
Van Gogh's Favorite Books - the-enemy
https://lithub.com/the-writers-vincent-van-gogh-loved-from-dickens-to-beecher-stowe/
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JoeAltmaier
I think this article tells more about the author than about the artist. Out of
hundreds of books in four languages, the author chose 6. Why not a statistical
analysis of the whole set? Why not a distribution plot? Selecting your
favorites tells us about … your favorites.

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Someone
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Firstly, who has the ability, will, and
time to go through such a list, and draw conclusions from it?

Also, a statistical analysis or distribution plot likely needs labels assigned
to those works. That, too, likely would mean making subjective choices. Even a
simple fiction/non-fiction distortion could be problematic in cases where a
book is partly both, or where a work was thought to be fiction in van Gogh’s
time, while it was later discovered to be autobiographical, or vice versa (for
example, are Marco Polo’s works fiction? When does “based on a true story”
become fiction?)

So, you would have to trust the author to make good choices for making those
plots. Why not trust her to make a good choice for these 6, too?

Also, this is (kind of) an advertorial for a book. Its goal is to sell that
book, not to be the end on van Gogh’s reading habits.

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JoeAltmaier
Ah. Well, I'm glad I didn't finish it then.

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julianeon
Of the books listed, I think I'd probably be most interested in reading
Maupassant's Bel Ami, followed closely by Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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ianai
For some reason I thought Vincent Van Gogh was further from us in time than
the late 1800s. I wish he could have lived longer.

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lihaciudaniel
Great books, i can't describe how much I love his paintings

