Another Book List

Since the last list was deliberately heavy and the criteria for choice was based on a book's impact on me intellectually, I have since thought that there is another list, equally important of books I have enjoyed. Here they are:

The Wind in the Willows - A beautiful book with fabulous characters and chapter names like "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", which served the 'Floyd well enough

The Shipping News - much much more broadly drawn than the film. Life affirming and funny

The Dice Man - This made me cry with laughter when i first read it, but i was 18 at the time


Food for Free - the first book that ispired me to look around at things natural and go yomping off into the Lincolnshire countryside, in wind rain and blizzard (and the occasional sunny day). Had i listened to my inner thoughts at the time, or paid heed to how i connected with Richard Mabey's thoughts, I may have found my current, preferred way of life sooner.

The Famous Five - this has turned out to be the Harry Potter of its era. It's not literature, and it repeats the formula endlessly, but it got me reading when i was ten years old.

The Growth of the Soil - had to include a Hamsun book again and this is the first one I read. It is a kind of precursor to Independent People by Halldór Laxness, though i found the former highly readable and the latter somewhat depressing and miserable.

The Aubrey/Maturin series from Patrick O'Brian - a wonderful evocation of the wooden world of HM Navy at the turn of the 18th century, and an engaging study of a friendship.

Richard Ellman's biography of Oscar Wilde - without which i would not have been moved to write my final dissertation on dear Oscar. Apart from anything else it is a beautifully written book.