Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Evanston: a future neighbor?; books and authors


        I found the above in my Christmas stocking yesterday, a gift from Carol of a future neighbor, assuming the Hilton Head condo purchase closes as scheduled this Friday.  I say ‘assuming’ because the hoard who get their fingers into such transactions do not live by my precept not to do things at the last minute.  To the contrary.  They seem only to do things at the last minute, and tedious, but significant details keep appearing.

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        A few weeks ago Matt asked for a list of my favorite books of all time.  I have since given that some thought and the result is below .  Some books immediately came to mind.  Some I remembered later.  Some I found on our few remaining bookshelves.  Some by reviewing my list of books read, which goes back eight years.
        There are some perhaps surprising but deliberate omissions, among them WAR AND PEACE, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, MOBY DICK,  Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ernest Hemingway.
        I’ve read WAR AND PEACE three times, but I prefer ANNA KARENINA.
        If I had prepared this list six months ago HUCKLEBERRY FINN would certainly have been included, but I recently reread it and found it to be perhaps two-thirds a great novel—when Huck and Jim are on the river, ruined by the last third or quarter when Tom Sawyer makes his appearance and the book becomes stupidly childish.
        MOBY DICK, too, is uneven.  Part is great, but too much is deadly boring.
        I haven’t read Dostoevsky for decades and, though I recall being impressed by CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, that speaks for itself.  
        I am uncertain about Ernest Hemingway.  Some of his books were good; some terrible.  If I were to include him it would be his collected short stories, A MOVEABLE FEAST and maybe THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.  I just downloaded a Kindle edition of THE OLD MAN to reread and will let you know my opinion when I do.  I very much liked a book titled BY-LINE: ERNEST HEMINGWAY, a collection of his journalism pieces.
       They are in the order in which I thought of them.
        For some prolific authors, many of whose works I admire, such as Conrad, Hardy, Zola,  I arbitrarily picked a few books and then noted ‘others’.  
        For some I’ve suggested various translations.
        Not all are of equal quality.  I’ve included the Aubrey/Maturin and The Last Kingdom series because I enjoyed them, but I don’t remotely think them the equal of the other books on this list.
        If I prepared this list a year from now, it would vary some, but mostly be the same.  These are the books that for me have lasted through the years, now decades.

THE HORSE’S MOUTH   Joyce Cary     
Joseph Conrad  HEART OF DARKNESS; TYPHOON; THE  NIGER OF THE NARCISSIS, others
Thomas Hardy  THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE, others
Emile Zola  DEBACLE;  BEAST IN MAN, others
Honore de Balzac   OLD GORIOT; EUGENIE GRANDET, others
Jose Saramago THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS,  BATHASAR AND BLIMUDA, others   
ILIAD   Homer   trans.  Richard Lattimore, Robert Fagles, Robert Fitzgerald
ODYSSEY  Homer  trans.  Emily Wilson, Robert Fagles 
INFERNO  Dante  trans.  Robert Pinsky
THE ODYSSEY:  A MODERN SEQUEL  Nikos Kazantzakis;  also THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST 
AENEID   Virgil   trans.  Robert Fitzgerald
LUSIADS  Luis de Camoes
THE CIVIL WAR trilogy   Shelby Foote
THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS;  TRUMAN; JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, others David McCullough
PARADE’S END  Ford Madox Ford
SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD  Joshua Slocum
ANNA KARENINA  Leo Tolstoy
A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION  Gustav Flaubert
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT  Erik Maria Remarque
POEMS  William Butler Yeats
POEMS   C.P. Cavafy
POEMS  Fernando Pessoa
THE BOUNTY TRILOGY   Nordhoff and Hall
A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR;  WINTER’S TALE  Mark Helprin  
VOSS ; THE VIVISECTOR  Patrick White
THE WAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD  Mario Vargus Llosa
A SAND COUNTY ALAMANAC   Aldo Leopold
WEST WITH THE NIGHT  Beryl Markham
NIGHT FLIGHT; WIND, SAND AND STARS  Antoine de Saint-Exupery
OUT OF AFRICA  Isak Dinesen
THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS  Erskine Childers
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET   Lawrence Durrell
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE  Kurt Vonnegut
THE STRANGER; THE PLAGUE   Albert Camus
FAR TORTUGA  Peter Matthiessen
DAVID COOPERFIELD   Charles Dickens
REGENERATION TRILOGY  Pat Barker
LIFE AND FATE  Vasily Grossman
HARLAND’S HALF ACRE  David Malouf
MEMOIRS  U. S. Grant
GUNS OF AUGUST  Barbara Tuchman
BY A SLOW RIVER   Philippe Claudel
BIRDSONG  Sebastian Faulks
RAGTIME  E.L. Doctorow
THE DWARF   Par Lagerkvisk
The Aubrey/Maturin novels   Patrick O’Brian
The Last Kingdom novels  Bernard Cornwell