one thousand books - Christopher K Starr Homepage

Christopher K. Starr
ONE
THOUSAND
BOOKS
Zardhenge, Ohio
2007
Cover illustration: The Bookworm by Carl Spitzweg (1850)
CONTENTS
Introduction ....................................................................................... 3
Books I Would Like to Read ..................................................................... 5
Books I'm Glad I Read ........................................................................... 31
1
2
INTRODUCTION
Like modern people everywhere, I am enchanted by the written word. I regard books as a
thing of wonder. Quite a number of famous writers, in an unabashed display or modernity,
have seen fit to share with us the books that have meant much to them, and we thank
them for it. I have perused those of Jorge Luis Borges (1961), Henry Miller (1952) and John
Cowper Powys (1916), with interest and delectation.
It has occurred to me that a very few people might care to see that my own booklist
would look like. Going a step beyond Borges, Miller and Powys, I have listed those books
that I have not yet read but would like to (Part 1), as well as those that I can recall having
read with appreciation (Part 2). To be sure, some of the books that I think I want to read
will almost certainly turn out to be foolish choices when I get to them, but no matter.
Unlike the three aforementioned luminaries, I have no literary reputation to lose. Each
part lists about 1000 books.
Where a particular volume has an english version, this title is given first. If it has an
alternative english title or (more often) if the original title is in another modern language
that uses roman script, this follows in square brackets. Whether I read a particular book in
English or another language is irrelevant.
Following the title is the date of composition or publication. A bracketed date
indicates that publication (usually posthumous) was long after the work was written.
And in a few cases I have favoured the reader with my own opinionated comments.
What use should you make of this book? Well, anything you please, really. Anyone
wishing to psychoanalyze me -- a dirty job, but for all I know someone may want to
undertake it -- will find plenty of data in these pages, I have no doubt. This list is not
exactly a set of recommendations, but a young person looking for suggestions on what to
read might very well derive some profit from it. Without claiming to understand the minds
of librarians, it occurs to me that some might find some professional value here. After all,
these are the thoughts of one who has been reading books almost constantly for 50 years
and serious grown-up fare for more than 40 years. Finally, I am mindful that some of you
like to have cookouts, and these pages, once printed, will burn, so at the very least I can
help you to get the barbecue up and burning.
References
Borges, J.L. 1961. Biblioteca Personal. Madrid: Alianza 173 pp.
Miller, H. 1952. The Books in My Life. New York: New Directions 316 pp.
Powys, J.C. 1916. One Hundred Best Books. New York: G.A. Shaw 73 pp.
3
4
Part 1.
BOOKS I WOULD LIKE TO READ
This is not exactly a list of those books that I definitely want to read. Rather, it is those
that I think I will want to read when I get the chance. As often happens, one eagerly
looks forward to reading something, based on what one has heard, what one has already
read by the author, or maybe just because the topic sounds so cool, only to find the
book an utter disappointment. (The Lord of the Rings springs readily to mind; what a
letdown.)
In addition, even if an especially prolific author's books are uniformly good, one may
not have appetite for more than a few of them. For example, I have a strong
appreciation of H.P. Lovecraft and would very much like to get acquainted with Jules
Verne, but do I really want to read more than three or four books by either one?
With those cautions in account, I would be happy to have any of the following
volumes in my hands. Will I ever, in fact, read them? Yes, most of them, unless I get
hit by a bus tomorrow.
Author(s) unknown. The Domesday Book. 1087.
Egil's Saga. c.1220-1240.
Golden Lotus. 16th century.
My Secret Life. 1966.
Das Niebelungenlied. c.1200.
Njál's Saga. [The Story of Burnt Njál.] 13th century.
Saga of Eric the Red. prob. 13th century.
Viga-Glum's Saga. c.13th century. Let's face it, I can never pass up an epic.
Edward Abbey. The Monkey Wrench Gang. 1975.
Jack Henry Abbott. In the Belly of the Beast. 1981.
Pierre Abélard. The Story of My Misfortunes. [Historia Calamitatum.] c. 1140.
Roger Abrahams. Deep Down in the Jungle. 1964.
Octavio Aceves. Siete Vidas Esotéricas. date?
José de Acosta. Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias. 1588.
Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams: An Autobiography. (1985.) If it hadn't been for Adams, I
might not have seen what an elegant and high-minded colour grey is.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon. The Bridal Canopy. 1967.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Rashômon. 1915.
The Spider's Thread. 1918.
In a Grove. 1921.
The Man of the West. 1927.
Chris Albertson. Bessie. 1972.
John R. Alden. A History of the American Revolution. 1969.
Ciro Alegría. Gabriela Mistral Intima. 1968.
Ciro Alegría. Siete Cuentos Quirománticos. (1978.)
Sarane Alexandrian. Marcel Duchamp. 1976.
5
Abdul Alhazred. The Necronomicon. Date unknown. Described by H.P. Lovecraft as
"the ghastly soul-destroying symbol of the forbidden corpse-eating cult of
inaccessibility in Central Asia", the nonexistence of this book is cause for regret.
Tariq Ali. Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope. 2006.
Dante Alighieri. The New Life. [La Vita Nuova.] 1294.
Saul Alinsky. Reveille for Radicals. 1946.
Rules for Radicals. 1971.
Gay Wilson Allen. The Solitary Singer. 1955. About Walt Whitman.
Isabel Allende. Eva Luna. [Cuentos de Eva Luna.] 1990.
Aphrodite. [Afrodita.] 1997.
Dorothy Allison. Bastard Out of Carolina. 1992.
Kenneth Allsop. Hard Travellin'. 1967.
Roald Amundsen. The South Pole. 1913.
Jon Lee Anderson. Che Guevara. 1997.
Roy Chapman Andrews. Ends of the Earth. 1929.
Roy Chapman Andrews & Yvette Borup Andrews. Camps and Trails in China. 1918.
Maisie Angus & Travers McNeice. Lion Children. 2001.
Michael Anthony. Green Days by the River. 1967.
Cricket in the Road. 1973.
Guillaume Apollinaire. Calligrammes. 1915.
Le Poète Assassiné. 1915.
Les Mamelles de Tirésias. 1917.
Herbert Aptheker. American Negro Slave Revolts. 1943.
Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion. 1966.
Louis Aragon. Le Paysan de Paris. 1926.
Les Beaux Quartiers. 1936.
Holy Week. [La Semaine Sainte.] 1958.
Francisco Aranda. Luis Buñuel: A Critical Biography. [Luis Buñuel: Biografía Crítica.]
1969.
Alonso de Arcilla. La Araucana. 16th century. An epic about the war between Lautaro
and Pedro de Valdivia.
Hannah Arendt. On Revolution. 1963.
Ludwig Achim von Arnim. Tröst, Einsamkeit, alte und neue Sagen und Wahrsagungen,
Geschichte und Gedichte. 1808.
Der Wintergarten. 1809.
Armuth, Reichthum, Schuld und Busse der Gräfin Dolores. 1810.
Die Kronenwächter. 1817.
Der tolle Invalide auf dem Fort Ratonneau. 1818.
Landhausleben. 1826.
Juan José Arreola. Mujeres, Animales y Fantasías Mecánicas. 1972.
Narrativa Completa. 1997.
Tres Días y un Cenícero, y Otros Cuentos. 2000.
Muhammad Asad. The Road to Mecca. 1954.
6
Dore Ashton. A Joseph Cornell Album. 1974.
St Augustine. Confessions. 397.
François V.A. Aulard. The French Revolution: A Political History, 1789-1804. [Histoire
Politique de la Révolution Française.] 1901.
Kofi Awoonor. The Breast of the Earth. 1975.
Ride Me, Memory. 1973.
Liyana Badr. A Balcony over the Fakihani. 1985.
Gaston Bachelard. Lautréamont. 1939.
The Psychoanalysis of Fire. [Psychanalyse du Feu.] 1964.
The Poetics of Space. [Poétique de l'Espace.] c.1964.
Mikhail A. Bakunin. God and the State. 1871.
Statism and Anarchy. 1873.
Anna Balakian. Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute. 1959.
André Breton, Magus of Surrealism. 1971.
James Baldwin. Another Country. 1962.
Blues for Mister Charlie. 1964.
Going to Meet the Man. 1965.
Tell me How Long the Train's Been Gone. 1968.
Hugo Ball. Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary. [Flucht aus der Zeit.] 1927.
J.G. Ballard. Empire of the Sun. 1984. The young Ballard was never the same after
that. Made into a fine movie starring Christian Bale.
Honoré de Balzac. Louis Lambert. 1832-1833.
Eugénie Grandet. 1833.
Joseph Banks. Journal of the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks during Captain Cook's First
Voyage in HMS Endeavour in 1768-71. (1896).
Imamu Amiri Baraka. Black Music. 1967.
W.N.P. Barbellion (Bruce F. Cummings). The Journal of a Disappointed Man. 1919.
W.H. Barrett. Tales of the Fens (1963) and More Tales of the Fens (1964).
Christine Barrows (ed.). And I Remember Things. 1992.
John Barth. The Sot-Weed Factor. 1960.
J.R. Bartholomew. The Formation of Science in Japan. 1990.
Roy F. Barton. The Half-Way Sun. 1930.
Philippine Pagans: The Autobiographies of Three Ifugaos. 1938.
William Bartram. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West
Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or
Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws. 1791.
Jacques Barzun. Darwin, Marx, Wagner; Critique of a Heritage. 1941.
Thomas A. Bass. Camping with the Prince, and Other Tales of Science in Africa. 1990.
Georges Bataille. Guilty. [Coupable.] 1944.
H.E. Bates. Through the Woods. 1936. Wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker.
Presumably a sequel to Down the River.
Marston Bates. Gluttons and Libertines. 1967.
7
Charles Baudelaire. Artificial Paradise. [Paradis Artificiels.] 1860.
Paris Spleen. [Le Spleen de Paris.] 1869.
J.C. Beaglehole. The Exploration of the Pacific. 1934.
Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex. [Le Deuxième Sexe.] 1949.
The Mandarins. [Les Mandarins.] 1954.
Robert Beck. Pimp: The Story of My Life. 1967.
Death Wish. 1977.
Airtight Willie and Me. 1979.
Heribert Becker, Edouard Jaguer & Petr Kral (eds.). Das surrealistische Gedicht. 1985.
Hilary McD. Beckles. Natural Rebels. 1989.
John Beecher. To Live and Die in Dixie, and Other Poems. 1966.
Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai). The August Sleepwalker. 1990.
Waves. 1990.
Hilaire Belloc. The Bad Child's Book of Beasts. 1923.
More Beasts for Worse Children. 1923.
A Moral Alphabet. 1932.
Ruth Benedict. Patterns of Culture. 1934.
Walter Benjamin.
Berlin Childhood around 1900. [Berliner Kindheit um
Neunzehnhundert.] (1950.)
Illuminations. [Illuminationen.] (1968.)
Moscow Diary. [Moskauer Tagebuch.] (1980.)
Klaas van Berkel. Citaten uit het Boek der Natuur. 1998.
John D. Bernal. The Freedom of Necessity. 1949.
Ludwig van Bertalanffy. Problems of Life. 1952.
Bruno Bettelheim. Surviving, and Other Essays. 1979.
Adam Biro & René Passeron, eds. Dictionnaire Général du Surréalisme et de ses
Environs. 1982.
Chiraumanie Bissundyal. Whom the Kisdakees Call. 1994.
William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. c.1793.
Songs of Innocence and Experience. 1794.
Benjamin Paul Blood. The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy. 1874.
Pluriverse: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pluralism. (1920).
Heinrich Böll. The Train was on Time. [Der Zug war pünktlich.] 1949.
Traveler, if You Come to Spa. [Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ....] 1950.
Irish Journal. [Irisches Tagebuch.] 1957.
Arna Bontemps. Great Slave Narratives. 1969.
Lonesome Boy. 1955.
Jorge Luis Borges. A Universal History of Infamy. [Historia Universal de la Infamia.]
1935.
The Garden of Forking Paths. [El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan.] 1941.
A Handbook of Fantastic Zoology. [Manual de Zoología Fantástica.] 1957.
Dreamtigers. [El Hacedor]. 1960.
Kenneth Boulding. Ecodynamics. 1978.
8
L. Boulnois. The Silk Road. 1966.
Robert Boyle. Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things. 1688.
Brassaï. Conversations with Picasso. [Conversations avec Picasso.] 1964.
André Breton. Earth Light. [Claire de Terre.] 1923.
The Lost Steps. [Les Pas Perdus.] 1924.
The Revolver Has White Hair. [Le Revolver à Cheveux Blancs.] 1932.
The Air and the Water. [L'Air de l'Eau.] 1934.
Arcane 17. 1941.
Martinique, Charmeuse de Serpents. 1948.
Free Rein. [La Clé des Temps.] 1953.
André Breton & Paul Eluard. Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme. 1938.
André Breton & Philippe Soupault. Magnetic Fields. [Les Champs Magnetiques.] 1919.
Breyten Breytenbach. The autobiographical trilogy comprising A Season in Paradise
(1980), True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1983) and Return to Paradise
(1992).
E. Lucas Bridges. Uttermost Part of the Earth. 1948.
Carl Brinitzer. A Reasonable Rebel, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. [Die Geschichte eines
gescheiten Mannes.] 1956.
Max Brod. The Redemption of Tycho Brahe. [Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott.] 1915.
Thomas Browne. Pseudoxia Epidemica. 1646. The title means "A Plethora of False
Truths".
Carmen Bruna. Melusina, o la Búsqueda del Amor Extraviado. 1993.
Barry Brundell. Pierre Gassendi: From Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy.
1987.
N.I. Bukharin & E.A. Preobrazhensky. The ABC of Communism. 1919.
Vladimir Bukovsky. To Build a Castle - My Life as a Dissenter. 1979.
Mikahil Bulgakov. The White Guard. 1969.
Luis Buñuel. My Last Sigh. [Mon Dernier Soupir.] 1982.
Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange. 1963.
Gelett Burgess. The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne. 1904.
Titus Burkhardt. Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. 1967.
William S. Burroughs. The Soft Machine. 1961.
The Ticket that Exploded. 1962.
Nova Express. 1964.
J.N. Douglas Bush. Science and English Poetry. 1950.
Richard E. Byrd. Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure. 1938.
Pierre Cabanne. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. [Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp.]
1967.
James Branch Cabell. The High Place; a Comedy of Disenchantment. 1923.
The Silver Stallion; a Comedy of Redemption. 1926. Characterized by J.B.S.
Haldane as "that most indecent, blasphemous and amusing book."
The Cream of the Jest; a Comedy of Evasions. 1927.
9
Ladies and Gentlemen; a Parcel of Reconsiderations. 1934.
The King was in His Counting-House; a Comedy of Common-Sense. 1938.
Hamlet Had an Uncle; a Comedy of Honor. 1940.
The Devil's Own Dear Son; a Comedy of the Fatted Calf. 1949.
Roger Caillois. The Necessity of Mind. [Nécessité de l'Esprit.] 1981.
Italo Calvino. Difficult Loves. [Amori Difficili.] 1970.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. [Se una Notte d'Inverno un Viaggiatore.] 1979.
Invisible Cities. [Città Invisibili.] 1972.
Camara Laye. The Radiance of the King. [Le Regard du Roi.] 1954.
The Guardian of the Word. [Le Maître de la Parole.] 1978.
Hazel D. Campbell. Singerman. 1992.
Horace Campbell. Rasta and Resistance. 1985.
Andreas Capellanus. The Art of Courtly Love. [De Arte Honeste Amandi.] Late 12th
century.
Alejo Carpentier. The Kingdom of This World. [El Reino de Este Mundo.] 1949.
The Lost Steps. [Los Pasos Perdidos.] 1953.
Explosion in a Cathedral. [El Siglo de las Luces.] 1962.
Reasons of State. [Recurso del Método.] 1974.
Consagración de la Primavera. 1978.
Leonora Carrington. The Oval Lady. 1975.
The Hearing Trumpet. 1976.
The Stone Door. 1977.
The Seventh Horse, and Other Tales. 1988.
Constantine P. Cavafy (K.P. Kabaphes). Collected Poems. (1963).
Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Journey to the End of Night. [Voyage au Bout de la Nuit.]
1932.
Blaise Cendrars. Sutter's Gold. [L'Or.] 1925.
Frank M. Chapman. My Tropical Air Castle. 1929.
René Char. Le Nu Perdu. 1971.
Erwin Chargaff. Heraclitean Fire: Sketches of a Life Before Nature. 1978.
Serious Questions: An ABC of Skeptical Reflections. 1986.
Samuel B. Charters. The Blues Makers. 1991.
Paddy Chayevsky. Altered States. 1978.
Malcolm de Chazal. Plastic Sense. [Sens Plastique.] 1945, 1947.
Aggenèse; ou, Révélation de la Nuit. 1951
La Clef du Cosmos. 1951.
Magical Sense. [Sens Magique.] 1959.
G.K. Cherrie. Dark Trails: Adventures of a Naturalist. 1930.
John Chilton. Billie's Blues. 1975.
Alfred Cobban. A History of Modern France. 1957.
J.M. Coetzee. In the Heart of the Country. 1977.
Foe. 1986.
Alex Comfort. Darwin and the Naked Lady. 1961.
10
Barbarism and Sexual Freedom. 1977.
Théophile Conneau (Théodore Canot). Adventures of an African Slaver. [Vingt Ans de la
Vie d'un Négrier.] 1850.
Bruce Cook. Listen to the Blues. 1973.
Harold Courlander. The Drum and the Hoe. 1960.
H.G. Creel. The Birth of China. 1937.
René Crevel. Le Clavecin de Diderot. 1932.
Les Pieds dans le Plat. 1933.
Benedetto Croce. History as the Story of Liberty. [Storia come Pensiero e come
Azione.] c.1941.
Aleister Crowley. Aceldama, a Place to Bury Strangers in. 1898.
Gargoyles: Being Strangely Wrought Images of Life and Death. 1906.
Diary of a Drug Fiend. 1922.
Harold Cruse. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. 1967.
H. Cuny. Ivan Pavlov, the Man and His Theories. 1965.
Eberhard Curio. The Ethology of Predation. 1976.
Salvador Dalí. Conquest of the Irrational. [La Conquête de l'Irrationel.] 1935.
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. [Vie Secrète de Salvador Dalí.] 1942.
Diary of a Genius. [Journal d'un Génie.] 1964.
The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí. [Comment On Devient Dalí.] 1973.
William Dampier. A New Voyage Round the World. 1697.
Helen Oakley Dance. Stormy Monday: The T-Bone Walker Story. 1987.
Gabriele D'Annunzio. The Triumph of Death. [Il Trionfo della Morte.] 1894.
The Flame of Life. [Il Fuoco.] 1900. I freely confess that it is quite distressing how
many titles by fascist sympathizers appear on this list. It is enough to make one
suspicious of oneself.
Erasmus Darwin. Zoonomia. 1796.
René Daumal. A Night of Serious Drinking. [La Grande Beuverie.] 1939.
Elizabeth Gould Davis. The First Sex.
J. Philip Davis & Reuben Hersh. The Mathematical Experience. 1980.
Wade Davis. Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. 1988.
Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion. 2006.
Joan Dayan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. 1995.
Régis Debray. Che's Guerilla War. [La Guerilla du Che.] 1974.
Undesirable Alien. [Indésirable.] 1975.
Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1722.
Carlos Esteban Deive. Vodú y Magia en Santo Domingo. 1975.
Vincent G. Dethier. Man's Plague? Insects and Agriculture. 1976.
Stanley Diamond. In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization. 1974.
Philip K. Dick. Time out of Joint. 1959.
Counter-Clock World. 1967.
A Scanner Darkly. 1977.
Valis. 1981.
11
Charles Dickens. Bleak House. 1853.
Herbert Spencer Dickey. My Jungle Book. 1932.
Denis Diderot. Pensées Philsophiques. 1746.
Jacques the Fatalist. [Jacques le Fataliste.] 1771.
Kunikida Doppo. River Mist, and Other Stories. (1982.)
J.C. Dorsainvil. Vodou et Névrose. 1931.
Vodou et Magie. 1937.
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Memoirs from the House of Death. 1862.
Notes from Underground. 1864.
Crime and Punishment. 1866.
Charles M. Doughty. Travels in Arabia Deserta. 1888.
Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom. 1855.
Richard Drinnon. Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman. 1961.
Shirley Graham DuBois. There was Once a Slave. 1974.
W.E.B. DuBois. John Brown. 1909.
Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. 1920.
Marcel Duchamp. Salt Seller. [Marchand du Sel, Ecrits de Marcel Duchamp.] 1958.
Entretiens. 1966.
Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany. If I were Dictator. 1934.
Jean-Pierre Duprey. La Forêt Sacrilège. (1964.)
Lawrence Durrell. The Black Book. 1938.
The Avignon Quintet, comprising Monsieur: or: The Prince of Darkness (1974), Livia:
or, Buried Alive (1978), Constance: or, Solitary Practices (1982), Sebastian: or,
Ruling Passions (1983) and Quinx: or, the Ripper's Tale (1985).
José María Eça-de-Queiroz. O Mandarim. 1880.
Umberto Eco. The Island of the Day Before. [L'Isola del Giorno Prima.] 1994.
Lyford Edward. The Natural History of Revolution. 1927.
Tickner Edwardes. An Idler in the Wilds. 1906.
Loren C. Eiseley. The Invisible Pyramid. 1970.
Notes of an Alchemist. 1972.
The Man Who Saw through Time. 1973.
Another Kind of Autumn. 1977.
The Star Thrower. 1979.
Robert Eisler. Man into Wolf, an Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism
and Lycanthropy. 1951.
Cyprian Ekwensi. People of the City. 1954.
Burning Grass. 1962.
Beautiful Feathers. 1963.
Mircea Eliade. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. [Le Mythe de
l'Eternel Retour.] 1949.
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. [Le Chamanisme et les Techniques
Archaïques de l'Extase.] 1951.
12
Havelock Ellis. My Life: Autobiography of Havelock Ellis. 1939.
Walter M. Elsasser. The Chief Abstractions of Biology. 1975.
Friedrich Engels. The Peasant War in Germany. [Der deutsche Bauernkrieg.] 1850.
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. [Ludwig Feuerbach
und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie.] 1886.
Erik H. Erikson. Young Man Luther. 1958.
Max Ernst. The Hundred Headless Woman. [La Femme 100 Têtes.] 1929.
Sergei Esenin. Confessions of a Hooligan. 1920.
Graeme Ewens. Africa O-Ye! 1992.
Antoine Fabre-d'Olivet. Azalaïs et le Gentil Aimar. 1798.
Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social State of Man and the Destiny
of the Adamic Race. [Histoire Philosophique du Genre Humain.] 1824.
D.O. Fagunwa. The Forest of a Thousand Demons. (1968).
Howard Fast. Citizen Tom Paine. 1943.
William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. 1929.
Absalom, Absalom. 1936.
Edoardo Fazzioli. Chinese Calligraphy from Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214
Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters. 1986.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Pictures of the Gone World. 1955.
Starting from San Francisco. 1961.
Back Roads to Far Places. 1971.
Open Eye, Open Heart. 1973.
Landscapes of Living and Dying. 1979.
Rosario Ferré. La Mona que le Pisaron la Cola. 1981.
William Ferris. Blues from the Delta. 1970.
Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity. [Das Wesen des Christentums.] 1841.
Richard P. Feynman. What Do You Care What Other People Think? 1988.
Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones. 1749.
Julio Finn. The Bluesman. 1986.
Otto Flake. Ja und Nein. 1920.
Charles Fort. The Book of the Damned. 1919.
New Lands. 1923.
Lo! 1931.
Wild Talents. 1932.
Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. [Histoire de la Folie à l'Age Classique.]
1961.
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. [Les Mots et les
Choses.] 1966.
The Archeology of Knowledge. [Archéologie du Savoir.] 1969.
I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother .... [Moi,
Pierre Rivière, Ayant Egorgé Ma Mère, Ma Soeur et Mon Frère ....] 1973.
Margaret Fountaine. Butterflies and Late Loves. (1987.)
13
Charles Fourier. Design for Utopia. (1971.)
Vers la Liberté en Amour. (1975.)
James George Frazer. Totemism and Exogamy. 1910.
Folklore in the Old Testament. 1918.
Peter Freuchen. Vagrant Viking: My Life and Adventures. 1953.
Anna Freud. Difficulties in the Path of Psychoanalysis. 1969.
Sigmund Freud. Five Lectures on Pyschoanalysis. 1910.
Totem and Taboo. [Totem und Tabu.] 1913.
On the History of the Psychoanalytical Movement. [Zur Geschichte der
psychoanalytischen Bewegung.] 1914.
Civilization and its Discontents. [Das Unbehagen in her Kultur.] 1929.
Erich Fromm. Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud. 1962.
Carlos Fuentes. The Death of Artemio Cruz. [La Muerte de Artemio Cruz.] 1962.
Old Gringo. [Gringo Viejo.] 1985.
The Buried Mirror. [El Espejo Enterrado.] 1992.
The Crystal Frontier. [La Frontera de Cristal.] 1997.
Kanesuke Fujiwara (Fujiwara no Kanesuke). The Lady Who Loved Insects. (1929.)
Thomas Gage. A New Survey of the West Indies. 1648.
Rómulo Gallegos. La Rebelión y Otros Cuentos. 1922.
Doña Bárbara. 1929.
Gao Xingjian. Soul Mountain. 2001.
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather. 2004.
Gabriel García-Márquez. Leafstorm. [La Hojarasca.] 1955.
In Evil Hour. [La Mala Hora.] 1961.
Big Mama's Funeral. [Los Funerales de la Mamá Grande.] 1962.
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. [Relato de un Náufrago ....] 1970.
Innocent Eréndira, and Other Stories. [La Increíble y Triste Historia de la Cándida
Eréndira y de Su Abuelo Desalmada: Siete Cuentos.] 1972.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold. [Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada.] 1981.
The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow. [El Rastro de Tu Sangre en la Nieve.] 1982.
Love in the Time of Cholera. [El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera.] 1985.
Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín. [La Aventura de Miguel
Littín, Clandestino en Chile.] 1986.
Samuel R. Gardiner. The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648. 1874.
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14
H.A.R. Gibbs (tr.). Ibn Battutta. 1929.
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Günther Grass. The Tin Drum. [Die Blechtrommel.] 1959.
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Robert Graves. Claudius the God. 1934.
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Nada the Lily. 1892.
The People in the Mist. 1894.
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15
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The Age of the Rainmakers. 1971.
Black Marsden. 1972.
The Eye of the Scarecrow. 1974.
Companions of the Day and Night. 1975.
The Tree of the Sun. 1978.
Max Harrison. Charlie Parker. 1960.
Jacquetta Hawkes. Man on Earth. 1954.
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Stephen Hawking. A Brief History of Time. 1987.
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Nat Hentoff. The Jazz Life. 1961.
Heraclitus. Cosmic Fragments. c.-500.
Karl H. Hering & Ewalld Rathke (eds.). Dada: Dokumente einer Bewegung. 1958 (1968).
John Hersey. The Wall. 1950.
Melville J. Herskovits. Rebel Destiny. 1934.
Life in a Haitian Valley. 1937.
Dahomey. 1938.
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16
Fernand Hibbert. Le Manuscript de Mon Ami. 1988.
Christopher Hill. Lenin and the Russian Revolution. 1947.
Puritanism and Revolution. 1958.
The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. 1961.
Chester B. Himes. Cast the First Stone. 1952.
Pinktoes. 1961.
A Rage in Harlem. 1965.
The Heat's On. 1966.
Run, Man, Run. 1966.
The Real Cool Killers. 1969.
Abbie Hoffman. Steal This Book. 1971.
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Albert Hofmann. LSD - My Problem Child. [LSD, mein Sorgenkind.] 1979.
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Robert Hooke. Micrographia. 1665.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus). The odes. -23 to -13.
Nick Hornby. Fever Pitch. 1994.
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The Land's End. 1908.
A Shepherd's Life. 1910.
The Book of a Naturalist. 1919.
A Hind in Richmond Park. 1922.
The Book of Nature. 1923.
Richard Huelsenbeck. Dada Almanach. 1920.
Deutschland muss untergehen! 1920. Wonderful title; if Huelsenbeck had been
English he would surely have called it "God Strafe the Queen."
En Avant Dada: eine Geschichte des Dadaismus. 1920.
Memoirs of a Dada Drummer. [Mit Witz, Licht und Grütze.] 1957.
Dada; eine literarische Dokumentation. 1964.
Langston Hughes. The Big Sea. 1941.
I Wonder as I Wander. 1956.
Langston Hughes & Arna Bontemps. The Book of Negro Folklore. 1958.
Georges Hugnet. Aventure Dada, 1916-1922. 1957.
Zora Neale Hurston. Home to Harlem. 1928.
Mules and Men. 1935.
Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937.
Tell My Horse. 1938.
Vodoun Gods. 1939.
Alfred Hutchinson. Road to Ghana. 1960.
Elspeth Huxley. Red Strangers. 1939.
Francis Huxley. The Invisibles: Voodoo Gods in Haiti. 1966.
17
Stanley Edgar Hyman. The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud and
Imaginative Writers. 1966.
Yûsuf Idrîs. Rings of Burnished Brass. 1969.
Cheapest Nights, and Other Stories. 1978.
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H. Larry Ingle. First Among Friends. 1994
Eugene Ionesco. Rhinoceros. [Le Rhinocéros.] 1960.
Jonathan I. Israel. The Dutch Republic. 1995.
Iyyubh (Job) of Edessa. Book of Treasures. Early 8th century.
Zia Jaffrey. The Invisibles. 1996.
C.L.R. James. The Life of Captain Cipriani. 1932.
Notes on Dialectics. 1965.
Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. 1977.
Selected writings, comprising The Future in the Present (1977), Spheres of
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Alfred Jarry. King Turd, comprising Ubu Roi (1896), Ubu Cocu (1896) and Ubu Enchainé
(1899).
Almanaches du Père Ubu. 1899.
Karl Jaspers. Strindberg and Van Gogh. 1977.
Marcel Jean (ed.). The Autobiography of Surrealism. 1980.
Juan Ramón Jiménez. Platero y Yo. 1965.
Reginald Fleming Johnston. Twilight in the Forbidden City. 1934.
Gwyn Jones. A History of the Vikings. 1968.
James Joyce. Ulysses. 1922. I'd like at least to give it a try.
Franz Jung. Der Weg nach Unten. 1961. Autobiography of a Dadaist.
Marc Kac. Enigmas of Chance. 1985.
Franz Kafka. The Trial. [Das Urteil.] 1913.
America. [Amerika.] 1927.
The Great Wall of China. [Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer.] (1931).
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1913. [Tagebücher von Kafka.] (1948-1949).
Paul Kammerer. Das Gesetz der Serie. 1919.
Allain Kardec. Le Livre des Esprits. 1957.
Walter A. Kaufmann. Nietzsche: Psychologist, Philosopher, AntiChrist. 1950.
Yasunari Kawabata. The Dancing Girl of Izu, and Other Stories. 1925.
The Sound of the Mountain. 1949-54.
Snow Country. 1956.
First Snow on Fuji. 1958.
Beauty and Sadness. 1965.
Nikos Kazantzakis. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. 1938.
John Keay. Eccentric Travellers. 1982.
18
John Keegan. The Face of Battle. 1976.
Gottfried Keller. Die Leute von Seldwyla. 1856, 1873-1874.
Jomo Kenyatta. Facing Mount Kenya. 1938.
Hermann Alexander Keyserling. The Travel Diary of a Philosopher. [Das Reisetagebuch
eines Philosophen.] 1921.
South American Meditations. [Südamerikanische Meditationen.] 1932.
Betrachtungen der Stille und Besinnlichkeit. 1942.
Jamaica Kincaid. A Small Place. 1988.
David King (ed.). Trotsky: A Photographic Biography. 1986.
Baruch Knei-Paz. The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky. 1978.
Etheridge Knight. Poems from Prison. 1968.
Black Voices from Prison. 1970.
Lilli Koenig. Tales from the Vienna Woods. [Die klaren Augen.] (1958).
Arthur Koestler. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing View of the Universe.
1959.
Koizumi Kazuo. Father and I. 1935. His father (Koizumi Yakumo) was Lafcadio Hearn.
Sandor Kopacsi. In the Name of the Working Class: The Inside Story of the Hungarian
Revolution. [Au Nom de la Classe Ouvrière.] 1979.
Jerzy Kosinski. The Painted Bird. 1965.
Milan Kundera. Life is Elsewhere. 1973.
Immortality. 1991.
Stanley Kunitz. Coat without a Seam. 1974.
A Kind of Order, a Kind of Disorder. 1975.
Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1978. 1979.
Charles Lamb. The Essays of Elia. 1823.
George Lamming. The Emigrants. 1954.
Season of Adventure. 1960.
Natives of My Person. 1971.
Water and Berries. 1971.
A. Lange. In the Amazon Jungle. 1912.
The Lower Amazon. 1914.
Andreas Latzko. Men in War. [Menschen im Kriege.] 1918.
Jane van Lawick-Goodall & Hugo van Lawick-Goodall. Innocent Killers. 1970.
Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu & J.R. Johnson. Facing Reality. 1958.
Gershon Legman. Neurotica. 1948-1951.
The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore. 1964.
Ursula K. LeGuin. At the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. 1989.
Marcel Leiris. Le Point Cardinal. 1927.
André Masson and his Universe. [André Masson et son Univers]. 1947.
La Rêgle du Jeu. 1948-1976.
Doris Lessing. The Grass is Singing. 1950.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Nathan the Wise. [Nathan der Weise.] 1779.
19
Julius Lester. Revolutionary Notes. 1969.
François Levaillant. Travels from the Cape of Good Hope into the Interior Parts of
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Claude Levi-Strauss. The Savage Mind. 1966.
Lawrence Levine. Black Culture and Black Consciousness. 1977.
Li Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. 1994.
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A.F. Lindley. Taiping Tien Kwoh. 1866.
Clare Lloyd. The Traveling Naturalists. 1985.
Ronald Lockley. Dream Island: A Record of a Simple Life. 1988.
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Elias Lönrott. Kalevala. 1835. The national epic of Finland.
Federico García Lorca. Gypsy Ballad. [Romancero Gitano.] 1928.
His dramatic trilogy on the condition of women in Spain: Yerma (1934), The House
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Sangre] (1936).
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías. [Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías.] 1935.
Six Galician Poems. [Seis Poemas Galegos.] 1935.
Poet in New York. [Poeta en Nueva York.] (1940).
H.P. Lovecraft. The Tomb, and Other Tales. 1917. (Dates of Lovecraft books are for
the title pieces.)
The Doom that Came to Sarnath. 1919.
The Lurking Fear, and Other Stories. 1922.
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. 1927.
The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth, and Other Stories of the Supernatural. 1931.
The Horror in the Museum, and Other Revisions. 1932.
The Haunter of the Dark, and Other Tales of Horror. 1935.
The Shadow out of Time, and Other Tales of Horror. 1935.
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth. Dark Mind, Dark Heart. 1962.
Søren Løvtrup. Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth. 1987.
Mary Low. In Caesar's Shadow. 1975.
Mary Low & Juan Breá. Red Spanish Notebook. 1937.
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The Young Hegel. [Der junge Hegel.] 1948.
Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought. [Lenin: Studie über den Zusammenhang
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History and Class Consciousness. [Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein.] 1968.
Jean-François Lyotard. Duchamp's TRANS/formers. [Transformateurs Duchamp.] 1977.
Pacific Wall. [Mur du Pacifique.] 1979.
20
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Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas. 1881.
Arthur Machen. The Great God Pan. 1894.
The Hill of Dreams. 1907.
Claude McKay. Banjo: A Story without a Plot. 1929.
Banana Bottom. 1933.
Harlem: Negro Metropolis. 1940.
Cecily Mackworth. The Destiny of Isabelle Eberhardt. 1951.
Mahmud Shabistari. The Mystic Rose Garden. c.1250-1320
Bronislaw Malinowski. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. 1922.
Magic, Science and Religion. 1925.
Stephane Mallarmé. Poésies. 1899.
Thomas Malory. Morte d'Arthur. c.1485.
Andre Malraux. Storm in Shanghai. [La Condition Humaine.] 1933.
Ernest Mandel. Marxist Economic Theory. 1962.
Late Capitalism. 1975.
Guy Mangeot. Histoire du Surréalisme. c.1932.
Thomas Mann. Tonio Kröger. 1903.
Death in Venice. [Der Tod in Venedig.] 1912.
The Magic Mountain. [Der Zauberberg.] 1924.
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns. [Lotte in Weimar.] 1939.
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. [Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix
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Herbert Marcuse. Reason and Revolution. 1941.
One-dimensional Man. 1964.
An Essay on Liberation. 1969.
Five Lectures. (1970).
Dambudzo Marechara. Black Sunlight. 1980.
José Carlos Mariátegui. Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana. 1928.
Jean Markale. Le Druidisme. 1985.
Robert Marasco. Burnt Offerings. 1973.
Louis Mars. The Crisis of Possession in Voodoo. [La Crise de Possession dans le Vaudou.]
1946.
José Martí. Nuevas Cartas de Nueva York. date?
Karl Marx. The Poverty of Philosophy. [Misère de la Philosophie.] 1847.
The Class Struggles in France. [Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich.] 1850.
Capital. [Das Kapital.] Vol. 1. 1867.
The Civil War in France. [Die Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich.] 1871.
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. [Die deutsche Ideologie.] 1846.
André Masson. Anatomie de Mon Univers. 1943.
Gerhard Masur. Simón Bolívar. 1948.
21
Charles Robert Maturin. Melmoth the Wanderer. 1820.
W. Somerset Maugham. The Magician. 1908. The main character, "Oliver Haddo", is
Aleister Crowley.
Gavin Maxwell. Ring of Bright Water. 1960.
Vladimir Mayakovsky. The Bedbug. 1928.
H.L. Mencken. Prejudices. 1921.
Alfred Métraux. Le Vaudou Haitien. 1959.
Henri Michaux. A Barbarian in Asia. [Un Barbare en Asie.] 1933.
Affrontements. 1986.
Achdiat K. Milhardja. The Atheist. 1972.
Octave Mirbeau. Torture Garden. [Le Jardin des Supplices.] 1899.
Jonathan Mirsky. Great Chinese Travellers. 1965.
Yukio Mishima. Confessions of a Mask. 1948.
The Sound of Waves. 1954.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. 1963.
Manuel Vázquez Montalban. Escritos Subnormales, comprising Manifiesto Subnormal
(1970), Guillermotta en el País de las Guillerminas 1973(), Happy End (1974), and
Cuestiones Marxistas (1974).
Esteban Montejo. Autobiography of a Runaway Slave. (1968).
Virginia Morell. Ancestral Passions. 1995.
Christian Morgenstern. Galgenlieder. 1914.
Farley Mowat. Lost in the Barrens. 1965.
The Curse of the Viking Grave. 1966.
The Snow Walker. 1975.
Miyamoto Musashi. The Book of Five Rings. 17th century.
Alfred de Musset. Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle.
Mbulelo Mzamane. Mzala. 1980.
Children of Suweto. 1982.
Gary P. Nabhan. The Desert Smells Like Rain. 1982.
Gathering the Desert. 1985.
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita. 1955
Pnin. 1957.
Pale Fire. 1962.
Sheikh Nafzawi. The Perfumed Garden. (1927.)
Gérard de Nerval. Voyage en Orient. 1851.
Les Illuminés. 1852.
Les Filles du Feu. 1854.
Promenades et Souvenirs. 1854-1856.
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Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Decolonising the Mind. 1986.
Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. [Also Sprach Zarathustra.] 1883.
Ecce Homo. 1888.
22
Anaïs Nin. Delta of Venus. 1977.
Ivor Noël-Hume. All the Best Rubbish. 1974.
Paul Nougé. Histoire de ne pas Rire. 1980.
Michael J. Novacek. Time Traveler. 2002.
Dimitri Obolensky. The Byzantine Commonwealth. 1971.
Sean O'Faolain. Bird Alone. 1936.
Come Back to Erin. 1940.
The Man Who Invented Sin. 1948.
Paul Oliver. Blues Fell Down This Morning. [The Meaning of the Blues.] 1960.
The Story of the Blues. 1969.
Sembène Ousmane. Xala. 1973. The movie is highly recommended. Don't let the
awkward acting bother you.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). The Art of Love. [Ars Amatoria.] c.-1.
Metamorphoses. +7.
Sorrows of Exile. [Tristia.] After +8
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Historia Natural y General de las Indias. 1535.
R.I. Page. Runes and Runic Inscriptions. 1987.
Walter Pagel. Paracelsus, Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Renaissance.
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Milagros Palma. Por los Senderos Míticos de Nicaragua. 1984.
Victor J. Papanek. Design for the Real World. 1972.
Teresa de la Parra. Diario de una Señorita que se Fastigia. 1922.
Memorias de Mamá Blanca. 1929.
Elsie Clews Parsons. Folklore of the Antilles, French and English. 1943.
Octavio Paz. The Labyrinth of Solitude. [El Laberinto de la Soledad.] 1950.
Marcel Duchamp or the Castle of Purity. [Marcel Duchamp o el Sastillo de la
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Configurations (1967-1969). [Conyunciones y Disyunciones.] 1969.
Donald Culross Peattie. Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great
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E. Allison Peers. Fool of Love: The Life of Ramón Lull. 1946.
Valentine Penrose. The Bloody Countess. [La Comtesse Sanglante.] 1962.
Samuel Pepys. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. (1825).
Benjamin Péret. Le Passager du Transatlantique. 1921.
Le Grand Jeu. 1928.
De Derrière les Fagots. 1934.
Je ne Mange pas de ce Pain-là. 1936.
Feu Central. 1947.
Mort aux Vaches et au Champ d'Honneur. 1953.
Anthology of Sublime Love. [Anthologie de l'Amour Sublime.] 1956.
Jean Piaget. Behaviour and Evolution. [Le Comportement, Moteur de l'Evolution.]
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23
Teresa Piossek-Prebisch. La Rebelión de Pedro Bohórquez, el Inca de Tucumán, 16561659. 1967.
Los Hombres de la Entrada. 1986.
Georgii V. Plekhanov. The Role of the Individual in History. 1898.
Alexander Pope. Essay on Man, and Other Poems. 1712-1736.
James Pope-Hennessy. West Indian Summer. 1943.
Jan Potocki. Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse. 1804.
Llewelyn Powys. Black Laughter. 1924.
Earth Memories. 1934.
Rats in the Sacristy. 1937.
Love and Death: An Imaginary Autobiography. 1939.
T.F. Powys. The Soliloquy of a Hermit.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The Buru Quartet, comprising This Earth of Mankind (1975),
Child of All Nations (1979), Footsteps (1985) and House of Glass (1988).
Jacques Prévert. Paroles. 1946.
Tales for Naughty Children. [Contes pour Enfants pas Sages.] 1947.
Brian Priestley. Mingus: A Critical Biography. 1982.
Jean Price-Mars. De Saint-Domingue à Haiti. 1959.
Frederic Prokosch. The Asiatics. 1935.
Storm and Echo. 1948.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon. What is Property? [Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?] 1840.
Marcel Proust. Within a Budding Grove. [A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs.] 1918.
The Guermantes Way. [Le Coté de Guermantes.] 1920-21.
The Captive. [La Prisonnière.] 1923.
The Past Recaptured. [Le Temps Retrouvé.] 1928.
George Psalmanazar. The Historical and Geographical Descriptions of Formosa. 1704.
The author was a Frenchman who moved to England and passed himself off as a
native of Taiwan. He was hired to teach "Formosan" at Oxford and to translate the
Bible into it, for which purpose he invented a language out of nothing. His book on
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Pu Songling. Liaozhai Zhiyi. [Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.] 1679.
Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi. From Emperor to Citizen. 1964-65.
Newbell Niles Puckett. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. 1926.
Samuel Purchas. Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes. 1625.
Aleksandr S. Pushkin. Boris Gudunov. 1831.
A Journey to Erzerum. 1836.
Hal Rammel. Nowhere in America. 1990.
Vance Randolf (ed.). Pissing in the Snow, and Other Ozark Folktales. 1976.
Rudolf Erich Raspe. Baron Münchhausen's Narrative of His Marvelous Travels and
Campaigns in Russia. 1785.
Tarlton Rayment. The Valley of the Sky. 1937.
Ishmael Reed. Free-Lance Pallbearers. 1967.
24
Yellow Back Radio Broke Down. 1969.
19 Necromancers from Now. 1970.
Chattanooga. 1973.
Last Days of Louisiana Red. 1974.
Reckless Eyeballing. 1986.
Airing Dirty Laundry. 1993.
V.S. Reid. New Day. 1949.
Salomon Reinach. Orpheus: A General History of Religions. 1909.
Robert Reisner (ed.). Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker. 1962.
N.A.E. Restif de la Bretonne. The Human Heart Laid Bare. [Monsieur Nicolas, ou le
Coeur Humain Dévoilé]. 1794-1797.
Les Dangers de la Séduction et les Faux Pas de la Beauté. (1846).
Eugene M. Rhodes. Pasó por Aquí. 1927.
Matteo Ricci. China in the Sixteenth Century. 1583-1610.
Leni Riefenstahl. The Last of the Nuba. 1973.
Jacques Rigaud. Papiers Posthumes. (1984).
Milo Rigaud. Jésus ou Legba. 1933.
Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies. [Duineser Elegien.] 1923.
Sonnets to Orpheus. [Die Sonette an Orpheus.] 1923.
J.M. Roberts. History of the World. 1976.
Priscilla Robertson. Revolutions of 1848: A Social History. 1952.
Selden Rodman. Renaissance in Haiti. 1948.
Walter Rodney. The Groundings with My Brothers. 1969.
Franklin Rosemont. Lamps Hurled at the Stunning Algebra of Ants. 1990.
Penelope Rosemont. Beware of the Ice, and Other Poems. 1992.
Cecil Roth. A History of the Jews. 1961.
Jacques Roumain. Le Sacrifice du Rambour Assator. 1943.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. [Discours sur l'Origine et
les Fondements de l'Inégalite parmi les Hommes.] 1754.
The Social Contract. [Du Contrat Social.] 1761.
Essay on the Origin of Languages. [Essai sur les Origines des Langues.] (1781).
Leon Rousseau. The Dark Stream. [Die Groot Verlange.] 1974.
Raymond Roussel. Locus Solus. 1914.
Mike Rowe. Chicago Blues. 1981.
Juan Rulfo. Pedro Páramo. 1959.
Damon Runyon. More than Somewhat. 1937.
Take It Easy. 1938.
Salman Rushdie. Shalimar the Clown. 2005.
Bertrand Russell. Sceptical Essays. 1928.
In Praise of Idleness, and Other Essays. 1935.
The Impact of Science on Society. 1952.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. 1967-1969.
Ross Russell. Bird lives! 1973.
25
Amon Saba Saakana. Blues Dance. 1985.
D.A.F. de Sade. Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man. [Dialogue entre un Prêtre
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B. Akiga Sai. Akiga's Story. 1939.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Night flight. [Vol de Nuit.] 1931.
Sappho. Her extant poetry. c.-600. I believe it was Lawrence Durrell who
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medicine".
José Saramago. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. [O Ano da Morte de Ricardo
Reis.] 1986.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon. [História do Cerco de Lisboa.] 1996.
The Tale of the Unknown Island. [O Conto da Ilha Desconhecida.] 1997.
Jean-Paul Sartre. Imagination: A Psychological Critique. [L'Imaginaire: Psychologie
Phénoménologique de l'Imagination.] 1940.
The Age of Reason. [L'Age de Raison.] 1943.
The Words. [Les Mots.] 1954.
Critique of Dialectical Reason. [Critique de la Raison Dialectique.] 1960.
War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War, November 1939 - March 1940. [Cornets
de la Drôle de Guerre: Novembre 1939 - Mars 1940.] 1983.
Alberto Savinio. Operatic Lives. [Narrate, Uomini, la Vostra Storia.] 1944.
George Schaller. The Deer and the Tiger. 1967.
Victor Schoelcher. La Vie de Toussaint Louverture. 1889.
Bruno Schulz. The Street of Crocodiles. 1963.
Arturo Schwartz. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamps. 1970.
Marcel Schwob. Imaginary Lives. [Vies Imaginaires.] 1896.
George Seferis. Collected Poems 1924-1955. (1995.)
Kurt Seligmann. Magic, Supernaturalism, and Religion. 1948.
Victor Serge. Year One of the Russian Revolution. [L'An I de la Révolution Russe.] 1930.
Memories of a Revolutionary. [Mémoires d'un Révolutionnaire, 1901-1941.] 1951.
Ernest Henry Shackleton. South! 1919.
William Shakespeare. All of the tragedies and most of the rest.
Anton Shammas. Arabesques. 1988.
Nat Shapiro & Nat Hentoff (eds.). Hear Me Talkin' to Ya. 1955.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Necessity of Atheism. 1811.
Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude, and Other Poems. 1815.
The Mask of Anarchy. 1819.
The Wandering Jew. (1887.)
Richard B. Sheridan. Rivals. 1775.
The School for Scandal. 1777.
The Critic. 1779.
Michael Sherringham. André Breton: A Bibliography. 1972.
26
H.E. Sigerist. Four Treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim Called Paracelsus. 1979.
George E. Simpson. Black Religions in the New World. 1978.
The Shango Cult in Trinidad. 1965.
George Gaylord Simpson.
Concessions to the Improbable: An Unconventional
Autobiography. 1978.
D.W. Singer. Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thoughts. 1950.
R.G.H. Siu. The Tao of Science. 1957.
Clark Ashton Smith. Lost Worlds. 1944.
Genius Loci, and Other Tales. 1948.
The Abominations of Yondo. 1960.
The Devil's Notebook. (1990).
T.C. Smout. A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830. 1969.
Edgar Snow. Glory and Bondage. 1945. Probably not what it sounds like.
Michel Soukar. Entretiens avec l'Histoire. 1990.
Wole Soyinka. Idanre and Other Poems. 1967.
Kongi's Harvest. 1967.
A Shuttle in the Crypt. 1972.
Season of Anomy. 1973.
Ake: The Years of Childhood. 1981.
Baruch Spinoza. On the Improvement of Understanding. 1662.
Peter N. Stearns. 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe. 1974.
John Steinbeck. The Log from the Sea of Cortez. 1951.
Stendhal. The Charterhouse of Parma. [Chartreuse de Parme.] 1839.
John L. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán. 1841.
Joseph P. Stern. Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions Reconstructed from
His Aphorisms and Reflections. 1959.
John Stewart. Curving Road. 1975.
D.R. Stoddart. On Geography and its History. 1986.
I.F. Stone. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 1952.
The Trial of Socrates. 1988.
Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. 1967.
Enter a Free Man. 1968.
Night and Day. 1978.
August Strindberg. The Red Room. 1879.
Sleepwalker Awakens to the Day. 1884.
Utopian on Reality. 1885.
Harald Stuempke. The Snouters. [Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia.] 1957.
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Atalanta in Calydon. 1865.
Poems and Ballads. 1866.
Astrophel, and Other Poems. 1894.
A Channel Passage, and Other Poems. 1904.
J.M. Synge. The Aran Islands. 1907.
Deirdre of the Sorrows. 1910.
27
Rabindranath Tagore. Gora. 1908.
Mashi, and Other Stories. 1918.
Don C. Talayesva. Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian. 1942.
A.J.P. Taylor. Bismarck. 1955.
Ssu-yu Teng. New Light on the History of the Taiping Rebellion. 1950.
E.P. Thompson. The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays. 1978.
Hunter S. Thompson. Hell's Angels. 1966.
The Proud Highway. 1997.
Henry David Thoreau. Cape Cod. 1864.
The Maine Woods. 1864.
Sebastiano Timpanaro. On Materialism. [Sul Materialismo.] 1970.
Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. [La Démocratie en Amérique.] 1839.
Alvin Toffler. Future Shock. 1970.
The Third Wave. 1980.
Powershift. 1990.
Alphonse Toussenel. The Spirit of Beasts: Passional Zoology. [L'Esprit des Bêtes:
Zoologie Passionelle.] 1853.
Le Monde des Oiseaux: Ornithologie Passionelle. 1855.
G.M. Trevelyan. The English Revolution, 1688-89. 1938.
English Social History. 1942.
Flora Tristan. Peregrinations of a Pariah. 1836.
Leon Trotsky. 1905. 1907.
The History of the Russian Revolution. 1931-1933.
Colin Turnbull. The Mountain People. 1972
Amos Tutuola. The rest of his books: Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle (1955), The
Brave African Huntress (1958), Feather Woman of the Jungle (1962), Ajaiyi and His
Inherited Poverty (1967), Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer (1978) and The WitchHerbalist of the Remote Town (1981).
Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad. 1869.
Roughing It. 1872.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. 1897.
Tristan Tzara, ed. Anthologie Dada. 1919.
Approximate Man. [L'Homme Approximatif.] 1931.
Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. [Sept Manifestes Dada, Lampisteries.]
(1977.)
Akinari Ueda. Tales of Moonlight and Rain. 1779.
Tales of the Spring Rain. 1809.
Dubravka Ugresic. The Culture of Lies. 1998.
Thank You for Not Reading. 2003.
Arturo Uslar-Pietri. Red. 1936.
Treinta Hombres y sus Sombras. 1949.
28
Oficio de Difuntos. 1976.
Vercors. Le Silence de la Mer. 1943.
Jules Verne. Five Weeks in a Balloon. [Cinq Semaines en Ballon.] 1862.
A Journey to Centre of the Earth. [Voyage au Centre de la Terre.] 1864.
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. [Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers.] 1869.
Doctor Ox's Experiment. [Le Docteur Ox.] 1874.
The Mysterious Island. [L'Ile Mystérieuse.] 1874.
Tribulations of a Chinese Gentleman. [Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine.]
1880.
Carpathian Castle. [Le Château des Carpathes.] 1892.
The Danube Pilot. [Le Pilote du Danube.] (1908).
Cirilo Villaverde. Cecilia Valdés, o, La Loma del Angel. 1882.
F.M.A. de Voltaire. The Age of Louis XIV. [Siècle de Louis XIV.] 1751.
Kurt Vonnegut. Canary in a Cat House. 1961.
Slaughterhouse Five. 1969.
Welcome to the Monkey House. 1969.
Breakfast of Champions. 1973.
Lionel Wafer. A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America. 1699.
Derek Walcott. In a Green Night. 1962.
The Star-Apple Kingdom. 1979.
Omeros. 1990.
Arthur Waley. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China. 1939.
Alfred Russel Wallace. Tropical Nature, and Other Essays. 1878.
Wang Ch'ung. Discourses Weighed in the Balance. +83. A confucian rationalist,
recommended by Joseph Needham as the most important figure in the chinese
skeptical tradition.
Charles Webster. From Paracelsus to Newton. 1983.
John Webster. The White Devil. 1612.
The Duchess of Malfi. 1623.
Eliot Weinberger. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. 1987.
H.G. Wells. The Time Machine. 1895.
Elly Welt. Berlin Wild. 1986.
F.L. Wernstedt & J.E. Spencer. The Philippine Island World. 1967.
Richard S. Westfall. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. 1980.
Andrew Dickson White. The Warfare of Science with Theology and Christendom. 1896.
Norbert Wiener. Cybernetics. 1948.
The Human Use of Human Beings. 1954.
Edmund Wilson. Memoirs of Hecate County. 1946.
Apologies to the Iroquois. 1960.
Wilhelm Wisser. Auf der Märchensuche. c.1926. Personal account of 20 years of
folklore field work in Holstein.
29
Gene Wolfe. The quartet (I believe) comprising The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The
Sword of the Lictor (1981), The Citadel of the Autarch (1983) and The Urth of the
New Sun (1987).
William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other
Poems. 1798.
Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road. 1961.
W.B. Yeats. A Vision. 1925.
Norman R. Yetman. Life Under the Peculiar Institution. 1970.
Yi Mun-yol. The Poet. 1992.
Edward Young. Night Thoughts. 1750. It is extremely annoying that there are plenty of
excerpts of this long poem around, yet I have not yet been able to find the
complete text.
Manuel Zapata Olivella. Levántate Mulato! 1990.
Hemingway, el Cazador de la Muerte. 1993.
30
Part 2.
BOOKS I'M GLAD I READ
Author(s) unknown.
One Thousand and One Nights. [The Arabian Nights
Entertainment.] 9th century.
Beowulf. 7th or 8th century.
El Cid. [El Poema de Mio Cid.] c.1140. If you can read modern Spanish you can
probably struggle through the original, although I doubt that you would want to. It's
sort of like Chaucer or the Song of Roland in that respect.
Gilgamesh. Prob. before -2000. Herbert Mason's version is wonderfully readable.
The story of riding out the flood in a great big boat with representatives of the
world's biota on board is told here. Because it antedates the retelling by the Chosen
People, it is presumably not yet the word of God.
The Saga of Gisli. early 13th century.
Tuwaang Attends a Wedding. (1958). Part of a very long epic of the Maranaw of
southern Mindanao.
A&Z (Richard Appignanesi & Oscar Zárate). Any of their "for Beginners" books. I am
especially fond of Lenin for Beginners (1977) and Freud for Beginners (1979).
Edward Abbey. Desert Solitaire. 1968.
Peter Abrahams. Mine Boy. 1970.
Chinua Achebe. Arrow of God. 1964.
Anthills of the Savannah. 1987.
Amir D. Aczel. Pendulum. 2003. About the other Foucault, Léon, the one who lived a
long time ago.
Cecil Adams. The books compiled from his newspaper column: The Straight Dope
(1984), More of the Straight Dope (1984), Return of the Straight Dope (1994), The
Straight Dope Tells All (1998) and Triumph of the Straight Dope (1999). The chatty
tone gets kind of old after a while, and much of the subject matter isn't nearly as
serious as in Dan Savage's Savage Love column and book, but there's a lot of edifying
and entertaining stuff.
Aeschylus. All of his extant plays: Agamemnon; The Choephori; The Eumenides; The
Persians; Prometheus Bound; Seven Against Thebes; and The Suppliants. Early -5th
century.
Philip Agee. Inside the Company. 1975.
Henri Alain-Fournier. The Wanderer. [Le Grand Meaulnes]. 1912.
Tariq Ali. Street Fighting Years. 1987.
David Ellison Allen. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. 1976.
Lisa Allen. Something to Say. 1992.
Elechi Amadi. His trilogy of traditional village life in southeastern Nigeria, comprising
The Concubine (1966), The Great Ponds (1969) and The Slave (1978). Treat them as
independent stories.
Reinhold Aman. Hillary Clinton's Pen Pal. 1996.
Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1970.
31
Ian Angus. Canadian Bolsheviks. 1981.
Michael Anthony. The Year in San Fernando. 1965.
Yves Antoine. Libations pour le Soleil. 1985.
Guillaume Apollinaire. Alcools. 1913.
Lucius Apuleius. The Golden Ass. [The Transformations of Lucius Apuleius of Madaura.]
2nd century.
Douglas Archibald. Isidore and the Turtle. 1964.
Coriolan Ardouin. Poésies Choisies. 1997.
Louis Armstrong. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. 1954.
Ayi Kwei Armah. Most of his books. My favourite remains The Beautyful Ones are Not
Yet Born (1968), his first and the first that I read.
James Baldwin. Notes of a Native Son. 1955.
Nobody Knows My Name. 1961.
The Fire Next Time. 1963
Edward Bancroft. An Essay on the Natural History of Guiana. 1769.
H.E. Bates. Down the River. 1937. The edition I have seen is illustrated with wonderful
wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker.
Henry Walter Bates. The Naturalist on the River Amazons. 1863. I am very fond of
victorian-era natural history. This is my favourite.
Charles Baudelaire. Flowers of Evil. [Les Fleurs du Mal.] 1857.
Edward Baugh. A Tale from the Rainforest. 1988.
J.C. Beaglehole. The Life of Captain James Cook. 1974.
Jane C. Beck. To Windward of the Land. 1979.
Robert Beck. The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim. 1971.
William Beckford. Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents. 1783.
The History of the Caliph Vathek. 1786.
Brendan Behan. The Quare Fellow. 1956.
Confessions of an Irish Rebel. 1966.
Ulli Beier (ed.). Political Spider. 1969. A collection of african creation myths.
W.A. Bentley & W.J. Humphreys. Snow Crystals. 1931.
Walter Benton. This is My Beloved. 1943.
Léandre Bergeron. The History of Québec. [Petit Manuel d'Histoire du Québec.] 1971.
Isaiah Berlin. Karl Marx. 1939.
John D. Bernal. Science in History. Vol. 1-4. 1954.
Bruno Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment. 1976.
Joseph Biddulph. Walking the Wild Rhondda. 1995.
Ambrose Bierce. In the Midst of Life. 1891.
Can Such Things Be? 1893.
The Devil's Dictionary. [The Cynic's Word Book.] 1906.
Juan Antonio Blanco & Medea Benjamin. Cuba: Talking about Revolution. 1994.
Hugo Blanco. Land or Death. [Tierra o Muerte.] 1972. First-hand report by a leader in
the peasant struggle in Peru.
32
Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. [Decamerone.] 1350-1353. As good a way as any
to ride out a plague.
Fred Bodsworth. The Last of the Curlews. 1955.
Heinrich Böll. And Never Said a Word. [Und sagte kein einziges Wort.] 1953.
Doctor Murke's Collected Silence. [Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen.] 1958.
Marguerite Bonnet. André Breton: Nassisance de l'Aventure Surréaliste. 1975.
Jorge Luis Borges. The Aleph, and Other Stories. [El Aleph.] 1949.
Juan Bosch. Bolívar y la Guerra Social. 1966.
Máximo Gómez: De Monte Cristi a La Gloria. 1986.
Douglas Botting. Island of the Dragon's Blood. 1958. About Socotra, one of the ends of
the Earth.
Humboldt and the Cosmos. 1973. For one thing, this book poses the question
whether there any earthly reason why a substantial biography -- in contrast to a
book "about" someone -- should not be lavishly illustrated?
Peter J. Bowler. Evolution: The History of an Idea. 1984.
George Breitman. Evolution of a Revolutionary: The Last Year of Malcolm X. 1967.
Indispensable supplement to the autobiography.
André Breton. Everything by him is of the first importance, calling for repeated
readings. The books that have so far moved me most are Nadja (1928), The
Communicating Vessels [Les Vases Communicants] (1932), Mad Love [L'Amour Fou]
(1937) and Surrealism and Painting [Le Surréalisme et la Peinture] (1945).
Breyten Breytenbach. Sinking Ship Blues. The sinking ship is his native South Africa in
the apartheid era. 1977.
End Papers. 1986.
Yseult Bridges. Child of the Tropics. (1980).
Max Brod. Franz Kafka. 1937.
Erna Brodber. Myal. 1988.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights. 1847.
Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. 1970.
Wayne Brown. Landscape with Heron. 2000.
Janet Browne. The two-volume biography comprising Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995)
and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002).
Lenny Bruce. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. 1965.
Charles Bukowski. Notes of a Dirty Old Man. 1969.
Paul Buhle. C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary. 1988.
Alan Bullock. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. 1952.
Gelett Burgess. The Purple Cow! 1899.
William S. Burroughs. Naked Lunch. 1959.
Herbert Butterfield. The Whig Interpretation of History. 1931.
James Branch Cabell. Jurgen; a Comedy of Justice. 1919.
Omar Cabezas. Fire from the Mountain. [La Montaña es Algo Más que una Inmensa
Estepa Verde.] 1982. I recall him later in an interview saying something like "To
33
have participated in that struggle, to have written that book. Son of a bitch! It's
really dealt a blow to the enemy." And that's how he writes. There was red blood
in the Sandinistas in those long-ago days.
Frances B. Calhoun. Miss Minerva and William Green Hill. 1909. Much like the betterknown Penrod books of Booth Tarkington.
Philip S. Callahan. Tuning in to Nature. 1975. Phil Callahan is a hell of a guy with
wonderful ideas. If only he were right.
Camara Laye. The Dark Child. [L'Enfant Noir.] 1953.
Peter Camejo. Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877. 1976. A history of the radical
Reconstruction movement.
Roger Caras. The Custer Wolf. 1966.
Ernesto Cardenal. El Estrecho Dudoso. 1972.
Archie Carr. High Jungles and Low. 1953.
The Windward Road. 1955.
E.H. Carr. What is History? 1961.
Leonora Carrington. Down Below. 1944.
Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 1865.
Through the Looking-Glass. 1871.
Rachel L. Carson. Silent Spring. 1962. I was much affected by this in high school,
shortly after it appeared.
Joyce Cary. The Horse's Mouth. 1944.
W.J. Cash. The Mind of the South. 1941.
Bruce Catton. The Civil War. 1960. A very readable, one-volume history.
Catullus. The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus. F.W. Cornish, tr. c.-54.
Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote de la Mancha. [El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la
Mancha.] 1605, 1615. See the title of Brinitzer's book about G.C. Lichtenberg;
that's how I feel about Don Quixote.
Aimé Cesaire. Return to My Native Land. [Cahier d'un Retour à Mon Pays Natal.] 1939.
Charles Chaplin. My Autobiography. 1964.
Faustin Charles. Days and Nights in the Magic Forest. 1986.
Ray Charles. Brother Ray. 1978.
Henri Charrière. Papillon. 1970.
Samuel B. Charters. The Legacy of the Blues. 1977.
Geoffrey Chaucer. Canterbury Tales. 1387-1400. One has to be choosy which parts to
read and which to skip. Parts of the General Prologue are paralyzingly funny.
Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard. 1903-04. By far my favourite of his plays.
G.K. Chesterton. The Man Who was Thursday. 1908. This short book is really two
stories. The bulk of it is in the manner of early 20th-century boys' adventure
fiction, with clearly distinct bad guys and no ambivalence in the heroes. It will
entertain those who don't mind not knowing exactly what is going on and can delight
in quotables out of context.
V. Gordon Childe. Man Makes Himself. 1936.
Clyde M. Christensen. The Molds and Man. 1951.
34
Chuang Chou. Chuang Tzu. c. -300.
Gabriel J. Christian. Rain on a Tin Roof. 1999. Wonderful short stories from Dominica.
J.P. Clark. A Decade of Tongues. 1981. Includes "Ibadan", the first west-african poem
that ever grabbed me.
Ronald Clark. J.B.S.: The Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane. 1968.
LeRoy Clarke. Taste of Endless Fruit. 1974.
Eldridge Cleaver. Soul on Ice. 1967.
Karl von Clausewitz. On War. [Vom Kriege.] 1833.
Michael Clodfelter. The Pawns of Dishonor. 1976. It's all true.
J.M. Coetzee. Waiting for the Barbarians. 1980.
Life and Times of Michael K. 1983.
I. Bernard Cohen. Revolution in Science. 1985.
Stephen F. Cohen. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. 1974.
Wanda Coleman. Heavy Daughter Blues. 1987.
Colette. The Vagabond. [La Vagabonde.] 1932.
Joseph Collins, Frances Moore-Lappé & Nick Allen.
What Difference Could a
Revolution Make? 1982.
Arthur Conan-Doyle. Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I am also fond of Holmes
stories by later authors in imitation of Conan-Doyle, such as Adrian Conan-Doyle &
John Dickson Carr's The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954).
The Lost World. 1912.
Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim. 1900.
Renato Constantino. The Philippines: A Past Revisited (1975) and The Continuing Past
(1978). The history of the Philippines from a nationalist perspective.
Arthur Cooper (ed.). Li Po and Tu Fu. 1973.
Armand Coppens. The Memoirs of an Erotic Bookseller. 1969.
John Cornwell. Hitler's Scientists. 2003.
Francis H.C. Crick. What Mad Pursuit. 1988.
A.J. Cronin. The Green Years. 1945.
Aleister Crowley. Moonchild. 1917 (1929).
Euclides da Cunha. Rebellion in the Backlands. [Os Sertões.] 1902.
Roald Dahl (ed.). Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. 1983.
Charles Darwin.
The Voyage of the Beagle. 1839-1843.
On the Origin of Species. 1859.
Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. 1976.
The Blind Watch-Maker. 1987.
Allen G. Debus. Man and Nature in the Renaissance. 1978.
James Deetz. In Small Things Forgotten. 1977.
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. 1719. Like many early novels, it has a long, dreary
opening and ending, in which the author justifies taking up our time with a yarn.
Once you know that these contribute nothing to the story, it is easy enough to
disregard them.
35
John DeFrancis. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. 1984.
Yves Delange. Fabre, l'Homme qui Aimait les Insectes. 1981. The definitive biography
of my personal hero.
Vine Deloria. Custer Died for Your Sins. 1969.
Maya Deren. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. 1953. Some wonderful books
have been written about Haiti and vodou. This is one of the best that I have read.
René Descartes. Discourse on Method. [Discours de la Méthode.] 1637.
Isaac Deutscher. His three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky: The Prophet Armed
(1954), The Prophet Unarmed (1959) and The Prophet Outcast (1963).
Bernadette Devlin. The Price of My Soul. 1969.
Peter Dickinson. The Flight of Dragons. 1979. This book is not for those who have to
be quite certain whether the author really, literally means it.
Denis Diderot. D'Alembert's Dream. [Rêve de D'Alembert.] 1749.
An Essay on Blindness. [Lettre sur les Aveugles à l'Usage de Ceux qui Voient.] 1749.
Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa. 1938.
Raymond L. Ditmars. Strange Animals I Have Known. 1931.
Thrills of a Naturalist's Quest. 1932.
Raymond L. Ditmars & William Bridges. Snake-Hunter's Holiday. 1935.
J. Frank Dobie. The Ben Lilly Legend. 1950.
The Voice of the Coyote. 1950.
G. William Domhoff. Who Rules America? 1967.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. 1879-80. An abridged version is
acceptable as long as it includes the section on the Grand Inquisitor.
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. Read the book
and then visit his house in Washington.
W.E.B. DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903.
Dusk of Dawn. 1940.
René J. Dubos. The Dreams of Reason. 1961.
So Human an Animal. 1968.
Isadora Duncan. My Life. [Isadora.] 1927.
Ronald Duncan & Miranda Weston-Smith, eds. The Encyclopedia of Ignorance.
1977.
Comprising 50 articles by a broad spectrum of scientists on what we do not know.
Sample titles: "The Cosmological Mystery", "The Limitations of Evolutionary Theory",
"Why Do we not Understand Pain?" Hermann Bondi's piece on "The Lure of
Completeness" has been of especial value to me. I cannot understand why this
stupendous book is so little known.
Gerald Durrell. His books in general. I grew up on his zoo-collecting books, such as The
Bafut Beagles (1954) and Three Singles to Adventure (1954), although in rereading
parts of them much later I found them quite thin. I am more taken with his later
books about his youth on Corfu: My Family and Other Animals (1956), Birds, Beasts
and Relatives (1969), and Fauna and Family (1979). The last two, while good reads,
have the usual weaknesses of sequels and are much inferior to the first.
36
Lawrence Durrell. The Alexandria Quartet, comprising Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958),
Mountolive (1958) and Clea (1960).
His books on the islands of the Mediterranean: Prospero's Cell (1945, Corcyma),
Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953, Rhodes) and Bitter Lemons (1957, Crete).
Freeman Dyson. Disturbing the Universe. 1979.
Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China. [Chinas Geschichte.] 1948.
Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose. [Il Nome della Rosa.] 1980. The movie starring
Sean Connery is a bold attempt, but this book cannot be made into a good two-hour
movie.
Foucault's Pendulum. [Il Pendolo di Foucault.] 1988.
Joseph von Eichendorff. Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing. [Aus dem Leben eines
Taugenichts.] c.1894.
Loren Eiseley. Darwin's Century. 1958.
The Firmament of Time. 1960.
The Immense Journey. 1962.
The Unexpected Universe. 1969.
The Night Country. 1971.
All the Strange Hours. 1975.
Cyprian Ekwensi. Lokotown, and Other Stories. 1966.
Paul Eluard & André Breton. The Immaculate Conception. [L'Immaculée Conception.]
1930.
Friedrich Engels. Dialectics of Nature. [Dialektik der Natur.] 1873, 1886.
Anti-Dühring. [Her Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft.] 1877-1878.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. [Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie
zur Wissenschaft.] 1880.
Olaudah Equiano. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus
Vassa the African. 1789. Equiano had a place in Britain analogous to that of
Frederick Douglass in the USA, although not with the same impact.
Max Ernst. A Week of Kindness. [Une Semaine de Bonté.] 1934.
Euripides. Late -5th century. Of the three great antique tragedians, Euripides is my
favourite. I rejoice that 18 of his plays are extant: Alcestis, Andromache, The
Bacchae, Electra, Hecuba, Helen, The Heracleidae, Heracles, Hippolytas, Ion, The
Medea, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes, The Phoenissae, Rhesus, The
Suppliants, and The Trojan Women. Euripides's subjects are more human, and his
treatment of women is uniquely sympathetic. Or, as John Cowper Powys said,
"Euripides ... is the most modern in feeling, the most romantic in mood of all the
Greek poets. One is conscious that in his work ... the calm beauty of the Apollonian
temper is touched by the wilder rhythm of the perilous music of Dionysus."
Howard E. Evans. Wasp Farm. 1963.
Life on a Little-known Planet. 1968. The “little-known planet” is Earth.
The Pleasures of Entomology. 1985.
37
Jean-Henri Fabre. Souvenirs Entomologiques. 1879-1907. All ten volumes. Say yo to
bugs.
Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. [Peau Noire, Masques Blancs.] 1952.
The Wretched of the Earth. [Les Damnés de la Terre.] 1961.
Toward the African Revolution. [Pour la Révolution Africaine.] (1964).
A Dying Colonialism. [An V de la Révolution Algérienne.] (1966). I have read all of
his books, and now I want to read them again.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. 1955.
Her. 1960.
The Mexican Night. 1970.
Patrick Leigh Fermor. The Traveler's Tree. 1950. A wonderful read from start to finish.
One of the best travel books I have read, although that's not saying much.
Paul Feyerabend. Against Method. 1975.
Richard P. Feynman. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" 1985.
Orlando Figes. Natasha's Dance. 2002.
Edward Fitzgerald. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 1859. Yes, Fitzgerald is the
author. This is a great english poem based on Khayyam's persian original.
Tim Flannery. Throwim Way Leg. 1998.
Dario Fo. Accidental Death of an Anarchist. [Morte Accidentale di un'Anarchico.] 1970.
E.M. Forster. A Room with a View. 1908. Let's be frank. I read Forster's books mostly
the Merchant & Ivory movies of them are such a knock-out.
Howard's End. 1910.
A Passage to India. 1924.
Adrian Forsyth & Ken Miyata. Tropical Nature. 1984.
Dian Fossey. Gorillas in the Mist. 1983.
Margaret Fountaine. Love among the Butterflies. (1980).
Alain Foubert. Voodoo Blacksmiths. [Forgerons du Vodou.] 1990.
John Fowles. The French Lieutenant's Woman. 1969. Mostly for the footnotes and
asides. I never got far in anything else by Fowles.
James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. 1890.
T.H. Frazzetta. Complex Adaptations in Evolving Populations. 1975.
Free (Abbie Hoffman). Revolution for the Hell of It. 1968.
David Freedberg. The Eye of the Lynx. 2002.
Sigmund Freud.
Psychopathology of Everyday Life. [Zur Psychopathologie des
Alltagslebens.] 1904.
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. [Witz und seine Beziehung zum
Unbewussten.] 1905.
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. [Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die
Psychoanalyse.] 1917.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle. [Jenseits des Lustprinzips.] 1920.
The Ego and the Id. [Das Ich und das Es.] 1923.
An Autobiographical Study. 1925.
The Future of an Illusion. [Die Zukunft einer Illusion.] 1927.
38
Kinky Friedman. Roadkill. 1997. Kinky's books are at least entertaining, and this is the
most engaging of the several I have read.
Karl von Frisch. A Biologist Remembers. [Erinnerungen eines Biologen.] 1957.
Animal Architecture. [Tiere als Baumeister.] 1974.
Erich Fromm. The Forgotten Language. [Märchen, Mythen, Träume.] 1951.
The Art of Loving. 1956.
The Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought. [Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse - Grösse und Grenzen.] 1979.
Varian Fry. Surrender on Demand. 1945. A whole different Underground Railroad.
M.K. Gandhi. An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. 1929. Be
ready to skip many passages.
Gabriel García-Márquez. No One Writes to the Colonel. [El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le
Escriba.] 1958.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. [Cien Años de Soledad.] 1967.
The Autumn of the Patriarch. [El Otoño del Patriarca.] 1975.
The General in His Labyrinth. [El General en Su Laberinto.] 1989.
Patricia L. Garfield. Creative Dreaming. 1975.
Paul Garon. Blues and the Poetic Spirit. 1979.
Paul & Beth Garon. Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues. 1992. It is my
pleasure to have made a tiny contribution to this book through the interpretation of
one song.
Romain Gary. Promise at Dawn. [La Promesse de l'Aube.] 1960.
Peter Gay. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. 1966, 1969.
Jean Genêt. Our Lady of the Flowers. [Notre Dame des Fleurs.] 1948.
Alain Gerber. The Slave Trail. [La Trace-aux-Esclaves]. 1987.
Amorey Gethin & Erik V. Gunnemark. The Art and Science of Learning Languages.
1996. Positively the best book I have read on this subject.
Brewster Ghiselin. The Creative Process. 1952.
Robert Gibbings. Gibbings was primarily a wood-engraving illustrator, my favourite in
that medium. His writing is a supplement to his engravings. I am especially fond of
his "river books" about Ireland and England: Run Softly, Sweet Thames ... (1940),
Coming Down the Wye (1942), Lovely is the Lee (1945), Sweet Cork of Thee (1951),
and ... Till I End my Song (1957).
Françoise Gilot & Carlton Lake. Life with Picasso. 1964.
Martin Glaberman & Seymour Faber. Working for Wages. 1998.
J.W. von Goethe. Faust. 1808-31.
Poetry and Truth. [Dichtung und Wahrheit.] 1811.
Nikolai Gogol'. Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. 1831.
Arabesques. 1835.
Dead Souls. 1842.
Vincent van Gogh. Dear Theo. (1937). Vincent's letters to his brother, edited by Irving
Stone.
39
Thomas Goldstein. Dawn of Modern Science. 1980.
Nadine Gordimer. July's People. 1981.
Maxim Gorky. Fragments from My Diary. 1925.
The City of the Yellow Devil. (1972).
Kenneth Grahame. The Wind in the Willows. 1908. Who could resist a yarn about a
crazed amphibian?
Alberto Granado. Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary. [Con el
Che por Sudamérica.] 1986. See comment on Che’s book about the same road trip.
Günther Grass. Cat and Mouse. [Katz und Maus.] 1961.
Robert Graves. Goodbye to All That. 1929. The core of this autobiography is chapters
10-22, dealing with trench warfare in France. Some interesting snippets in other
chapters, but they can be skipped without much loss.
I, Claudius. 1934. The portrait of Caligula is especially appealing.
Graham Greene. Travels with My Aunt. 1969. The movie, too, is one of my favourites.
Maggie Smith can do no wrong.
A Sort of Life. 1971. His autobiography. Russian roulette is the heart of the
matter.
Dick Gregory. Nigger. 1964.
J.H. Griffin. Black Like Me. 1961.
Daniel Guérin. Fascism and Big Business. [Fascisme et Grand Capital.] 1945.
Che Guevara.
Episodes of the Revolutionary War. [Pasajes de la Guerra
Revolucionaria.] 1963.
Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America. [Notas de Viaje.] (1993).
Alberto Granado's book about the journey makes for a tighter read, as it was written
expressly as a book.
Charles Guignebert. The Christ. [Le Christ.] 1943.
Nicolás Guillén. Páginas Vueltas. 1982.
Erik V. Gunnemark. Countries, People and Their Languages. 1991.
Peter Guralnick. Feel Like Goin' Home. 1971.
Woody Guthrie. Bound for Glory. 1943. His autobiography.
Jean-Pierre Hallet. Congo Kitabu. 1965. The author is basically a good guy, so please
overlook his liberal imperialist assumptions.
Han Suyin. Her autobiographical-historical trilogy, comprising The Crippled Tree (1965),
A Mortal Flower (1966), and Birdless Summer (1968).
Eric Hansen. Stranger in the Forest. 1988. Redmond O'Hanlon, author of a giddy,
insignificant book about Borneo, has slandered this as "one of the most fascinating
travel books in recent years". In fact, it stands alongside Ian Thomson's Bonjour
Blanc as a serious, hardcore and very personal experience of the place, far removed
from "travel literature".
Miklos Haraszti. A Worker in a Worker's State. 1975. Comparable to Glaberman &
Faber's Working for Wages.
40
Heinrich Harrer. Seven Years in Tibet. [Sieben Jahre in Tibet]. 1952. Once you
disregard Harrer's admiration for the odious, semi-royal tibetan high-priesthood, it
becomes a good read.
Randy Allen Harris. The Linguistics Wars. 1993.
Wilson Harris. His writing in general, especially The Guyana Quartet, comprising Palace
of the Peacock (1960), The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962)
and The Secret Ladder (1963).
Richard Hart. Slaves Who Abolished Slavery. Vol. 2. Blacks in Rebellion. 1985.
Jaroslav Hasek. The Good Soldier: Schweik. 1921-23. Schweik occupies a place in the
czech public consciousness comparable to that of Don Quixote in Spain.
Lafcadio Hearn. Two Years in the French West Indies. 1890. This is a marvelous book,
in spite of its vapid title.
His books about Japan, especially Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Exotics and
Retrospectives (1898), Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (1896) and
Shadowings (1900).
Roy A.K. Heath. Kwaku, or The Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut. 1982.
William Least Heat-Moon. Blue Highways. 1983.
River-Horse. 1999.
Konrad Heiden. Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. [Führer.] 1944. Disregard the dull
title; this is an extremely interesting book, with a great deal about the social
background to Hitler's fascism. Heiden was one of those whom Varian Fry and his
crew helped to escape from France.
Joseph Heller. Catch-22. 1961.
Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon. 1932.
The Old Man and the Sea. 1952.
Enrique Hernández D'Jesús. Retrato en Familia. 1988.
William H. Herndon & Jesse Weik. Herndon's Life of Lincoln. 1888.
Herodotus. The Histories. c.-446.
Alexander Herzen. My Past and Thoughts. Parts 1-2. Childhood, Youth and Exile. 18521853.
Hesiod. Works and Days. c.-700
Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf. 1929.
Steven Hilty. Birds of Tropical America. 1994.
Chester Himes. Cotton Comes to Harlem. 1965.
Blind Man with a Pistol. 1969.
Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. 1925-1927. Let us firmly set aside the simple-minded notion
that one should only read something if one is prepared to go along with it, or at
least consider it. There is much to be learned from the enemy's writings, and this is
probably the prime example. First of all, it was not originally intended for general
consumption but as an internal polemic among fascists. Second, Hitler was so busy
covering up his shabbiness of person and his early life as an all-around screw-up that
he took no pains to conceal his larger aims and motives.
41
Eric J. Hobsbawm. His history of the western world from 1789-1991, comprising The Age
of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1975), The Age of Empire (1987) and The
Age of Extremes (1994).
Paul Hoffman. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. 1998. Biography of the
mathematician Paul Erdös.
Lancelot Hogben. Mathematics for the Million. 1936.
Holling Clancy Holling. Paddle-to-the-Sea. 1941. A stupendous book, among the
favourites of my early readings.
Minn of the Mississippi. 1951.
Vincent Holt. Why Not Eat Insects? 1885. Holt's modest proposal is taken increasingly
seriously in the West. It has never been controversial in Africa and Asia.
Homer. The Iliad. -8th or -7th century.
The Odyssey. -8th or -7th century.
Park Honan. Shakespeare: A Life. 1998.
Charles Hose. The Field-Book of a Jungle Wallah. 1929.
W.H. Hudson. The Naturalist in La Plata. 1889.
Idle Days in Patagonia. 1893. Obviously, it was this book that inspired Henry Miller
(the Patagonian) to write Quiet Days in Clichy.
Afoot in England. 1909. For many years I thought the title was "Afloat in England."
A bit of a letdown to learn otherwise.
Far Away and Long Ago. 1918. The great memoir of his early years in Argentina.
Langston Hughes. Not without Laughter. 1930.
The Ways of White Folks. 1934.
Robert Hughes. Goya. 2003.
Alexander von Humboldt. Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of
the New Continent. [Relation Historique du Voyage aux Régions Equinoxiales du
Nouveau Continent.] 1834.
David Hume. A Treatise on Human Nature. 1739-1740.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson. The Kindly Fruits of the Earth. 1979.
Aldous Huxley. The Doors to Perception. 1954.
Joris-Karl Huysmans. Against Nature. [A Rebours.] 1891.
E. Bolayi Idowu. Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief. 1994. The best book I have read on
traditional religion in Africa.
Christopher Isherwood. Mr. Norris Changes Trains. 1935.
Goodbye to Berlin. 1939. These two together are the basis of the movie Cabaret,
starring Michael York and Liza Minelli. I once asked Isherwood what he thought of
York's portrayal of him. He told me rather pointedly that he liked the performance
a lot, but it wasn't him (Isherwood). Okay, we can live with that.
George Jackson. Blood in My Eye. 1972.
Cheddi Jagan. The West on Trial. 1966.
42
C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins. 1938. The most highly-regarded treatment of the
revolution in Haiti.
A History of Pan-African Revolt. [A History of Negro Revolt.] 1938.
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways. 1953.
Beyond a Boundary. 1963. The best book I have read about sport ... insofar as it is
about sport.
Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady. 1880.
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. 1902.
Ted Joans. Black Pow-Wow. 1969.
Afrodisia. 1970.
F. Landa Jocano. Slum as a Way of Life. 1975. His other books are pretty lame.
Joey. Killer. 1973.
James Weldon Johnson. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. 1927. By the writer
of "Lift Every Voice and Sing", the national anthem of Afro-America.
Ernest Jones. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. 1953-57. The abridged version of
1961 is acceptable.
LeRoi Jones. Blues People. 1963.
James Joyce. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916.
Mary Harris Jones. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. 1925.
Franz Kafka. The Metamorphosis. [Die Verwandlung.] 1915.
The Castle. [Das Schloss.] 1926.
Khafra Kambon. For Bread, Justice and Freedom. 1988. Biography of labour leader
George Weekes.
Joseph Kastner. A Species of Eternity. 1977.
Yasunari Kawabata. The Master of Go. 1951.
Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba the Greek. 1946. Then look up the biography of Kazantzakis
by his daughter, Helen, and find the portrait photo of Alexis Zorba. He didn't look
much like Anthony Quinn, but in the movie Quinn turned himself into Zorba, if you
see what I mean.
Report to Greco. It's all about the canary perched on his head. 1961.
Alfred Kazin. A Walker in the City. 1952.
Rockwell Kent. N by E. 1930. It was the illustrations in this book that first drew my
attention to wood engravings.
Jack Kerouac. On the Road. 1957. I don't necessarily recommend this book, which is
now mainly of historical interest. It is listed here for its expansive effect on a much
younger Starr. I reread it years later and found it very thin, not much better than a
travel book by Paul Theroux.
Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev Remembers. 1970, 1974.
Kiang Kang-hu (ed.). The Jade Mountain. Translation of a classic collection of 300
poems of the Tang dynasty.
John Oliver Killens. The Cotillion. 1961.
Desmond King-Hele. Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802. 1963.
43
Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior. 1976. Salamander Fishcicle persists in
calling her Maxine King Hongston, but then, that’s the sort of thing Sal would
do,isn’t it?
China Men. 1980.
Franklin W. Knight. Slave Society in Cuba. 1970.
Frank Kofsky. Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. [John Coltrane and the
Jazz Revolution of the 1960s.] 1970. I never cared about jazz until I read this book.
Then I figured it was my duty as a young white radical in solidarity with black
nationalism to appreciate jazz. It was programmatically correct that I should do so,
you see. And when I got to listening, I found that it really did carve me. This is no
jive.
Kokkoka. The Koka Shastra. 12th century.
Asare Konadu. A Woman in Her Prime. 1967.
Peter Kropotkin. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. 1899.
Mutual Aid, a Factor in Evolution. 1902.
Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962.
Stephen Laberge. Lucid Dreaming. 1985.
Alex LaGuma. In the Fog of the Season's End. 1972.
Philip Lamantia. Blood of the Air. 1970.
J.B. de Lamarck. Zoological Philosophy. [La Philosophie Zoologique.] 1809.
George Lamming. In the Castle of My Skin. 1953. Think of it as a west-indian How
Green was My Valley.
Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Ducasse). Les Chants de Maldoror. 1868.
Poésies. 1870.
D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers. 1913. I don’t really have much serious use for fiction,
especially novels, but many fiction writers provide me with pleasant, if
inconsequential, entertainment. Lawrence is among them.
T.E. Lawrence. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 1926. The knowledgeable people say its
mostly horseshit, but I find it an uplifting read.
Edward Lear. The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear. (1947).
Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird. 1960.
Gershon Legman. Rationale of the Dirty Joke. 1968, 1975.
G.V. Legros. Fabre, Poet of Science. [La Vie de J.H. Fabre, Naturaliste.] 1913. Once
the definitive biography, now superceded by Yves Delange's book.
Ursula K. LeGuin. The Dispossessed. 1974.
Vladimir I. Lenin. What is to be Done? 1902.
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1917.
The State and Revolution. 1917.
Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac. 1949.
Mikahil Lermontov. A Hero of Our Time. 1840.
J.A. LeRoy. Philippine Life in Town and Country. 1905.
Thomas Levenson. Einstein in Berlin. 2003.
44
Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin. The Dialectical Biologist. 1985.
Howard S. Levy. Chinese Sex Jokes in Traditional Times. 1974.
Matthew G. Lewis. The Monk. 1795. Read this just before going to mass. Then watch
the priest's eyes.
Rupert Lewis.
Marcus Garvey, Anti-Colonial Champion.
1987.
My standard
recommendation to those wanting to read one book about Garvey and his
movement.
W.H. Lewis. The Splendid Century. 1954.
Li Ju-chen. Flowers in the Mirror. 1827.
Norman Lindsay. The Magic Pudding. 1918. Sort of an australian The Wind in the
Willows, although not so sedate.
Leo Lionni. Parallel Botany. [La Botanica Parallela.] 1977.
Richard Llewellyn. How Green was My Valley. 1939. I read this book in Stuttgart in the
summer of 1968 during one of the six or seven lucid days I can recall having lived.
Jack London. The Call of the Wild. 1903.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Song of Hiawatha. 1855.
Hendrik Willem van Loon. R.v.R. 1930. A wonderful evocation of Rembrandt and his
time.
Barry Lopez. Artic Dreams. 1986.
Konrad Lorenz. King Solomon's Ring. [Er redete mit dem Vieh, den Vögeln und den
Fischen.] 1949.
Man Meets Dog. [So kam der Mensch auf den Hund.] 1950.
H.P. Lovecraft. The Shadow over Innsmouth. 1926.
H.P. Lovecraft and others. Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. 1990.
Earl Lovelace. The Dragon Can't Dance. 1979.
The Wine of Astonishment. 1982.
Salt. 1996.
Mary Low. Where the Wolf Sings. 1994.
Walter Lowenfels (ed.). Walt Whitman's Civil War. 1961.
Lu Xun. His fiction in general, especially The True Story of Ah Q (1927).
Mochtar Lubis. Twilight in Djakarta. 1963. Much like Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful
Ones are Not Yet Born, except with several interwoven stories.
Mochtar Lubis. The Outlaw, and Other Stories. 1982.
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus). On the Nature of Things. [De Rerum Natura.] -1st
century.
Edward Lueders (ed.). Writing Natural History: Dialogues with Authors. 1989.
Russell McCormmach. Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist. 1982.
Carson McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 1940.
Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince. [Il Principe.] 1513. Even better than Saint-Exupéry's
The Little Prince.
Claude McKay. A Long Way from Home. 1937.
My Green Hills of Jamaica. 1947 (1979).
45
Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy. 1962.
Understanding Media. 1964.
Gordon MacCreagh. White Waters and Black. 1926. Absotively and posilutely the most
fantastic exploration book I have read. The “Entomologist” is William Mann.
Joaquim Maria Machado-de-Assis. The Psychiatrist. [O Alienista.] 1881-82.
John McWhorter. The Power of Babel. 2001. Forgive the dumb title. This book will
answer many of your burning questions about language.
Roger Mais. The Hills were Joyful Together. 1953
Brother Man. 1954.
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965. Edited by Alex Haley, who in later
printings allowed himself to be promoted as the author. Liberals have no shame.
William Mandel. Saying No to Power. 1999.
Nelson Mandela. No Easy Walk to Freedom. 1973.
The Struggle is My Life. 1978.
André Malraux. The Conquerors. [Les Conquérants.] 1928.
Benoit B. Mandelbrot. Fractals: Form, Chance, Dimension. 1977.
Daniel P. Mannix. Those About to Die. 1960. A straight-forward history of the roman
games.
Frank E. Manuel. A Portrait of Isaac Newton. 1968.
Mao Tun. Spring Silkworms, and Other Stories. 1932-43.
Eugène N. Marais. The Soul of the White Ant. [Die Siel van die Mier.] 1934.
My Friends the Baboons. [Burgers van die Berge.] 1938.
René Maran. Batouala. 1921.
Herbert Marcuse. Eros and Civilization. 1955.
Dambudzo Marechara. The House of Hunger. 1978.
Don Marquis. Archy and Mehitabel. 1927.
Tony Martin. The Pan-African Connection. 1983.
Arthur Marwick. The Nature of History. 1970.
Harpo Marx. Harpo Speaks. 1961.
Karl Marx. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. [Der achtzehnte Brumaire des
Louis Bonaparte.] 1852.
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. [Das kommunistische
Manifest.] 1848.
Edgar Lee Masters. Spoon River Anthology. 1915.
J.H. Matthews, ed. The Custom House of Desire. 1975.
Peter Matthiesen. The Snow Leopard. 1978.
Ernst Mayr. The Growth of Biological Thought. 1982.
P.B. Medawar. Advice to a Young Scientist. 1979.
Curt Meine. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work. 1988. Despite the wimpy title and
pedestrian writing, a thoroughly researched and insightful treatment.
Alfred F. Mendes. Black Fauns. 1935.
46
Martin Meredith. Nelson Mandela. 1997. As a liberal, the author simply doesn't get it
from time to time. Still, a thorough, well-written, fair-minded treatment, so we
can overlook this limitation.
Gustav Meyrink. The Golem. [Der Golem.] 1915.
Milton Mezzrow. Really the Blues. 1946. The most exhilirating book I have read about
jazz.
Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer. 1934.
The Colossus of Maroussi. 1941. Miller regarded this as his best book.
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. 1945.
Remember to Remember. 1952.
Quiet Days in Clichy. 1956.
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. 1957.
Henry Miller in Conversation. [Henry Miller--Entretiens de Paris avec Georges
Belmont.] 1970.
Dear, Dear Brenda. The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus. (1986.)
A.A. Milne. When We were Very Young. 1924.
Winnie the Pooh. 1926.
Now We are Six .... 1927.
The House at Pooh Corner. 1928.
John Milton. Paradise Lost. 1667. Milton wrote his great epic at a time when London
was in flames, Newton was formulating the core of his most important ideas, and
Hooke had just published Micrographia. It was England's moment of greatness. The
place has been in decline ever since.
A.B. Mitford. Tales of Old Japan. 1871.
Edgar Mittelholzer. My Bones and My Flute. 1955.
Prince Modupe. I was a Savage. 1958.
Jacques Monod. Chance and Necessity. [Le Hasard et la Nécessité.] 1970.
Ashley Montagu. The Anatomy of Swearing. 1967.
Jan Morris. The Matter of Wales. 1984. The best book I have read about Wales.
Felix Morrow. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain. 1938.
Farley Mowat. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. 1957. There are those who claim that this is
pure fiction, that the dog, Mutt, never existed. I once raised this question with
Mowat, who told me emphatically that the dog did exist and was just as he
described him. That’s good enough for me.
The Boat Who Wouldn't Float. 1969.
The Siberians. 1971.
Ezekiel Mphahlele. Down Second Avenue. 1959.
John Muir. Travels in Alaska. 1915.
The Cruise of the Corwin. (1917.)
Gerald W. Mullin. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia.
1972.
George Simeon Mwase. Strike a Blow and Die. (1967).
47
Maurice Nadeau. The History of Surrealism. [Histoire du Surréalisme.] 1945.
Shiva Naipaul. Fireflies. 1970.
V.S. Naipaul. The Mystic Masseur. 1957.
Miguel Street. 1959.
A House for Mr. Biswas. 1961. It remains a mystery to me that Naipaul got the
Nobel Prize, but this book was evidently the main reason.
The Loss of Eldorado. 1969.
A Bend in the River. 1979.
John Nance. The Gentle Tasaday. 1975.
R.K. Narayan. The Malgudi books, set in a fictitious south-Indian town of that name,
comprising the novels Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The
Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), Mr Sampath (1949), The Financial
Expert (1952), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Printer of Malgudi (1957), The
Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), The
Painter of Signs (1976), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) and Talkative Man (1986), and
the collection of short stories Malgudi Days (1982). I have read most of them and
have every intention of reading the others.
Sylvia Nasar. A Beautiful Mind. 1998. Skip the movie.
John Nash. Vermeer. 1991. A different John Nash from the subject of Sylvia Nasar's
book.
Tobie Nathan. La Psychanalyse et Son Double. 1979.
Joseph S. Needham. The Grand Titration. 1969.
Science in Traditional China. 1981.
A.S. Neill. Summerhill. 1962.
Abioseh Nicol. The Truly Married Woman. 1965.
Friedrich Nietsche. Beyond Good and Evil. [Jenseits von Gut und Böse.] 1886.
Anaïs Nin. A Spy in the House of Love. 1954.
Little Birds: Erotica. (1979).
Kwame Nkrumah. Ghana. 1957.
George Novack. The Origins of Materialism. 1965.
The Understanding of History. 1972.
Oginga Odinga. Not Yet Uhuru. 1967.
Sean O'Faolain. I Remember! I Remember! 1962.
David Ogilvy. Confessions of an Advertising Man. 1967.
Kakuzo Okakura. The Book of Tea. 1906.
Harold Oldroyd. The Natural History of Flies. 1964.
Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. 1996.
George Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London. 1933.
Homage to Catalonia. 1938. When I heard that Francisco Franco was on the way
out I went and got a copy of this book, which I commenced to read – in celebration - the minute I heard of Franco's death.
48
Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1949. I wonder if in 1984 anyone bothered to write a book
called Nineteen Forty-Nine.
Mykhaylo Osadchy. Cataract. 1976.
Sembène Ousmane. Tribal Scars, and Other Stories. [Voltaïque.] 1962.
Dennis Overbye. Einstein in Love. 2000.
Joseph Owens. Dread. 1976. The best book I have read about the Rastafarians.
Ivar Oxaal. Black Intellectuals Come to Power. 1968. Well, no, they didn't. Still, a
good book about politics in Trinidad & Tobago around the end of the colonial period.
Thomas Paine. Rights of Man. 1791-92.
Greg Palast. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. 2002.
Michael Parfit. South Light. 1987.
Boris Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago. 1957.
Alan Paton. Cry, the Beloved Country. 1948.
Michael Peppiatt. Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. 1996. The painter, not the
philosopher.
Merrill D. Peterson. Thomas Jefferson & the New Nation. 1970.
Henry Petroski. The Evolution of Useful Things. 1992. Petroski has a wonderful way of
presenting engineering as a very human endeavour.
Antonio Pigafetta. The Voyage of Magellan. (1969).
Edgar Allan Poe. His writings in general, especially the short stories.
Angelina Pollak-Eltz. Religiones Afroamericanas Hoy. 1994.
Michael Pollan. The Botany of Desire. 2002.
Velma Pollard. Karl, and Other Stories. 1994.
Marco Polo. The Travels of Marco Polo. 1298.
Karl Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. [Logik der Forschung.] 1934.
Conjectures and Refutations. 1962.
Unended Quest. 1976.
Laurens van der Post. The Lost World of the Kalahari. 1958.
The Heart of the Hunter. 1961. This sequel to The Lost World of the Kalahari is
listed with some reservation. The subject is extremely interesting, but an excessive
zeal for interpretation and comparison with western mythology and literature
renders much of it unreadable.
Chaim Potok. The Chosen. 1967.
Bronson Potter. Isfendiar and the Bears of Magandaran. 1969.
John Cowper Powys & Llewelyn Powys. Confessions of Two Brothers. 1916.
Llewelyn Powys.
Impassioned Clay. 1931.
Glory of Life. 1934. My favourite bit of writing by any of the Powys brothers. Look
for the edition illustrated by Robert Gibbings.
William H. Prescott. The Conquest of Mexico. 1843.
The Conquest of Peru. 1847.
Jean Price-Mars. This is What Uncle Said. [Ainsi Parla l'Oncle.] 1928. This is the book
that made the point that vodou is the heart and soul of haitian folklore.
49
Marcel Proust. Swann's Way. [Du Coté de Chez Swann.] 1914. For the record, if I could
reside anywhere I chose in Washington it would be on Swann Street in the 1500
block.
Alexander Pushkin. Eugene Onegin. 1833.
David Quammen. The Flight of the Iguana. 1988.
Thomas de Quincy. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. 1822.
Suspiria de Profundis. 1845.
Ann Radcliffe. The Mysteries of Udolpho. 1794.
Howell Raines. My Soul is Rested. 1977.
Man Ray. Self-Portrait. 1965. Not at all close to the book it could have been, but an
autobiography of Immanuel Radnitsky, nonethless.
Bill Read & Rollie McKenna. The Days of Dylan Thomas. 1964.
Pauline Réage. The Story of O. [Histoire d'O.] 1954.
Saunders Redding. The Lonesome Road. 1958.
John Reed. Insurgent Mexico. 1914.
Ten Days that Shook the World. 1919. I took this book along to reread during my
first stay in Leningrad. It was such a gas to walk many of the same streets that Reed
mentions.
Wilhelm Reich. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. [Die Massenpsychologie des
Faschismus.] 1933.
Deneys Reitz. Commando. 1930. The Boer War as seen by the good guys.
Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. [Im Westen Nichts Neues.]
1929.
Mary Renault. Her historical fiction of ancient Greece, especially the Theseus books
(The King Must Die [1958] and The Bull from the Sea [1962]) and the first two
volumes of her Alexander trilogy (Fire from Heaven [1969] and The Persian Boy
[1972]).
Restif de la Bretonne. Les Nuits de Paris. 1788.
David van Reybrouck. De Plaag. 2001.
Jack Reynolds. Daughters of an Ancient Race. 1974.
Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966.
Hans Richter. Dada; Art and Anti-Art. 1964.
Milo Rigaud. Secrets of Voodoo. [La Tradition Voudoo et le Voudoo Haïtien.] 1953.
Arthur Rimbaud. A Season in Hell. [Une Saison en Enfer.] 1873.
Rius (Eduardo del Río). Cuba for Beginners. [Cuba para Principiantes.] 1966. Also his
other books in the same format, such as those on Marx and Lenin.
Diego Rivera. My Art, My Life. 1960. To be read critically, as Diego was certainly
something of a blowhard.
José Rizal. The Social Cancer. [Noli me Tangere.] 1886.
The Reign of Greed. [El Filibusterismo.] 1891.
Paul Roazen. Freud and His Followers. 1971.
50
Tom Robbins. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. 1976. His other books are similarly
amusing.
Andrew Robinson. The Story of Writing. 1995.
Walter Rodney. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 1972.
Dave Roediger. The Wages of Whiteness. 1991.
Hilary Rose & Steven Rose, eds. The Political Economy of Science. 1976.
Franklin Rosemont. André Breton and the First Principles of Surrealism. 1978.
Penelope Rosemont (ed.). Surrealist Women. 1998.
Jacques Roumain. Masters of the Dew. [Gouverneurs de la Rosée.] 1944.
Raymond Roussel. Impressions of Africa. [Impressions d'Afrique.] 1910.
Damon Runyon. The Damon Runyon Omnibus, comprising Guys and Dolls (1932), Blue
Plate Special (1934) and Money from Home (1935).
Salman Rushdie. The Jaguar Smile. 1987. Just travel literature, with the usual
limitations, but a good, informative read.
The Satanic Verses. 1989. I keep my copy of the Quran sandwiched between this
book and V.S. Naipaul's Among the Believers.
Bertrand Russell. Why I am not a Christian. 1927.
D.A.F de Sade. The 120 Days of Sodom. [Les 120 Jours de Sodome.] 1785. No one is
expected to read every paragraph or even every page. That pretty much goes for
all of Sade's writings.
Justine. [Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu.] 1791.
The Boudoir Philosophy. [La Philosophie dans le Boudoir. 1795.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Night Flight. [Vol de Nuit.] 1931.
Wind, Sand and Stars. [Terre des Hommes.] 1939.
Ivan T. Sanderson. Caribbean Treasure. 1939.
Thomas Sankara. Thomas Sankara Speaks. (1988).
Jean-Paul Sartre. The Words. [Les Mots.] 1964.
Dan Savage. Savage Love. 1998.
Charles Sawyer. The Arrival of BB King. 1980.
George B. Schaller. The Year of the Gorilla. 1964.
Stones of Silence. 1980.
Londa Schiebinger. Has Feminism Changed Science? 1999.
Arthur Schnitzler. Traumnovelle. 1926. The movie version is Eyes Wide Shut.
Ernest Thompson Seton. Two Little Savages. 1903. The most influential book of my
youth, after those of Jean-Henri Fabre. I read it, I believe, nine times.
William Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. 1962.
Mikhail Sholokhov. And Quiet Flows the Don. 1928-40.
Ben Sidran. Black Talk. 1971.
Ignazio Silone. Bread and Wine. [Pane e Vino.] 1944.
Alan Sillitoe. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. 1959. Made into a fine
movie starring Michael Courtney.
51
Georges Simenon. The Madman of Bergerac. [Le Fou de Bergerac.] 1932. I may read
some more of Simenon's Inspector Maigret stories, and then again I may not. The
stakes are low.
Isaac Bashevis Singer. His stories in general. I much prefer the purely human stories,
unmarred by supernatural happenings.
Alexander Skutch. A Naturalist in Costa Rica. 1971.
Joshua Slocum. Sailing Alone Around the World. 1900.
Alexander McCall Smith. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. 1998. Further volumes in
the series are entertaining, but I don't know anyone who wants to read them all.
Anthony Smith. Explorers of the Amazon. 1990.
Homer W. Smith. Man and His Gods. 1952.
Edgar Snow. Red Star over China. 1937.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. 1962.
Cancer Ward. 1968.
Sophocles. All of his extant tragedies: Ajax; Antigone; Elektra; Oedipus at Colonus;
Oedipus the King; Philoctetes; and The Trachiniae. Mid -5th century.
Wole Soyinka. The Interpreters. 1970.
Madmen and Specialists. 1971.
Albert Speer. Inside the Third Reich. [Erinnerungen.] 1969.
A.B. Spellman. Black Music: Four Lives. [Four Lives in the Bebop Business.] 1966.
Jakob Sprenger & Heinrich Kramer. Malleus Maleficarum. 1487. A textbook of the
theory and practice of combating witchcraft.
Eintou Pearl Springer. Out of the Shadows. 1986.
Kenneth Stampp. The Peculiar Institution. 1956. The classic treatment of american
chattel slavery.
John Steinbeck. Cannery Row. 1939.
The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.
Travels with Charlie. 1961.
John Steinbeck & Edward F. Ricketts. Sea of Cortez. 1941.
Wallace Stevens. Selected Poems. 1953. Includes "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird."
John Stewart. Last Cool Days. 1971.
William Still. The Underground Railroad. 1872. The classic account of a righteous
subversion.
Joseph W. Stillwell. The Stillwell Papers. 1948.
Bram Stoker. Dracula. 1897.
Irving Stone. Lust for Life. 1934.
The Agony and the Ecstasy. 1963.
Tom Stoppard. Travesties. 1975.
Theodor Storm. The Rider of the White Horse. [Der Schimmelreiter.] 1888.
Paul Strathern. Mendeleyev's Dream. 2000.
Theodore Sturgeon. Beyond. 1953.
More than Human. 1975.
52
Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). The Lives of the Caesars. 120.
Robert C. Suggs. The Island Civilizations of Polynesia. 1960.
The Hidden Worlds of Polynesia. 1962.
Frank J. Sulloway. Freud, Biologist of the Mind. 1979.
Sun Tzu (Sun Wu). The Art of War. -4th century.
Lawrence W. Swan. Tales of the Himalaya. 2000.
R.C.H. Sweeney, The Scurrying Bush. 1965.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels. 1726.
J.M. Synge. The Playboy of the Western World. 1907.
John F. Szwed. Space is the Place. 1997.
Robert Taber. The War of the Flea: Guerrilla Warfare Theory and Practice.
1970.
Booth Tarkington. Penrod: His Complete Story. 1931. The collected Penrod books.
Edwin Way Teale. The American Seasons, comprising North with the Spring (1951),
Journey into Summer (1960), Autumn Across America (1960), and Wandering
through Winter (1965).
The Lost Woods. 1952. I know how he felt. I, myself, was cast out of paradise at
the age of seven.
Wilfred Thesiger. Arabian Sands. 1959.
Corbett H. Thigpen & Hervey M. Cleckley. The Three Faces of Eve. 1957.
Dylan Thomas. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. 1940.
Collected Poems, 1934-1952. 1952.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. The Harmless People. 1958.
J.C. Thomas. Chasin' the Trane. 1975. An uninspired biography of John Coltrane, but it
has the main information.
J.J. Thomas. The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar. 1869.
Froudacity. 1889.
Lewis Thomas. Lives of a Cell. 1974.
The Medusa and the Snail. 1979.
Piri Thomas. Down These Mean Streets. 1967. As you see, the Thomas family has been
prolific.
Alvin O. Thompson. Maroons of Guyana. 1999.
Ian Thomson. Bonjour Blanc. 1992. An excellent book about Haiti, the best I have read
by an outsider. It has two notable limitations: a) He seems not to have recognized
that Creole is a distinct language, not just broken French, and b) He never attended
a vodou ceremony or, it appears, had any clue that vodou is the heart and soul of
haitian culture.
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. On Growth and Form. 1917.
Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 1971.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972. 1973. The story of talking pro
football with Nixon is a real hoot.
The Great Shark Hunt. 1979.
53
Stith Thompson. The Folktale. 1946.
Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. 1849.
Walden; or Life in the Woods. 1854.
Niko Tinbergen. Curious Naturalists. 1958.
Leo Tolstoy. His fiction in general, except for the religious stuff. Of the long novels, I
especially appreciate Anna Karenina (1878), of the short ones The Death of Ivan
Ilych (1886).
John K. Toole. A Confederacy of Dunces. (1980). The title evidently comes from Swift's
remark that "When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this
sign: That all the dunces are in confederacy against him."
B. Traven. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. [Der Schatz der Sierra Madre.] 1934.
Leon Trotsky. My Life. 1930.
The Revolution Betrayed. 1937.
Problems of Everyday Life. (1973).
Portraits Political and Personal. (1977).
Barbara W. Tuchman. Her trilogy of World War I: The Proud Tower (1966), Guns of
August (1962) and The Zimmermann Telegram (1958). I don't know that she ever
explained why she wrote them in reverse sequence.
A Distant Mirror. 1978.
Practicing History. 1981.
Fawaz Turki. The Disinherited. 1972. What it's like to be a Palestinian.
Frederick Turner. John Muir: Rediscovering America. [Rediscovering America: John
Muir in His Time and Ours.] 1985.
Amos Tutuola. The Palm-Wine Drinkard. 1952. This book probably did more than any
other toward releasing me from a slavish dependence on rationality.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. 1954.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 1876.
A Tramp Abroad. 1880.
Life on the Mississippi. 1883.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884.
The Mammoth Cod. (1976).
James Ramsay Ullman. The Day on Fire. 1958. A novel based on the life of Arthur
Rimbaud.
Rems Umeasiegbu. The Way We Lived. 1969.
Arturo Uslar-Pietri. El Camino de El Dorado. 1967.
Jacques Vaché. War Letters. [Lettres de Guerre.] 1919.
Valmiki (attributed). The Ramayana. between -6th and -2nd century.
Gore Vidal. Burr. 1973. If only for the pleasure of seeing Jefferson get roughed up.
Virgil. The Aeneid. between -29 and -19.
Harry Villegas. Pombo, a Man of Che's Guerrilla. [Pombo: Un Hombre de la Guerrilla de
Che.] 1997.
54
Marc de Villiers & Sheila Hirtle. Sahara. 2002.
Stephen Vizinczey. In Praise of Older Women. 1965.
Kurt Vonnegut. Mother Night. 1962. The movie starring Nick Nolte is also
recommended.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. 1965.
Vyasa (attributed). The Mahabharatha. Between -6th and 1st century. Of the two
great epics of India, the Ramayana is probably the more revered and influential, but
I prefer the Mahabharatha. It is more human.
Arthur Waley. The Way and Its Power. 1934. A convenient introduction to Taoism.
Alfred Russel Wallace. A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. 1853.
Wallace lost most of his notes when the ship caught fire, so that this is a
disappointingly sketchy memoir, not on the same level as The Malay Archipelago.
Still, a valuable supplement to Bates's book.
The Malay Archipelago. 1869.
Horace Walpole. The Castle of Otranto. 1764.
Isaak Walton. The Compleat Angler. 1653.
Peter Ward. The End of Evolution. 1994.
Booker T. Washington. Up from Slavery. 1901.
Charles Waterton. Wanderings in South America. 1825.
James D. Watson. The Double Helix. 1968.
Barbara Watterson. The Gods of Ancient Egypt. 1984.
Bennett Alan Weinberg & Bonnie K. Bealer. The World of Caffeine. 2002.
David Friedrich Weinland. Kuning Hartfest. 1879.
H.G. Wells. The Island of Dr. Moreau. 1896.
Edward Weston. The Daybooks of Edward Weston. Vol. I. Mexico. (1973). Vol. 2, on
California, is less compelling.
E.B. White. Stuart Little. 1946.
Charlotte's Web. 1952.
Gilbert White. The Natural History of Selborne. 1789.
Alfred North Whitehead. Science and the Modern World. 1926.
Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. 1855. Whitman revised and expanded this book for
the rest of his life, so that the original edition of 1855 is only a fraction the size of
later ones.
Leonard Wibberly. His fiction in general, in which sometimes quite minor twists lead to
absurd conclusions. I especially go for the "Mouse" books about the Duchy of Grand
Fenwick, of which I have read three: The Mouse that Roared (1955), Beware of the
Mouse (1958) and The Mouse on the Moon (1962).
John Wickham. World without End. 1982.
Eric E. Williams. Capitalism and Slavery. 1944.
Tennessee Williams. A Streetcare Named Desire. 1949.
Amabel Williams-Ellis. Darwin's Moon. 1966.
Edmund Wilson. To the Finland Station. 1941.
55
Edward O. Wilson. Biophilia. 1984.
The Diversity of Life. 1992.
Naturalist. 1994.
Frederick Winsor & Marian Parry. The Space Child's Mother Goose. 1958.
P.G. Wodehouse. The Jeeves books; I care less for the others.
John Womack. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. 1968. I met Jack Womack one day,
quite by accident. It was a real gas to talk about Mexico with him.
Gene Wolfe. The Shadow of the Torturer. 1980.
Richard Wright. Black Boy. 1937.
Wu Cheng-en. Monkey. (1942). An abridgement of The Journey to the West.
Wu Ching-tzu. The Scholars. (1957).
Sylvia Wynter. The Hills of Hebron. 1962.
Norman R. Yetman (ed.). Voices from Slavery. [Life Under the Peculiar Institution.]
1970.
Allen M. Young. Sarapiquí Chronicle. 1991.
Marguerite Yourcenar. Memoirs of Hadrian. [Mémoires d'Hadrien.] 1951.
Pérez Zagorin. Francis Bacon. 1998. The philosopher, not the painter.
Zhang Xinxin & Sang Ye. Chinese Lives; an Oral History of Contemporary China. 1987.
No, you may not borrow my autographed copy.
Hans Zinsser. Rats, Lice and History. 1935.
56