Friday, August 18, 2006
Favorite books on the art of living
Day five of my favorite books – and what can I possibly choose to round off the week? Well, this is the last list before I leave tomorrow, so it will have to serve as a catch-all for many subjects on the theme of living well. Brain food to help both the mind and spirit grow through life: favorite children’s books, cookery and home life, poetry, belles lettres, anthologies, and other odds and ends. These have educated me in the art of living:
Children’s books I still love to read as an adult:
A Child’s Garden of Verses – Robert Louis Stevenson. Everyman, New York 1992. Stevenson could do it all, really – children’s tales, novels, poetry, letter-writing. These poems are still what I love best.
Now We Are Six – A.A. Milne. Dutton, New York 1988. Pooh is very dear, but like the above, I love the poems more than the tales.
The Adventures of Tintin – Hergé. Little, Brown, Boston 1980s. Twenty in all? I’d read twenty more if he’d written them. My favorite evening read when I want something familiar and comforting.
The Reluctant Dragon – Kenneth Grahame. Rand, McNally, Chicago 1966 (circa 1900). Like the story of Ferdinand the bull, a tale of a peace-loving beast, a gentle, shy monster who still manages to save the day.
He Went With Marco Polo – Louise Andrews Kent. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1935. The one book that lit a fire in the child-me to see the world. I have, though largely through books.
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber. Simon and Schuster, New York 1950. Deeply strange, and I still love its weirdness.
The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster. Knopf, New York 1989. Ditto.
The Dolls’ House – Rumer Godden. Viking, New York 1962. Pathos in a doll family. Rumer Godden’s novel China Court should have been on my fiction list on Wednesday (it hinges on rare books, and has a fascinating, complex structure). Godden is often bittersweet.
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1949. Who doesn’t love this book, and Sara Crewe (The Little Princess). These books were IT for me when I was young.
The Wonder Clock – Howard Pyle. Harper, New York 1888. I think I got most of my ideas about beauty and style from the illustrations in this book, and perhaps from Andrew Lang’s series of color fairy books. A wonderful series of tales for each hour of the day.
Cookery and home life:
The Gastronomical Me – M.F.K. Fisher. World, Cleveland 1948. I don’t really get people who aren’t much interested in what they eat. I’m not a cook, really, but I know what I like, and I enjoy eating almost as much as reading. So reading about food is doubly good. Fisher isn’t just a food writer; she's an incredible writer who just happens to choose food as a main theme. I love her prose style, she is a master.
Mainstays of Maine – Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Macmillan, New York 1944. Bowdoin professor, poet, essayist. This book combines his love of his home section of the Maine coast with his memories of the best of Maine food. I re-read this book often, its exuberance and vitality is palpable.
The Transcendental Boiled Dinner – John J. Pullen. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1972. An extended essay on the fine art of cooking a Maine boiled dinner.
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection – Robert Farrar Capon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1989. Like the above, Capon writes an entire book about cooking just one dish. One of the best books about true epicurianism.
How To Cook a Rogue Elephant – Peter Van Rensselaer Livingston. Little, Brown, Boston 1971. I kept this book for its title, which I love seeing on the cookery shelf in my kitchen every day. WASP-y, upper-crusty recipes and stories.
Pot on the Fire and Serious Pig – John Thorne with Matt Lewis Thorne. North Point, New York 2000 and 1996. Two books of essays for the true chowhound. I often give these books as gifts.
The Tummy Trilogy – Calvin Trillin. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1994. Witty, deeply funny, simultaneously light and serious. For Trillin, Food = Life. He will go anywhere and try anything in search of an authentic dish. And then write about it for The New Yorker.
Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin. Knopf, New York 1988. Novelist Laurie Colwin also wrote essays about food and cooking for Gourmet magazine. This collection is wonderful; her stories about food, home life, and travel are funny and fine.
More Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin. HarperCollins, New York 1993. A second collection, equally fine.
The Epicure’s Companion – editors Ann Seranne and John Tebbel. McKay, New York 1962. Fat anthology ranging from ancient authors to Dumas and Flaubert.
Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style – editors Michael Snodin and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark. Bulfinch, Boston 1997. One of the best books I’ve seen about how to completely construct the kind of life one wants for oneself, from clothing to home architecture, furniture, books, and art. Lovely illustrations.
The Old Way of Seeing – Jonathan Hale. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1995. A wonderful book about why certain old New England buildings and homes are pleasing to the eye, and fit in their landscapes, and why new mcmansion versions do not.
Buildings of Delight – Alec Clifton-Taylor. Gollancz, London 1988. Quirky and unique residences and buildings in England, from all historical eras. Written with joy.
Poetry:
archy & mehitabel – Don Marquis. Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, New York 1928. The cockroach and the cat, they will never go out of style.
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman. Small, Maynard, Boston 1897. The best American poet? One of the best, let’s say that. Superlatives are difficult.
Harvest Poems 1910-1960 – Carl Sandburg. Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1960. Sandburg’s short poems about nature are among my favorite poems ever.
The Captain’s Verses – Pablo Neruda. New Directions, New York 1972. Love poetry at its most verdant and passionate. Read this, then find Neruda’s books of odes – more love, for everything, not just for another person.
What the Light Was Like – Amy Clampitt. Knopf, New York 1985. A few Maine-themed poems in this collection haunt me.
House of Light – Mary Oliver. Beacon, Boston 1992. Really, anything she writes is so beautiful, but this little book is the one I pack on every trip I take. The first poem is one of my favorites of hers.
An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 – Anne Porter. Zoland,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1994. Poems about nature, family, God, art. Quiet and deep.
Where Water Comes Together With Other Water – Raymond Carver. Vintage, New York 1986. His poems are tough, painfully truthful, often difficult, and usually elegiac. If you’re a woman, read them to learn what it’s like to be a man. If you’re a man, read them to learn how to be a man. No offense meant to men or women.
Essays, anthologies, and miscellanies:
The Practical Cogitator or The Thinker’s Anthology – editors Charles P. Curtis and Ferris Greenslet. Houghton, Mifflin, Boston 1950. One of the best anthologies I know of, and the perfect bedside-table book, either for one’s own room or a guest room (but buy several because guests will want to take copies home with them).
Time and the Art of Living – Robert Grudin. Ticknor & Fields, New York 1988. Unclassifiable essays of great beauty.
Intimate Things – Karel Čapek. Putnam, New York 1936. One of those books I was pricing at the shop, and I opened it randomly and started reading, and realized an hour had passed and I’d read half the book. I took it home.
What Am I Doing Here – Bruce Chatwin. Viking, New York 1989. The best collection of Chatwin’s short pieces: journalism, interviews, essays, tales. I had to add him to every list this week, he is that important to me.
Prefaces Without Books – Christopher Morley. Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin 1970. Morley wrote prefaces for many books, both for reprints and for friends. He is often at his best in short descriptive pieces such as these.
Letters of Askance – Christopher Morley. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1939. Essays on many topics.
Forty-Four Essays – Christopher Morley. Harcourt, Brace, New York 1925. More essays, I couldn’t choose just one book.
Inward Ho! – Christopher Morley. Doubleday, Page, Garden City, New York 1923. Short, often tiny, pieces about poetry, writing, authors, and philosophy of life. Perhaps my all-time favorite Morley book. Almost pocket-size.
The Old Court Suburb – Leigh Hunt. Lippincott, Philadelphia, n.d. (circa 1815). A master essayist, and dear friend of the poet Shelley.
One Man’s Meat – E.B. White. Harper, New York 1950. The other master of essay-writing.
The Bottom of the Harbor – Joseph Mitchell. Little, Brown, Boston 1960. A primer for anyone interested in learning how a perfect piece of descriptive journalism is put together. The magic, though, is unlearnable, and he had it in spades.
Book of Uncles – Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Macmillan, New York 1942. A collection of tales about Coffin’s favorite Maine uncles. Sounds strange, but boy is this a fine book. Another one I started reading at the shop, and took home that night to finish. And kept. A recurring problem for me.
How Proust Can Change Your Life – Alain de Botton. Pantheon, New York 1997. A little life philosophy: how to use Proust to solve real-life dilemmas.
A Theory of Everything – Ken Wilber. Shambhala, Boston 2000. One straight philosophy book, for some balance. Wilber is one of the great thinkers of today, and shuts himself away from the world for long periods of time to try and figure out What It All Means. Then he writes books to help us figure it out, too.
Ancilla to Classical Reading – Moses Hadas. Columbia University Press, New York 1954. Who the heck were all those dead white guys, anyway? Who lived when, and who wrote what during which empire? Who was best friends with whom? And why should we care today? This is a fine companion for anyone sneaking up on the classics of Greek and Roman thought and literature.
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes – editors Iona and Peter Opie. Oxford 1951. Scholarly, but still very high on the browsability scale. The stories behind famous and not-so-famous nursery rhymes. The Opies are known for their collection of children’s books, games and toys, and folklore surrounding the life of children.
Wodehouse Nuggets – selected by Richard Usborne. Hutchinson, London 1983. A hilarious compendium of quotes culled from P.G. Wodehouse’s works. Cheers me immensely and immediately, when I need cheering. I can’t think how I came to leave Wodehouse off the fiction list the other day.
Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement – Derwent May. HarperCollins, London 2001. Deep geek for booklovers and TLS fans.
The Art Spirit – Robert Henri. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1930. I refer constantly to this book about painting and living as an artist. I can open it anywhere, start reading, and be reassured and aided by this master.
Hawthorne on Painting – Charles Hawthorne. Dover, New York 1978 (1938). My other essential art book, after the one listed above. Along with Mary Oliver’s poetry book House of Light, I pack this on every trip I take (both books are very slim and light in softcover). As a painter, this book has been the most useful to me of anything I’ve ever read.
And let’s end this, finally, with some bookish reference books, perfect for browsing:
The Atlantic’s 50 Best Book Reviews – editor Sage Stossel. Atlantic Monthly, Boston 2004. Entertaining and wide-ranging.
Anthology: Selected Essays from the First 30 Years of The New York Review of Books 1963-93 – editors Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein. New York Review of Books, New York 2001. Like the above, but a bit more hip, if book reviews can be such a thing.
The Reader’s Encyclopedia – editor William Rose Benét. Crowell, New York 1948. Essential! I use mine almost every day. It’s still in print, in a new edition that I don’t use half as often as my good old brown 1948 copy.
Bartlett’s Quotations – Christopher Morley edited this twice, so I prefer those editions. Morley even inserted some fake quotations, happy hunting! 11th edition: Little, Brown, Boston 1938. Another perfect bedside-table book, endlessly browsable.
The Lifetime Reading Plan – Clifton Fadiman. World, Cleveland 1960. Educate yourself, here’s how, from the most well-read man in twentieth-century America.
Books About Books – Winslow L. Webber. Hale, Cushman & Flint, Boston 1937. A bibliography of books about books. My want list in a nutshell.
The List of Books – Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. Harmony, New York 1981. Great books in all topics, this book makes my week of lists look paltry, miserly, and lean.
The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Authors – editors Laura Miller with Adam Begley. Penguin, New York 2000. Who the heck are all those hip young things writing good novels and winning literary prizes? And why should we care today? Find out here.
An Almanac of Reading – Charles Lee. Coward-McCann, New York 1940. Good reading suggestions throughout the year, in a gentle, whimsical almanac format.
Ex Libris Carissimis – Christopher Morley. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1932. He lists “85 Golden Florins” at the end - a fine reading list.
That’s it! I’ve been packing and re-packing for tomorrow, checking items off tiny lists, and generally losing my mind. It really does seem that it takes twice as much energy to get ready for a vacation as it would have if I’d just stayed here and lived my regular old life for an extra week. But once I’m there, it’s all worth it.
The lists - what a mammoth project. I hope people find it useful. When I re-open the shop on the 28th I will immediately return to writing tiny little blog posts of three lines each. Seriously, though, thanks to everyone for suggestions and comments – mull it over and add more of your favorite books while I’m gone! Surprise me! I haven't delved much into nature books, history, philosophy - I ran out of week - so feel free to add books in these subjects, too. After a vacation, my abrupt return to civilization will be greatly eased by the delight of hearing about who loves what books. Thanks for reading this week, bookish friends.
Children’s books I still love to read as an adult:
A Child’s Garden of Verses – Robert Louis Stevenson. Everyman, New York 1992. Stevenson could do it all, really – children’s tales, novels, poetry, letter-writing. These poems are still what I love best.
Now We Are Six – A.A. Milne. Dutton, New York 1988. Pooh is very dear, but like the above, I love the poems more than the tales.
The Adventures of Tintin – Hergé. Little, Brown, Boston 1980s. Twenty in all? I’d read twenty more if he’d written them. My favorite evening read when I want something familiar and comforting.
The Reluctant Dragon – Kenneth Grahame. Rand, McNally, Chicago 1966 (circa 1900). Like the story of Ferdinand the bull, a tale of a peace-loving beast, a gentle, shy monster who still manages to save the day.
He Went With Marco Polo – Louise Andrews Kent. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1935. The one book that lit a fire in the child-me to see the world. I have, though largely through books.
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber. Simon and Schuster, New York 1950. Deeply strange, and I still love its weirdness.
The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster. Knopf, New York 1989. Ditto.
The Dolls’ House – Rumer Godden. Viking, New York 1962. Pathos in a doll family. Rumer Godden’s novel China Court should have been on my fiction list on Wednesday (it hinges on rare books, and has a fascinating, complex structure). Godden is often bittersweet.
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1949. Who doesn’t love this book, and Sara Crewe (The Little Princess). These books were IT for me when I was young.
The Wonder Clock – Howard Pyle. Harper, New York 1888. I think I got most of my ideas about beauty and style from the illustrations in this book, and perhaps from Andrew Lang’s series of color fairy books. A wonderful series of tales for each hour of the day.
Cookery and home life:
The Gastronomical Me – M.F.K. Fisher. World, Cleveland 1948. I don’t really get people who aren’t much interested in what they eat. I’m not a cook, really, but I know what I like, and I enjoy eating almost as much as reading. So reading about food is doubly good. Fisher isn’t just a food writer; she's an incredible writer who just happens to choose food as a main theme. I love her prose style, she is a master.
Mainstays of Maine – Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Macmillan, New York 1944. Bowdoin professor, poet, essayist. This book combines his love of his home section of the Maine coast with his memories of the best of Maine food. I re-read this book often, its exuberance and vitality is palpable.
The Transcendental Boiled Dinner – John J. Pullen. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1972. An extended essay on the fine art of cooking a Maine boiled dinner.
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection – Robert Farrar Capon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1989. Like the above, Capon writes an entire book about cooking just one dish. One of the best books about true epicurianism.
How To Cook a Rogue Elephant – Peter Van Rensselaer Livingston. Little, Brown, Boston 1971. I kept this book for its title, which I love seeing on the cookery shelf in my kitchen every day. WASP-y, upper-crusty recipes and stories.
Pot on the Fire and Serious Pig – John Thorne with Matt Lewis Thorne. North Point, New York 2000 and 1996. Two books of essays for the true chowhound. I often give these books as gifts.
The Tummy Trilogy – Calvin Trillin. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1994. Witty, deeply funny, simultaneously light and serious. For Trillin, Food = Life. He will go anywhere and try anything in search of an authentic dish. And then write about it for The New Yorker.
Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin. Knopf, New York 1988. Novelist Laurie Colwin also wrote essays about food and cooking for Gourmet magazine. This collection is wonderful; her stories about food, home life, and travel are funny and fine.
More Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin. HarperCollins, New York 1993. A second collection, equally fine.
The Epicure’s Companion – editors Ann Seranne and John Tebbel. McKay, New York 1962. Fat anthology ranging from ancient authors to Dumas and Flaubert.
Carl and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style – editors Michael Snodin and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark. Bulfinch, Boston 1997. One of the best books I’ve seen about how to completely construct the kind of life one wants for oneself, from clothing to home architecture, furniture, books, and art. Lovely illustrations.
The Old Way of Seeing – Jonathan Hale. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1995. A wonderful book about why certain old New England buildings and homes are pleasing to the eye, and fit in their landscapes, and why new mcmansion versions do not.
Buildings of Delight – Alec Clifton-Taylor. Gollancz, London 1988. Quirky and unique residences and buildings in England, from all historical eras. Written with joy.
Poetry:
archy & mehitabel – Don Marquis. Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, New York 1928. The cockroach and the cat, they will never go out of style.
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman. Small, Maynard, Boston 1897. The best American poet? One of the best, let’s say that. Superlatives are difficult.
Harvest Poems 1910-1960 – Carl Sandburg. Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1960. Sandburg’s short poems about nature are among my favorite poems ever.
The Captain’s Verses – Pablo Neruda. New Directions, New York 1972. Love poetry at its most verdant and passionate. Read this, then find Neruda’s books of odes – more love, for everything, not just for another person.
What the Light Was Like – Amy Clampitt. Knopf, New York 1985. A few Maine-themed poems in this collection haunt me.
House of Light – Mary Oliver. Beacon, Boston 1992. Really, anything she writes is so beautiful, but this little book is the one I pack on every trip I take. The first poem is one of my favorites of hers.
An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 – Anne Porter. Zoland,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1994. Poems about nature, family, God, art. Quiet and deep.
Where Water Comes Together With Other Water – Raymond Carver. Vintage, New York 1986. His poems are tough, painfully truthful, often difficult, and usually elegiac. If you’re a woman, read them to learn what it’s like to be a man. If you’re a man, read them to learn how to be a man. No offense meant to men or women.
Essays, anthologies, and miscellanies:
The Practical Cogitator or The Thinker’s Anthology – editors Charles P. Curtis and Ferris Greenslet. Houghton, Mifflin, Boston 1950. One of the best anthologies I know of, and the perfect bedside-table book, either for one’s own room or a guest room (but buy several because guests will want to take copies home with them).
Time and the Art of Living – Robert Grudin. Ticknor & Fields, New York 1988. Unclassifiable essays of great beauty.
Intimate Things – Karel Čapek. Putnam, New York 1936. One of those books I was pricing at the shop, and I opened it randomly and started reading, and realized an hour had passed and I’d read half the book. I took it home.
What Am I Doing Here – Bruce Chatwin. Viking, New York 1989. The best collection of Chatwin’s short pieces: journalism, interviews, essays, tales. I had to add him to every list this week, he is that important to me.
Prefaces Without Books – Christopher Morley. Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin 1970. Morley wrote prefaces for many books, both for reprints and for friends. He is often at his best in short descriptive pieces such as these.
Letters of Askance – Christopher Morley. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1939. Essays on many topics.
Forty-Four Essays – Christopher Morley. Harcourt, Brace, New York 1925. More essays, I couldn’t choose just one book.
Inward Ho! – Christopher Morley. Doubleday, Page, Garden City, New York 1923. Short, often tiny, pieces about poetry, writing, authors, and philosophy of life. Perhaps my all-time favorite Morley book. Almost pocket-size.
The Old Court Suburb – Leigh Hunt. Lippincott, Philadelphia, n.d. (circa 1815). A master essayist, and dear friend of the poet Shelley.
One Man’s Meat – E.B. White. Harper, New York 1950. The other master of essay-writing.
The Bottom of the Harbor – Joseph Mitchell. Little, Brown, Boston 1960. A primer for anyone interested in learning how a perfect piece of descriptive journalism is put together. The magic, though, is unlearnable, and he had it in spades.
Book of Uncles – Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Macmillan, New York 1942. A collection of tales about Coffin’s favorite Maine uncles. Sounds strange, but boy is this a fine book. Another one I started reading at the shop, and took home that night to finish. And kept. A recurring problem for me.
How Proust Can Change Your Life – Alain de Botton. Pantheon, New York 1997. A little life philosophy: how to use Proust to solve real-life dilemmas.
A Theory of Everything – Ken Wilber. Shambhala, Boston 2000. One straight philosophy book, for some balance. Wilber is one of the great thinkers of today, and shuts himself away from the world for long periods of time to try and figure out What It All Means. Then he writes books to help us figure it out, too.
Ancilla to Classical Reading – Moses Hadas. Columbia University Press, New York 1954. Who the heck were all those dead white guys, anyway? Who lived when, and who wrote what during which empire? Who was best friends with whom? And why should we care today? This is a fine companion for anyone sneaking up on the classics of Greek and Roman thought and literature.
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes – editors Iona and Peter Opie. Oxford 1951. Scholarly, but still very high on the browsability scale. The stories behind famous and not-so-famous nursery rhymes. The Opies are known for their collection of children’s books, games and toys, and folklore surrounding the life of children.
Wodehouse Nuggets – selected by Richard Usborne. Hutchinson, London 1983. A hilarious compendium of quotes culled from P.G. Wodehouse’s works. Cheers me immensely and immediately, when I need cheering. I can’t think how I came to leave Wodehouse off the fiction list the other day.
Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement – Derwent May. HarperCollins, London 2001. Deep geek for booklovers and TLS fans.
The Art Spirit – Robert Henri. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1930. I refer constantly to this book about painting and living as an artist. I can open it anywhere, start reading, and be reassured and aided by this master.
Hawthorne on Painting – Charles Hawthorne. Dover, New York 1978 (1938). My other essential art book, after the one listed above. Along with Mary Oliver’s poetry book House of Light, I pack this on every trip I take (both books are very slim and light in softcover). As a painter, this book has been the most useful to me of anything I’ve ever read.
And let’s end this, finally, with some bookish reference books, perfect for browsing:
The Atlantic’s 50 Best Book Reviews – editor Sage Stossel. Atlantic Monthly, Boston 2004. Entertaining and wide-ranging.
Anthology: Selected Essays from the First 30 Years of The New York Review of Books 1963-93 – editors Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein. New York Review of Books, New York 2001. Like the above, but a bit more hip, if book reviews can be such a thing.
The Reader’s Encyclopedia – editor William Rose Benét. Crowell, New York 1948. Essential! I use mine almost every day. It’s still in print, in a new edition that I don’t use half as often as my good old brown 1948 copy.
Bartlett’s Quotations – Christopher Morley edited this twice, so I prefer those editions. Morley even inserted some fake quotations, happy hunting! 11th edition: Little, Brown, Boston 1938. Another perfect bedside-table book, endlessly browsable.
The Lifetime Reading Plan – Clifton Fadiman. World, Cleveland 1960. Educate yourself, here’s how, from the most well-read man in twentieth-century America.
Books About Books – Winslow L. Webber. Hale, Cushman & Flint, Boston 1937. A bibliography of books about books. My want list in a nutshell.
The List of Books – Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. Harmony, New York 1981. Great books in all topics, this book makes my week of lists look paltry, miserly, and lean.
The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Authors – editors Laura Miller with Adam Begley. Penguin, New York 2000. Who the heck are all those hip young things writing good novels and winning literary prizes? And why should we care today? Find out here.
An Almanac of Reading – Charles Lee. Coward-McCann, New York 1940. Good reading suggestions throughout the year, in a gentle, whimsical almanac format.
Ex Libris Carissimis – Christopher Morley. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1932. He lists “85 Golden Florins” at the end - a fine reading list.
That’s it! I’ve been packing and re-packing for tomorrow, checking items off tiny lists, and generally losing my mind. It really does seem that it takes twice as much energy to get ready for a vacation as it would have if I’d just stayed here and lived my regular old life for an extra week. But once I’m there, it’s all worth it.
The lists - what a mammoth project. I hope people find it useful. When I re-open the shop on the 28th I will immediately return to writing tiny little blog posts of three lines each. Seriously, though, thanks to everyone for suggestions and comments – mull it over and add more of your favorite books while I’m gone! Surprise me! I haven't delved much into nature books, history, philosophy - I ran out of week - so feel free to add books in these subjects, too. After a vacation, my abrupt return to civilization will be greatly eased by the delight of hearing about who loves what books. Thanks for reading this week, bookish friends.
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My favorite essayists are H.M. Tomlinson (Old Junk, Out of Soundings, Waiting For Daylight); Christopher Morley (all the ones Sarah mentioned, plus The Powder of Sympathy, Pipefuls, Plum Pudding); Alexander Smith (Dreamthorp); E.B. White (anything); Joseph Mitchelln (ditto); and A.J. Liebling. (I’d read his pieces on pouring cereal into a bowl or tying his shoes, if he wrote them.)
I forgot to include in earlier lists Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion, Henry Beston’s Northern Farm, and Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow.
Thanks again for writing your great lists and sparking comments. I can see this will lead to many new purchases. Welcome home.
Dan
I forgot to include in earlier lists Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion, Henry Beston’s Northern Farm, and Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow.
Thanks again for writing your great lists and sparking comments. I can see this will lead to many new purchases. Welcome home.
Dan
# posted by 
: 10:09 AM
: 10:09 AM
I like a little book of satire by Carolyn Wells called "Idle Idylls" - I am reminded of it by the JKJ title. Which I haven't read but now plan to. Thanks Dan, as usual - it's good to be back. Sort of.
Is it too late to join or re-start The Knothole Association or Society (can't remember exactly what they called themselves)? Anyway, we'll all have to take a trip to Roslyn, Long Island sometime to visit Morley's writing cabin, now restored. The Morley fan club is reborn...
Is it too late to join or re-start The Knothole Association or Society (can't remember exactly what they called themselves)? Anyway, we'll all have to take a trip to Roslyn, Long Island sometime to visit Morley's writing cabin, now restored. The Morley fan club is reborn...
I googled and found the website of the Christopher Morley Knothole Association (christophermorley.org). According to this, volunteers play Morley for summer visitors. There were lots of links, including membership, but they didn't lead anywhere.
I made a mistake listing Idle Thoughts... I only finished it because of Jerome's Three Men In a Boat, which I think is the funniest book I've ever read. Thanks for the Carolyn Wells recommendation.
I made a mistake listing Idle Thoughts... I only finished it because of Jerome's Three Men In a Boat, which I think is the funniest book I've ever read. Thanks for the Carolyn Wells recommendation.
# posted by : 8:27 PM
: 8:27 PM
My mother visited the Knothole many years ago - she says it's been moved from its original location to a park, and when she saw it, it was boarded up and rather sad. Sounds like it's been renovated recently... thanks to the many people who've emailed this year about Christopher Morley. Many of us want to make sure he's never forgotten.
Dan, "Idle Idylls" is a sweet book, but I like the title more than the contents! Sounds like the same is true for you re the JKJ book... I have a shelf of books at home that I like only for their odd or endearing titles. Contents aside. I refuse to allow this to worry me.
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Dan, "Idle Idylls" is a sweet book, but I like the title more than the contents! Sounds like the same is true for you re the JKJ book... I have a shelf of books at home that I like only for their odd or endearing titles. Contents aside. I refuse to allow this to worry me.
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