Travels Through my Bookshelves (3)

These bookshelves are purely imaginary. I can only fit a handful of books in my tiny flat, and a few more in my office at work. Anyway, onwards...

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (people rave about this story but I found it rather dull and obvious)

The American by Henry James (I remember nothing about this)

Victorian Painting by Lionel Lambourne (pretty good)

Dark Forces (Kirby McAuley, editor) (like all horror anthologies, I can never remember the contents)

Four Past Midnight by Stephen King (the first Stephen King book I read; the Sun Dog really scared me, and The Langoliers is really original)

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (another book in which Dickens relies on good-hearted wealthy people to save the day)

New Terrors Omnibus (Ramsey Campbell, editor) (as above)

Hornblower and the Atropos by C.S. Forrester (I started reading this book immediately after my last Leaving Cert exam, in a spirit of trepidation about the future. It was poor.)

The Coral Island by J.M. Ballyntyne (I read this as a child but all I can remember is the atmosphere and one scene where a dead body is discovered)

J.R.R. Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter (wonderful biography)

Prime Evil, (Douglas W. Winter, editor)

Think by Simon Blackburn (adequate philosophy primer, uninspiring)

The Passion of Michel Foucault (I have a regrettable attraction to flashy ideas and I was drawn to Foucault in my twenties-- not enough to actually read any of his books. This is actually a well-written, interesting biography, a good portrait of a time and environment)

The World at War by Mark Arnold Foster (nothing special)

The Best of Myles by Myles Na Gopaleen (this book became so well-thumbed in my house that the front and back covers, as well as many of the first and last pages, were missing. My father read it, I read it, all my brothers read it. Lines from it became household words, at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular to be a Myles fan.)

Myles Before Myles, Myles Na Gopaleen (some good stuff)

Myles Away from Dublin by Myles Na Gopaleen (very poor. Myles was really hitting the sauce by now, and-- as the preface admits-- some of the articles are more or less copied out of the encyclopedia)

The Dalkey Archive by Flann O’Brien (rather unfairly dismissed, it holds the attention from beginning to end, although it rather trails off)

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu ("The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao"-- one of the most profound sentences ever formulated, surely? It's took me a lifetime to appreciate the first line of this book, so it's no surprise I don't remember the rest very well. I think I'm more of a Confucian than a Taoist, though.)

The Republic by Plato (Read it one Christmas day, very readable. My first encounter with it was through Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies, where it is devastatingly critiqued. But then, some commentators say Plato never meant it as a serious proposal.)

The Last Days of Socrates by Plato (I was tremendously moved by this, although Socrates's contention that: "I have never been happier than during a dreamless sleep" is rather depressing, as his observation that all pleasure is similar to taking fetters from one's legs-- merely relief of pain.)