Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested. – Francis Bacon
You are what you eat. How’s your nutrition these days?
Currently on my Library Table (and often piled next to my bed):
- Leo Gurko, Josheph Conrad, Giant in Exile – literary biography
- Ursula King, Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin
- William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” - Barbara Tuchman, Author of The Guns of August
Favorite Authors (no particular order):
- Joseph Conrad
- E. M. Forster
- C. S. Lewis
- Bertrand Russell
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Giambattista Vico
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Stefan Zweig
- Mór Jókai
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal
- G. B. Shaw
- Charles Dickens
- Barbara Tuchman
- Robert Wohl
- Patrick Leigh Fermor
- Milan Kundera
- Jonathan Raban
- Ernest Hemingway
- Christopher Hitchens
- Michael Arlen
- Oscar Wilde
- Mark Slouka
- Markus Zusak
- Kevin Baker
Reference Library:
No dining room is complete without a reference library. - Patrick Leigh Fermor
- The Great Books – Mortimer Adler and Britannica’s great gift to English-reading humanity.
- The Oxford English Dictionary (20 Volume Set) (Vols 1-20) – I have the Compact edition which I got for $2 at a rummage sale.
- Britannica Encyclopedia – Yes, the books. Nothing gets me started on a new subject like sitting down with a cup of tea and a volume of this old friend.
- Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia 5e: Fifth Edition – A wonderful tool to help make sense of literary references in your reading. Who was that Greek goddess? What was theme of that Ibsen play?
Teaching Tools:
Heritage History compact library of old historical books for young readers – all on CD with beauitful old illustrations ready to read on-screen or to print. A huge resource of accessible, excellent material for young historians in the making.
Lovely quotes about books:
A room without books is like a body without a soul. – Cicero
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. - Albert Camus
There is no frigate like a book, To take us lands away. – Emily Dickinson
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. – John Ruskin
A book worth reading is worth buying. – John Ruskin
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. – Katharine Mansfield
In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. – Mortimer Adler
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. – Mortimer Adler
If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess. – Mortimer Adler
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas—a place where history comes to life. – Norman Cousins
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty. – Theodore Parker