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
|
to
Dawn
Jean Aitchison (*1938) Words
in the Mind • Ambrose
of
Milan
(338 – 397 AD) Correspondence • Ammianus Marcellinus (325 – 391 AD) The
History
• W.H. Auden (1907
– 1973) Collected Poems • Saint Augustine
(354 – 430 AD) Confessions, Civitate Dei • Richard A. Bermann (1883 – 1939) Das Urwaldschiff
• Jorge Luis
Borges (1899 – 1986) Ficciones, The
Essays • James
Boswell (1740 – 1795) Life of Johnson • Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994) The
most beautiful Woman in Town, Post
Office • Jacob
Burckhardt (1818
– 1897) Die Zeit Constantins des Großen • William
Burroughs
(1914 – 1997) Naked Lunch • Lord
Byron
(1788 – 1824) Don Juan • 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
Little
Sister,
The
Lady
in
the
Lake,
The Long Goodbye, Playback, Collected
Stories
• Antonin Chekhov (1861 –
1904) The Lady with the Lap Dog and
other Stories, Antonin Chekhov’s Life and Thoughts –
Selected Letters • 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
• Eusebius of Caesarea (263 – 339 AD) Ecclesiastic History, The Life of Constantine • Rosalind Fergusson (1985) Rhyme-lexicon •
Edward Gibbon (1737
– 1794) The History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire • 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
Snows of Kilimanjaro
• King James Bible
(1611) • Jean Paul
Friedrich Richter (1763
– 1825) Des Luftschiffers
Giannozzo Seebuch • Saint
Jerome (347
– 420 AD) Correspondence,
Treatises, Prefaces, Chronicle • James
Joyce (1882 – 1941)
A
Portrait of the Artist as a young Man • Franz
Kafka (1883 – 1924) Collected
Stories, The Trial, The Castle, America
• Douglas Kennedy
(*1955) In God’s own Country –
Travels in the Bible Belt • Stephen
King (*1947) Duma Key • Karl Kraus (1874
– 1936) Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit • Charles Lamb
(1775 – 1834) Essays of Elia • Libanius (314 – 394 AD) Autobiography
• 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) 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 •
Thomas Mann (1875
– 1955) Buddenbrooks, Sämtliche
Erzählungen • Gabriel García
Márquez (*1927) Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores • Marcus Valerius Martialis (43 – 104
AD) On the Spectacles, Epigrams Books I-XIV • John Milton
(1608
– 1674) Paradise Lost, Areopagita • Theodor
Mommsen (1817
– 1903) The Roman Provinces
• 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, Knight, Queen, Knave, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bent
Sinister, Speak Memory, Lolita, Pnin • Frank O’Hara
(1926 – 1966) Complete Poems • Odyssey
(725 BC) transl. Rodney Merrill
• 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 • Pliny the Younger (61 – 112 AD) Letters I-X,
Panegyricus • 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 Catcher in the Rye •
Sappho (631 – 572 BC) Poems
• William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Anthony
and Cleopatra, Richard III, Titus
Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth • Sei Shonagon
(965/6
–
after
1000
AD)
Das Kopfkissenbuch • Michael E.
Smith (*1953) The Aztecs • 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 • Leo
Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) War and
Peace • Barry Turner
The
Writer’s Handbook • John
Updike
(1932 – 2009) Couples,
Villages, Towards the End of Time
• 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
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
