Books I
enjoy reading
|
I have received your new book (A
Discourse on Inequality, by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau) against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was
such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs,
in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that
habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of
resuming it.
|
Voltaire, 1755
|
Ambrose
of Milan
(338 – 397 AD) Correspondence • Ammianus Marcellinus (325 – 391 AD) The
History • Philippe
Aries (1914
– 1984)
Centuries
of Childhood
• Jean Aitchison (*1938) Words
in the Mind • W.H. Auden (1907
– 1973) Collected Poems • Saint Augustine
(354 – 430 AD) Confessions, Civitate Dei • Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689) The
Rover • Richard A. Bermann (1883 – 1939) Das Urwaldschiff
• Jorge Luis
Borges (1899 – 1986) Ficciones, The
Essays,
Collected Stories, Complete
Poems, Borges und Ich, Borges über
Borges • William Burroughs
(1914 – 1997) Naked Lunch • Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994) The
most beautiful Woman in Town, Post
Office • Jacob
Burckhardt (1818
– 1897) Die Zeit Constantins des Großen • Thomas Carlyle (1795
– 1881) The French Revolution
• Giacomo Casanova (1725 –
1798) Memoirs • Miguel
de Cervantes
y Saavedra (1547 – 1616) Don Quixote
• Raymond
Chandler (1888 – 1959) The
Big Sleep, The High Window, Farewell my
Lovely, The Lady in the Lake • William
Congreve (1637 –
1708) The Way of the World • Terence
W. Deacon (*1963) The Symbolic Species • John
Donne (1572 – 1631) Poems and
Prose, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions • Eugene
Ehrlich (1922 – 2008) A Dictionary of Latin Tags and
Phrases • Manfred
Eigen (*1927) and Ruthild Winkler
(*1941), Laws of the Game • George Etherege (1635 – 1692) The
Man of Mode • Eusebius of Caesarea (263 – 339 AD) Ecclesiastic History, The Life of Constantine • Rosalind Fergusson (1985) Rhyme-lexicon •
Edward
Gibbon (1737 – 1794) The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire • Libanius (314 – 394) Autobiography
• Johannes Haller (1865 –
1947) The Papacy, Idea and Reality
I-V: The Foundation, the Rise, the Completion, the Summit, the Collapse
• Heinrich Heine (1797 – 1856) Aus
den Memoiren des Herrn
von Schnabelewopski, Reisebilder, Die Romantische Schule,
Religion und Philosophie
in Deutschland, Der Salon, Ludwig Börne,
eine Denkschrift,
Geständnisse • Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, 49 Stories •
The Iliad (750 AD)
transl. George Chapman • Franz
Kafka (1883 – 1924) The Trial
• King James Bible
(1611) • Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763
– 1825) Des Luftschiffers
Giannozzo Seebuch,
Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke
oder Ehestand,
Tod und Hochzeit
des Armenadvokaten F.
St. Siebenkäs im
Reichsmarktflecken Kuhschnappel •
Saint
Jerome (347
– 420 AD) Correspondence,
Treatises, Prefaces, Chronicle • James
Joyce (1882 – 1941) A
Portrait of the Artist as a young Man
• Simon Karlinsky (1924
– 2009) and Michael
Henry Heim (*1944) Antonin Chekhov’s Life and Thoughts –
Selected Letters • Douglas Kennedy
(*1955) In God’s own Country –
Travels in the Bible Belt • Stephen
King (*1947) Duma Key, On Writing • Karl Kraus (1874
– 1936) Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit • Charles Lamb
(1775 – 1834) Essays of Elia
• Juan Antonio Llorente (1756 – 1823)
A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain
• Jack London (1876 – 1916) The
Cruise of the Snark • Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) Die Bibel • Norman Mailer
(1923 – 2007) An American Dream, The Castle in the Forest,
Advertisements for Myself, The
Deer Park
• Bernard Mandeville (1670 –
1733) Fable of the Bees, Free Thoughts on
Religion, the Church, and National Happiness, An Enquiry into the
Origin of
Honor, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War
• Gabriel García
Márquez (*1927) Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores • Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) Moby
Dick • Henry Miller (1895 – 1980) Sexus,
Plexus, Nexus, Tropic
of Cancer, Quiet Days in Clichy • John Milton
(1608
– 1674) Paradise Lost, Areopagita
• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
(1533 –
1592) Essays, Letters, Itinerary • John Lothrop Motley (1814 – 1877) The Rise of the Dutch Republic, History of the
United Netherlands 1584 – 1609, The Life and Death of John of
Barneveld
• Vladimir
Nabokov (1899 –
1977) Mashenka, Speak Memory • Theodor Mommsen (1817
– 1903) The Roman Provinces • Odyssey
(725 BC) transl. Rodney Merrill • Frank O’Hara
(1926 – 1966) Complete Poems
• Okakura Kakuzo (1862
– 1913) The Book of Tea • Walter J. Ong SJ (1912 –
2003) Orality and Literacy • Blaise Pascal
(1623 – 1662) Provincial Letters, Pensées
• Sylvia
Plath (1932 – 1963) The
Bell Jar • William Hickling
Prescott (1796 – 1859) History
of King Philip II, The Conquest of Mexico, The Conquest of the Incas •
Procopius of Caesarea (500
– 565 AD.) The Secret History
• John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
(1647 – 1680) Collected Works • Bertrand
Russell (1872 – 1970)
A History of Western Philosophy • Marquis de Sade (1740
– 1814) Justine, Eugénie de Franval, Philosophy
of the Bedroom, Dialogue
between a Priest and a dying Man, Seven
Letters, Note concerning my Detention, Last
Will and Testament • J.D.
Salinger
(*1919) Nine
Stories, The Cather in the Rye • Sappho (631 – 572 BC) Poems • Arno Schmidt (1914 – 1979) Nobbodaddys Kinder • William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Anthony and Cleopatra, Richard III, Titus
Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth • Richard Brinsley
Sheridan (1751 –
1816) The School for Scandal • Sei Shonagon (965/6 – after 1000 AD) Das Kopfkissenbuch • Michael E.
Smith (*1953) The Aztecs • Richard Steele (1751 – 1816)
The Conscious Lovers • Laurence
Sterne (1713
– 1768) The Life and opinions of Tristram
Shandy, Gentleman, A
Sentimental Journey
• William Strunk
(1869 –
1946) Elements of Style • Gaius
Suetonius Tranquillus
(69/75 – after 130 AD) Life of the
Caesars • Publius Cornelius Tacitus (42 – 123 AD) Agricola,
Germania, Dialogus • Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (156 – 235 AD) De
Carne Christi, De Spectaculis, De Corona,
Ad Scapula,
Ad Nationes, An Answer to the Jews, The
Soul’s
Testimony, A Treatise on the Soul, Adversus
Marcion, Adversus
Hermogenes, Adversus Valentianianii,
On the Resurrection, Adversus Praxeas, Scorpiace,
Against
all Heresies • Vigoleis Thelen (1903 – 1989) Die
Insel des Zweiten
Gesichts • Theophrast (372 – 287 BC) The
Characters • Barry Turner
The
Writer’s Handbook • John
Updike
(1932 – 2009) Rabbit
Run, Rabbit Redux,
Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, Couples,
Villages, Towards the End of Time, Terrorist
• Virgilius Maro (70
– 19 BC) The Georgics • Voltaire (1694
– 1778) The History of Charles XII, The
Age of Louis XIV, Candide
and other Tales • Webster
12th Collegiate Dictionary • Edmund
White (*1940) A Boy's Own Story, The
Beautiful Room is Empty • Jeanette Winterson (*1959) Boating
for Beginners, Oranges are not the only
Fruit • William Wycherley (1640 –
1715) The Country Wife • Herbert Zbigniew
(1924 – 1998) The King of Ants, Still Life with a Bridle
Limited shelf space can be a blessing. Most of my books are
stored away
in the loft. So, from time to time I make a review of my references on
shelf
and look what I really, really want. Then I climb upstairs. Some, if
not quite
a few of the books, of course, take their shelf space merely as a
sentimental
memento, and that is all right. They don’t have to be the greatest
books of the
human race; all I ask of them is to please. Once a collector of rare
books
myself, life has taught me not to attach your heart too much to earthly
matter,
but I still prefer hardbacks over paperbacks and I still protect my
paperbacks
with an extra cover that prevents the spine from creasing. Cicero once
wrote to
his nephew: “At last our new house has a
soul; the books have arrived.” I share the sentiment, but I also
look
forward to the new electronic readers that will allow you to carry an
entire
library on a single disk, although some time will pass before
everything I
would wish to read is actually going to be digitized. The forests will
breathe a
sigh of relief.
© - 7/21/2008 - by michael
sympson, 200 words, all rights reserved
To be continued
