experiment, because that is a dead end in this context.) What would be a sign that I could use to verify that God exists? Note that this does not have to be rational, for many things that have been accepted as fact, or almost fact, such as Relativity, seem illogical but in truth are true. So is there any sort of factual evidence I could gather from the world that would tell me that God exists? I say nay.

What would constitute some proof for the existence of the supernatural is if there was an item that could violate the laws of physics or nature. However, this has never been documented before. But what if this is to miss the point? What about religious experiences? What if there are divine encounters only on a God to a single man relationship, or on somewhat of an ‘I and Thou’ basis. What if God only communicates with certain individuals? There are those who seem convinced that they had a religious experience, and a direct encounter with God, but only he was a witness? This would make any sort of scientific proof, or a proof that more than one person could partake in witnessing, but the existence of God is still true.

Having a conversation with God would constitute as a religious experience, and the fact that God communicates with man would suffice as a religious truth. But can they be known? This is the questions. There have been claims that God exists and interacts with man, and in the twentieth century there have been countless instances where people had visions of the Virgin Mary and all sorts of things that appear to defy logic, reason, physics, nature and common sense.

Another supposed religious truth is that bad people go to hell. If this were true, it would be a fact. However, can it be verified by humans living on earth right now? It is an entity that is either true or it is false, but can it be verified as true or false? The answer is we cannot. There have been people who have been pronounced dead, and physically died and claimed to have religious experiences. They usually consist of a white light, and a whole lot of other fanfare, and then they wake up. Some psychologists claim that it is the person remembering their birth, and that is the rational explanation, but that is not even a theory, it is a proposition; not even a conjecture or a hypothesis.

The point is that there are religious truth claims, but they cannot be verified under the current standard for of proof that is required of most conjectures. So, religious epistemology is a fallacious entity. No religious truth claim can be known. This can be proved in the definition of religion, but it was good exercise to examine examples. There is nothing about the divine that can be known by humans under the current standard of truth, and since we are not even sure if God exists it could stop right there.