VioletCrown's 2022 books

A little late in the year to be joining in I suppose, and unlikely I'll make it to 75 ... but 2023 awaits.

1. Guy Pocock, Some English Diarists
2. Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms
3. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
4. Herodotus, The Histories
5. Frank T. Bullen, The Cruise of the "Cachalot"
6. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
7. Georges Simenon, Madame Maigret's Own Case
8. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
9. Molière, The Doctor Despite Himself
10. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

11. Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty
12. Graham Greene, The Shipwrecked
13. Loren Eiseley, Notes of an Alchemist
14. Patricia Highsmith, Ripley Under Water
15. Everyman with Other Interludes
16. Georges Simenon, Pietr the Latvian
17. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma
18. Iona & Peter Opie, The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse
19. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
20. J. Frank Dobie, Tales of Old-Time Texas

21. H. P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space and Other Stories
22. St. Francis de Sales Sermons for Lent
23. V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men
24. St. Cyprian, The Lapsed & The Unity of the Catholic Church
25. Ernest Bramah, Best Max Carrados Detective Stories
26. Nibelungenlied
27. Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto
28. William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism
29. Shakespeare, Henry IV Part I
30. Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat

31. Emile Zola, His Excellency Eugene Rougon
32. Colette, The Captive
33. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
34. The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh
35. Ann Raney Coleman, Victorian Lady on the Texas Frontier
36. Emile Zola, The Kill
37. Asser, Life of King Alfred
38. Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood
39. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
40. Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

41. Ray Russell, The Case Against Satan
42. Helen Weinzweig, Basic Black with Pearls
43. Ronald Firbank, Vainglory
44. Georges Simenon, The Judge's House
45. The Journal of John Wesley
46. Carl Sandburg, Harvest Poems: 1910-1960
47. Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
48. Pilar Gerasimo, The Healthy Deviant
49. Julio Cortázar, Blow-Up and Other Stories
50. Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead

51. Lafcadio Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories
52. Kathleen Stock, Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism
53. José Maria de Eça de Queiros, The Mandarin and Other Stories
54. Henry Mazzeo, ed., Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural
55. John Mortimer, Rumpole for the Defence
56. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
57. J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century
58. Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories
59. Eric Berne, Games People Play
60. John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

61. Anne Sheppard, Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art
62. Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin
63. John Mortimer, Rumpole and the Golden Thread
64. Molière, The Bourgeois Gentleman
65. Robert Louis Stevenson, New Arabian Nights
66. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
67. John Mortimer, Rumpole's Last Case
68. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
69. David Kessler, The End of Overeating
70. Rupert Brooke, 1914 and Other Poems

Wow, that’s a heckuva list! Welcome - never too late.

>2 drneutron: Thank you for the welcome, friend! This seems like a pleasant group of readers. I don't think I'll be able to post more than once or twice a week and hope that's okay with this community.

Welcome, anytime!

>3 VioletCrown: That is completely up to you. Some members are very talkative on a daily basis, others only post when they have read a book, and everything in between.

Yep, perfectly fine. I don’t post all that often either. Feel free to join in our other threads too!

Welcome to the group. As stated by some of my other friends everybody moves blithely at their own pace in the group entirely without pressure!

Nice list of your first 60 reads - looks like you will get very close to 75.

My week's reading:

This week I finished a bit of philosophy for the layman, Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art by Anne Sheppard at Univ. of London, whose research focus is the interaction of philosophy and literature. Unfortunately that accounts for my disappointment in reading this book, which starts off presenting interesting problems in the philosophy of aesthetics, focusing as most readers would expect on the visual arts and music, but then moving firmly to literature alone — and, even more narrowly, 19th century fiction — never to return to what most people mean by “art.” Her chapters on literary interpretation compare unfavorable to Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction, published just a few years before Sheppard’s 1987 book but which she evidently had not read — despite (unfavorable) references to two of Eagleton’s earlier books. At any rate nothing that she discusses in the second half of the book has any perceivable relevance to music or the visual arts, leaving the issues she brings up in the first half of the book with no in-depth discussion except with regard to novels and short fiction. I really wanted to learn more about why we think and feel as we do about 'art' in the conventional sense.

Two quick re-reads also: Pilgrim’s Progress for homeschool discussion this week; and Eric Berne’s wonderfully dated book on the psychology of interpersonal relationships, Games People Play, which at least is an interesting reminder to keep our Adult focused on other people’s Adult and to be aware of slipping into Parent or Child mode. Hey, baby, I’m ok — you’re ok!

Currently reading Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths, from the Borges Personal Library -- it’s a wilder ride than the bland non-fiction title would lead one to believe.

I'm continuing to read from Jorge Luis Borges's "Personal Library." The original Borges Personal Library list, in Spanish. Below are the works with their original titles and English translations, with links and comments. (My links didn't survive the cut & pasting alas.)

1/ Julio Cortázar: Cuentos (Stories). Two books of Cortázar’s stories in English, together with his novel Hopscotch, are in an Everyman compilation.

2/ The Apocryphal Gospels. These are early writings by orthodox Christians that were never considered for inclusion in the canon (like the Didache or Clementine epistles), but are also not to be confused with the (much later) Gnostic writings. In my opinion these are best understood as early Christian fan-fiction.

3 & 4/ Franz Kafka: Amerika; Short Stories.

5/ G. K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown.

6/ Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone.

7/ Maurice Maeterlinck: L’Intelligence des fleurs. (The Intelligence of the Flowers.)

8/ Dino Buzzati: Il deserto dei Tartari (The Desert of the Tartars). Published in English as The Tartar Steppe or The Stronghold.

9 & 10/ Henrik Ibsen: Peer Gynt; Hedda Gabler.

11/ José María Eça de Queiroz: O mandarim. (The Mandarin).

12/ Leopoldo Lugones: El imperio jesuítico (“The Jesuit Empire”). I can’t find this text in either Spanish or English. Good news — OUP has Selected Writings of Leopoldo Lugones, though it doesn’t include anything with a title like “The Jesuit Empire.”

12/ André Gide: Les Faux-monnayeurs. (The Counterfeiters)

13 & 14/ H. G. Wells: The Time Machine; The Invisible Man

15/ Robert Graves: The Greek Myths.

16/ Fyodor Dostoevsky: Bésy (The Devils or Demons or The Possessed)

17/ Edward Kasner & James Newman: Mathematics and the Imagination.

18, 19 & 20/ Eugene O´Neill: The Great God Brown; Strange Interlude; Mourning Becomes Electra.

21/ Ariwara no Narihira: Ise monogatari (The Tales of Ise). It’s not believed now that Narihira wrote these stories, so they’re no longer published under his name.

22, 23 & 24/ Herman Melville: Benito Cereno; Billy Budd; Bartleby, the Scrivener.

25, 26 & 27/ Giovanni Papini: Il Tragico Quotidiano; Il Pilota Cieco; Parole e Sangue (“The Tragic Everyday”; “The Blind Pilot”; “Words and Blood”). No sign that these books were ever translated into English. But if we want to read some Papini anyway, this website has a list of English translations of his work.

28/ Arthur Machen: The Three Impostors. Included in The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories.

29 & 30/ Fray Luis de León: Cantar de cantares; Exposición del Libro de Job. (Song of Songs; Explanation of the Book of Job). Can’t find these in English.

31 & 32/ Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness; The End of the Tether.

33/ Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

34/ Oscar Wilde: Essays and Dialogues. All Wilde’s essays and dialogues (“intentions”) are in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde.

35/ Henri Michaux: Un Barbare en Asie (A Barbarian in Asia).

36/ Hermann Hesse: Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game).

37/ Arnold Bennett: Buried Alive. Way out of print, but findable.

38/ Claudius Aelianus (or Aelian): De natura animalium. (On Animals). Available from Loeb in 3 volumes for about $90; but I’m looking around for a cheaper option.

39/ Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class.

40/ Gustave Flaubert: La Tentation de Saint Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony).

41/ Marco Polo: Il Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo).

42/ Marcel Schwob: Vies imaginaires (Imaginary Lives).

43, 44 & 45/ George Bernard Shaw: Caesar and Cleopatra; Major Barbara; Candida

46 & 47/ Francisco de Quevedo: La Fortuna Con Seso Y La Hora De Todos; La Vida de Marco Bruto. The first was published in English in 1697 as Fortune in Her Wits, Or the Hour of All Men; I can’t find a more recent translation. The latter was published in English in 1710 as The Controversy About Resistance and Non-Resistance, Discuss’d in Moral and Political Reflections on Marcus Brutus, Who Slew Julius Cæsar in the Senate House, For Assuming the Sovereignty of Rome.

48/ Eden Phillpotts: The Red Redmaynes.

49/ Søren Kierkegaard: Frygt og Bæven. (Fear and Trembling.)

50/ Gustav Meyrink: Der Golem (The Golem).

51/ Henry James: “The Lesson of the Master”; “The Private Life”; “The Figure in the Carpet.” Probably all found in any James short story collection.

52/ Herodotus: Historiai (The Histories).

53/ Juan Rulfo: Pedro Páramo.

54/ Rudyard Kipling: Relatos. Probably The Phantom ‘Rickshaw, And Other Stories.

55/ William Beckford: Vathek.

56/ Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders.

57/ Jean Cocteau: Le Secret professionnel (The Professional Secret). Borges’ list says “y otros textos”; I’ll try to figure out what other texts these are.

58/ Thomas de Quincey: Last Days of Emmanuel Kant, And Other Writings.

59/ Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Prólogo a la obra de Silverio Lanza (“Prologue to the work of Silverio Lanza”). Can’t find an English translation.

60/ Antoine Galland: Les Mil et une nuit, contes Arabes (The Arabian Nights in 4 vols.; scroll down). Galland’s was the first translation of the Arabian Nights, finished in 1717, and was so loosely translated and embellished as to really be Galland’s own book. In 1802 Edward Forster translated Galland’s translation into English. Galland/Forster is family friendly, with all the erotic parts omitted (then famously replaced in Burton’s translation).

61 & 62/ Robert Louis Stevenson: New Arabian Nights; Markheim.

63, 64 & 65/ León Bloy: Le Salut par les Juifs (Salvation through the Jews); Le Sang du pauvre (Blood of the Poor); Dans les ténèbres. I haven’t found an English translation of the last.

66/ Bhagavad Gita.

67/ The Epic of Gilgamesh.

68/ Juan José Arreola: Cuentos fantásticos (“Fantastic Stories”). A compilation of Confabulario, Palindroma, Variaciones sintácticas, Cantos de mal dolor, Prosodia, and La feria. Two English translations of Arreola are available: Confabulario and Other Inventions, an anthology of Varia invención, Confabulario, and Punta de plata; and La feria (The Fair), Arreola’s only novel.

69, 70 & 71/ David Garnett: Lady Into Fox; A Man in the Zoo; The Sailor’s Return.

72/ Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.

73/ Paul Groussac: Crítica literaria (“Literary Criticism”). Can’t find any Groussac in English.

74/ Manuel Mujica Láinez: Los ídolos (“The Idols”). Can’t find it in English.

75/ Juan Ruiz: Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love).

76/ William Blake: The Complete Poems.

77/ Hugh Walpole: Above the Dark Circus.

78/ Ezequiel Martínez Estrada: Obra poética (“Poetical works”). Can’t find any of his poetry translated into English.

79/ Edgar Allan Poe: Tales.

80/ Virgil: The Aeneid.

81/ Voltaire: Candide and Other Stories.

82/ J. W. Dunne: An Experiment with Time.

83/ Attilio Momigliano: Ensayo sobre el Orlando Furioso.

84/ William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.

85/ Snorri Sturluson: Egils Saga.

Some additional useful links:
– The Prologues that Borges wrote for the books. English translations of some of them are to be found in his Selected Non-Fictions.
– A translation of the Personal Library titles into English; this list has some problems so I’m using it as a resource but don’t offer it as a satisfactory list.

My week's reading:

Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin (Le Peau de chagrin). One of Balzac's "Études philosophiques," the frame narrative is about a young man who imprudently purchases in a curiosity shop an oddly lettered parchment of onager skin -- in French, "chagrin," a more successful pun than in English -- which grants his every desire but shrinks every time he so indulges, shortening his life. Naturally this is in fact a novel about Will versus Power and how they connect in the human organism, with a great deal of related philosophizing about love, science, society, etc. Its great lesson is either to discover the true balance in our lives; or that one should not linger in curio shops run by bizarre wizened old French trolls.

Also read this week: John Mortimer's Rumpole and the Golden Thread as a low-brainpower replacement for staring at the glowing rectangle of addiction in the morning; and Molière's The Bourgeois Gentleman (again) for homeschooling discussion.

66. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
67. John Mortimer, Rumpole’s Last Case
68. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
69. David Kessler, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
70. Rupert Brooke, 1914 and Other Poems

Quick review: Even numbers were very good and highly recommended; odd numbers not so much and I rather wish I had that time back.

The Sheltering Sky was so good I made Mr. Crown promise to find me the LoA edition of Bowles’s novels for me for Christmas. If you like travel literature and Existentialism, this is the book for you.

Lying was a re-read that I first read in the '80s after a professor recommended it (not to me personally, ahem). Bok makes a reasoned case for never, or effectively never, lying, even in the situations where we most feel lying is fine. Parts of the book are dated -- nobody cares about Freud now, and Philosophy departments are doing better with the kind of practical ethics Bok discusses in her book -- but her case is reasoned out just as convincingly forty years later. Maybe even more so as the trends toward normalizing of deceit that Bok worries about have only accelerated.

The End of Overeating was a two-page article plumped out into a book. Glad I only paid $2 for it. Salt, sugar, and fat of various unhealthy kinds are layered onto food (or onto corn products) in unhealthy amounts, in a deliberate attempt by the food industry to make us all addicted, and that's why we're fat. There, now you don't even have to spend $2.

Rupert Brooke was yet another gifted young poet sent to die in the trenches, and this slim volume contains every poem he wrote. I'm currently reading The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, another slim volume of the same sort but better known.

Also I'm reading some Kerouac -- The Dharma Bums -- as well as all my other Current Reads. I should really learn the lesson of not trying to read multiple books at one time.

Finished Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. This is Kerouac’s fictionalized account of his trail hiking and hitchhiking with Gary Snyder, who introduced the devoutly Catholic Kerouac to Zen Buddhism. Kerouac, like Thomas Merton in the same period, saw multiple parallels between Zen and Catholicism. Reading The Dharma Bums, though, it’s evident that protagonist Ray Smith’s “Buddhist” prayers and meditations are essentially Catholic — as Kerouac allows Ryder (Snyder) to point out.

I was struck how Kerouac’s presenting his very Catholic spiritual reflections — and this is a deeply spiritual book, possibly the most “religious” novel I’ve read in years — in Buddhist language “alienates” them to the reader; you have to pause to think about what he’s saying and what he means, in a way you might not do if the Ray Smith character were practicing conventional Catholicism. “What makes a person a bodhisattva?” is a more intriguing question that “What makes a person a saint?”, which puts a reader (me, at least) into automatic Catechism mode.

A wonderful book, written of course in Kerouac’s trademark “spontaneous writing” style, beautiful and interesting. I didn’t learn anything about actual Buddhism from this book; but I learned something about mid-century America and its hunger for the radicalism that should be inherent to Christianity but wasn’t.

Excerpt:

Warren Coughlin said “Too bad, he’ll probably disappear into Central Asia marching about on a quiet but steady round from Kashgar to Lanchow via Lhasa with a string of yaks selling popcorn, safety-pins, and assorted colors of sewing-thread and occasionally climb a Himalaya and end up enlightening the Dalai Lama and all the gang for miles around and never be hear of again.”

“No he won’t,” I said, “he loves us too much.”

Alvah said, “It all ends in tears anyway.”

>10 VioletCrown: The Sheltering Sky is a great book.

Of course Brooke did not die in the trenches but on a hospital trip of blood poisoning from an infected mosquito bite on the way to Gallipoli. He hasn't "aged" in the quite the same way as Owen as a poet as Brooke romanticised the war whilst Owen showed its horrors or what he called the pity of war. He did write some memorable lines though.

>12 PaulCranswick: Apologies for my lack of precision; I meant "sent to die in the trenches" in a loose sense of the horrific wastefulness of human life in WWI. I wonder how Brooke's poetry would have changed over the course of the war if he'd lived.

>13 VioletCrown: Oh I am sure that it would have done, he is rather unfairly criticized for his patriotic romanticism but his social class and early death must be taken into due account. There are fewer more beautiful short poems than "The Soldier" and I think with a more jaundiced eye his work would have been startlingly good.

Blame the mosquito that poisoned the blood
Of the poet en route to the Dardanelles
That gained him the early brotherhood
Of all those others who subsequently fell -
Before he could inspect with a more jaundiced view
All that lay piteously ahead for his retinue.

>14 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the lovely bit of verse, Paul!

>15 VioletCrown: Welcome Violet!

I enjoyed discussing Owen / Brooke with you being a bit of a poetry nerd