Fifty Books

My wife and I visited our branch library yesterday morning. We were there on other matters but we made sure to stay for awhile. Like bookstores, there is something special about libraries. I could spend hours wandering through the stacks, thumbing through books, searching for just the right title to spend a little time with.

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I make lists. I used to make more list than I do now, but I still make them. They’re helpful. They reduced the chance that I am going to forget something. Like a gallon of milk or head of lettuce. Lists are useful.

There was a series of books published titled The Book of Lists? There were three volumes.  They contained nothing but lists. Lists like:

• Former Jobs of 30 Famous People
• 15 People Who Became Words
• 15 Authors Who Wrote Best-sellers in Prison
• 10 Words You Can’t Pronounce Correctly
• The 15 Most Boring Classics

These were three books packed with all sorts of lists; some interesting and some not so much. Some were very enlightening and others made you scratch your head and ask why. But I have them and I have read them.

So, let’s see. Looking back many years ago, I had thoughts of running away. Things were not quite like I had hoped they’d be and I felt that a change could do me good. Perhaps I am the only who ever had these thoughts. But, maybe not. I thought about what all I could fit into a car and then just take off. No particular destination. Simply turn the car west and strike out on an adventure.

I made some lists. If I could take 50 books with me, what books would they be? That isn’t an easy question to answer. If I could take only 50 albums with me, which fifty would I take? That one was a bit easier. My Beatles and Jethro Tull albums, along with a few classical selections would get me to fifty fairly quick. I would have thrown in some art supplies, a backpack of cloths, the camera, and I’d be on my way.

Of course, I never packed the car and I never headed west. Maybe someday. I looked around trying to find those lists from years ago. I couldn’t find them. It would have been interesting to see if my taste in books changed much over the years. I know my music taste are pretty much the same, although I now enjoy a healthy diet of classical music. I have also grown fond of motion picture soundtracks. 

But thinking about books. If I had to choose fifty books now, I don’t know if they would be much different now from the ones I would have picked then. In fact, I have even started the exercise of choosing what would be my fifty titles. The list isn’t complete but I think I’ve made a good beginning.

1. The Bible
2. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
3. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
4. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
5. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
6. Complete Works by William Shakespeare
7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
8. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
11. The Lord of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
12. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
13. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
14. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
15. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
16. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
17. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
18. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
20. A Treasury of the Worlds Great Diaries edited by Phillip Dunaway and Mel Evans
21. The Oxford Companion to Music edited by Alison Latham
22. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
23. Curtain by Agatha Christie
24. ...
25. ...

You can see I have a few books to go. As I complete the list I imagine a few other Maugham and Hemingway works will be added. Perhaps a few more anthologies would be nice as would a couple of volumes of history.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I cannot live without books.” Oscar Wilde noted that “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

I suppose this paints one picture of my life. I cannot imagine a home without books. I cannot imagine a world without books. And books, to me, are like a wonderful pieces of music; they deserve to be savored again and again. Thus, most of the books on my list, I’ve already read at least once. But I would not dare be without them in the event I want to read them again. That is why they are there. In books, there is life.

Think on what Gustave Flaubert said, “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

~ Greg

Friends, what are your favorite books? Care to recommend one or two for my list?