Last updated: March 1, 2020
Franz Kafka once wrote: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
In my podcast episode “Ice and Axes – What Makes a Favorite?”, I gave Kafka’s words some lengthy thought and concluded they make a lot of sense. I’ve since abandoned having “favorites” and resolved to evaluate books in this new light. When I read now, I see if a book a) gives me a new idea, b) causes me think about an old idea in a new way, or c) changes my life in some other way. This is how I personally define an “axe” book.
The books below comprise a partial list of my fictional “axes.” Some of them are carryovers from my old favorites list, while others – not quite fitting the “favorite” label – have still impacted me.
My “Axe” Novels – a non-exhaustive list in no precise order:
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
- Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin
- The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Alice books – Lewis Carroll
- The Sherlock Holmes series – Arthur Conan Doyle
- Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
- The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
- Till We Have Faces – C. S. Lewis
- Magellania – Jules Verne
- Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- The Painted Veil – W Somerset Maugham
- A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Sea and Poison – Shūsaku Endō
I was intrigued by the \”Classics | History | Axes| arrangement…Very interesting idea to have an axial category!
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Thanks! 🙂 It's a little quirky, but I liked Kafka's idea so much, I thought I'd just go with it.
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Til We Have Faces is on my list for someday. The Idiot is one Dostoevsky I haven't heard of — I have read only _Crime & Punishment_/_The Brothers Karamazov_/_Notes from Underground_. _Notes_ is the one I remember best probably because I have read it more recently than the others.Is there any chance you will revisit the ones that don't have reviews? I would be interested to see what you think.
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Oooh, I'm happy for you you haven't read those two yet – the first time is quite an experience! Let me know what you think when you do…I should update this page; I actually did a podcast review on the Alice books last year: https://www.classicsconsidered.com/2018/03/finding-alice-from-wonderland-to.htmlI also plan to re-read Jane Eyre and Sherlock Holmes soon, then I'll review them properly!
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