| Some books that I’ve found interesting
Many serious books contain insightful
modern analyses of love, war, violence, democracy, technology
and the other themes of my Letters. If I listed them,
this would turn this into an undergraduate reading list,
which I don’t suppose you want. So here are a some more
general books which I’ve really enjoyed and you might
also. Obviously you will already know some of them.
*
Often people say profound things in the disguise
of books which appear to be for children. You’ll probably
have read some of the books by J.R.Tolkein on The
Lord of the Rings, and J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter
series C.S.Lewis, Narnia Chronicles and Philip
Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. You will
also find much to think about in whichever of the following
you have not read; A.A.Milne’s books and poetry, especially
the Winnie the Pooh stories, Graham, The Wind
in the Willows and in Rudyard Kipling’s stories,
especially the Just So Stories, the Jungle
Book and Puck of Pook’s Hill. T.H.White’s
Once and Future King, Dodie Smith’s I Capture
the Castle Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Stories, Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry’s, The Little Prince are other
classics which I still enjoy.
Quite close to these are books on mystery, imagination
and the arts of detection. M.R.James’ famous Ghost
Stories, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series
(‘The Four Orange Pips’, ‘The Speckled Band’ are a good
start), G.K.Chesterton’s Father Brown stories
and Edgar Allen Poe’s four ‘Dupin’ stories (including
the Murder at the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Purloined Letter’
and ‘The Gold Bug’).
Obviously there is a great tradition of exploring
the mysteries of human nature in poetry, plays and novels.
Hopefully you will be guided through the heights, from
Chaucer to W.B.Yeats, from Shakespeare onwards. Perhaps
I can just mention two wonderful meditations on the
human condition. One is by the Persian poet Omar Khayam
in his Rubaiyat, exquisitely translated by Fitzgerald.
The other is the source of many of the famous quotations
in the English language, Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on
Man’.
Often writers use fictional journeys through
space to give deep (satirical) insight into this world.
Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice
Through the Looking Glass are famous examples. Others
are Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
The Little Prince, William Golding’s Lord
of the Flies, and Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy,
Often time travellers have a lot to tell us. George
Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,
Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, Thomas More’s Utopia,
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are examples.
Someone who plays with both space and time in intriguing
ways is J.L.Borges in Labyrinths.
Very often, of course, novels are used to explore
the deepest questions of human existence. I will leave
on one side the many famous ones from Richardson, through
Jane Austen, to Dickens and Tolstoy and just mention
three less well known ones. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness
at Noon is one of the great portrayals of communism.
James Hogg’s Memoirs of a Justified Sinner takes
us inside the mind of a religious maniac. Llewellyn
Powys, Love and Death anatomizes love and transience.
There are many autobiographical accounts of deep
experiences. Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, Primo
Levi’s series on concentration camps (especially If
This were a Man and If not now, when?), Carlo
Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli Norman Douglas’
South Wind, all are extraordinary books.
A theme of the Letters is the diversity
of cultures. My favourite analysis of England is by
the Frenchman Hippolyte Taine in Notes Upon England.
The oddness (to the west) of Japan and China are best
summarized in Chamberlain’s Things Japanese,
and J.Dyer Ball’s Things Chinese.
There are numerous books of aphorisms and stories
by philosophers which contain basic insights. Francis
Bacon’s Essays and Aphorisms; La Rochefoucauld’s
Maxims; Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary;
Montaigne’s Essays (these are numerous, those
on ‘Coaches’ ‘Cannibals’ and ‘Friendship’ are a good
start), Sei Sonagon’s Pillow Book is full of
wonderful lists of thoughts from twelfth century Japan.
Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son, Samuel
Butler’s Notebooks Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
are all worth looking at.
There are a number of twentieth century classics
of satire and humour. Joseph Heller’s Catch 22
exposes the absurdity of war, C.Northcote Parkinson’s
Parkinsons’ Law exposes the pressures behind
bureaucracy. A.P.Herbert’s Uncommon Law shows
the ridiculous nature of law, and Simon Potter, the
subtle side of Gamesmanship. Saki’s Collected
Works analyses the pretensions of English life (worth
starting with ‘Sredni Vashtar’), and Jerome K.Jerome’s
Three Men in a Boat, the bizarre nature of everyday
existence. Thinly disguised books on philosophy are
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance’
and Godel, Esher and Bach by Douglas Hofstaddter.
Two recent books which attempt to explain parts
of ‘How our World Works’ are Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s
World and Stephen Law’s The Philosophy Files.
John Gray’s False Dawn and Straw Dogs are
very illuminating, as are various books by A.C.Grayling,
including The Meaning of Things and the recent
book by Bill Bryson on A History of Almost Everything.
Finally just a few books of an academic sort
really open up new worlds. René Descartes, Discourse
on Method will help you solve problems. James Monaco’s
Reading Film is an excellent overview of media,
and Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization
is one of many great books on technology by this author.
Gombrich’s Art and Illusion opened my eyes to
art, and Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy
to culture.
Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft explains
what history is and historians do. Karl Jaspers’ Origins
and Goal of History is an inspiring short summary
of world history, complemented for the early period
by Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, and
at a wider level by A.C.Hocart’s deeply insightful overview
of archaeology and anthropology in The Progress of
Man. Ernest Gellner’s The Conditions of Liberty
is an inspiring short overview, which can be supplemented
on the historical side by Guizot’s magnificent survey
of the origins of modern civilization in his History
of European Civilization. Jules Henry’s Culture
Against Man and R.Dubos’s So Human an Animal
start to fit humans into their biological world.
*
As you will see, this is not a conventional reading
list. Each book has the potential to change the way
you look at and understand the world, to give comfort
and understanding or to de-stabilize what you believe.
Very few of the books are by women. That is because
I’ve excluded most of literature, where books by women
are often the best. Most authors are British, with some
Europeans and one Japanese. Again, a longer list would
contain many others.
All of the suggestions are for books (the full
titles, dates and details are on the internet at amazon.com
or on the second-hand bibliographical site, bookfinder.com;
if you can’t find them there, try Google.com).
They can all be found, and most of them are in paperback.
This is just to give you a few things to start with
which I have found really exciting and interesting.
Books, of course, are only one source. What
about other ways to find out about the world? There
are museums, historic sites, television programs, internet
sites, wonderful films from all over the world. Marvellous
insights occur if you travel with your eyes and ears
open. Above all there are friends, especially friends
whose taste and values you respect and admire.
*
[Others which have been suggested to me while I was
writing these Letters include: Darwin’s Voyage of
the Beagle (Moorhead); Thesiger, Marsh Arabs;
Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek; Johanson, Lucy;
Bertrand Russell – various works; Mark Twain, Huckleberry
Finn etc.; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird;
Marx, Communist Manifesto; Ceram, Gods, Graves
and Scholars; Barrie, Peter Pan; Crick and
Watson, The Double Helix; Salinger, The Catcher
in the Rye]
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