Words, Words, Words
Nov. 18th, 2023 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo A personal library is a tendentious self portrait.
What it doesn't contain is as revealing as what it does. I tell myself I love Agatha Christie but if I was really passionate about her I'd own some of her books, wouldn't I?
A guy I once knew said a glance at a person's bookshelves would tell you exactly when they stopped thinking. I check mine every so often for signs that this may have happened to me.
I have no Darwin, no Marx, no Freud- nor commentators thereupon- but quite a lot of Jung. I have no Orwell- he creeps me out- and the only Huxleys I possess are a book of art criticism and The Perennial Philosophy. There's very little academic stuff. I admit John Buchan but not Ian Fleming. There's a lot of poetry, mostly 19th and 20th century.
I have more books by G.K. Chesterton than anyone else. This reflects who I was forty years ago rather than who I am now.
Next comes Dickens. I have a set of the collected works. Neck and neck with Dickens is Thomas de Quincey. I have read nearly all of Dickens but will confess that my reading of de Quincey has been rather more selective.
After Dickens and de Quincey comes Rudyard Kipling- an abiding love. That there are more Chestertons than Kiplings has to do with Chesterton publishing many more books in the course of an insanely prolific career.
Next up are de la Mare, H. G. Wells and- a bit of a surprise this- Joan Grant. I think I may have a copy of everything Grant ever published.
The most recent additions to the collection are books by Alice Munro, Michael Moorcock and Imogen Hermes Gowar- all living authors. They reassure me that I'm no deid yet....
What it doesn't contain is as revealing as what it does. I tell myself I love Agatha Christie but if I was really passionate about her I'd own some of her books, wouldn't I?
A guy I once knew said a glance at a person's bookshelves would tell you exactly when they stopped thinking. I check mine every so often for signs that this may have happened to me.
I have no Darwin, no Marx, no Freud- nor commentators thereupon- but quite a lot of Jung. I have no Orwell- he creeps me out- and the only Huxleys I possess are a book of art criticism and The Perennial Philosophy. There's very little academic stuff. I admit John Buchan but not Ian Fleming. There's a lot of poetry, mostly 19th and 20th century.
I have more books by G.K. Chesterton than anyone else. This reflects who I was forty years ago rather than who I am now.
Next comes Dickens. I have a set of the collected works. Neck and neck with Dickens is Thomas de Quincey. I have read nearly all of Dickens but will confess that my reading of de Quincey has been rather more selective.
After Dickens and de Quincey comes Rudyard Kipling- an abiding love. That there are more Chestertons than Kiplings has to do with Chesterton publishing many more books in the course of an insanely prolific career.
Next up are de la Mare, H. G. Wells and- a bit of a surprise this- Joan Grant. I think I may have a copy of everything Grant ever published.
The most recent additions to the collection are books by Alice Munro, Michael Moorcock and Imogen Hermes Gowar- all living authors. They reassure me that I'm no deid yet....
no subject
Date: 2023-11-18 06:21 pm (UTC)