Sunday

19 March 2017

— Three spiffy new solar lamps on the edge of the back patio

Good Morning All,

For the handful of students who’ve written to ask for my Recommended Reading Book List, a list whipped together twenty years ago, I had come up with a sensible plan for updating it.

“Don’t rush it, Bheka,” I said to myself and the rubber refrigerator pig. “Take a couple of weeks. Give yourself time to remember all those authors, both old and new.”

I also advised myself to visit the basement once a day, with pad in hand, to peruse the titles there. And—just to be on the safe side—I would spend a half hour or so each evening up on the Net checking the lists for Award winners: Nobels, Pulitzers, Bookers, National Books, Newberys, Edgars, and what not.

That was the plan: slow, sensible, and thorough, sticking to a leisurely time frame that would get me done next Thursday. But that did not take into account my disorderly obsessive-compulsive tendencies for these sorts of activities.

The long and the short of it being: I am—as of about twenty minutes ago—up to 485 of the 501 titles needed, so I had better send the sucker out today, since I want to add recommendations from you all. (And if we go over 501, well, that is also fine. We could go up 555, Triple Nickels!)

So, here’s the list. I need to say three quick things about it:

1. I have not read all 485 of these books. I would guess I’ve read 400, give or take. I’ve added the others because people—friends, family, colleagues, students, other authors—have already highly recommended them, or else the title kept coming up in virtually every list I consulted.

2. You will be shocked by what is not on this list, either because I did not remember some author or title, or because I purposely left it off. (For example, The Lord of the Flies is not on the list for the simple reason I thoroughly hate and abominate--not to mention loathe and detest--this paint-by-the-numbers book. I had to teach it once. It took five years off my life.)

3. Please, please, please feel free to make a recommendation or five or ten. The only rule is: For each author, I am listing only one title per genre (novel, novella, short story, non-fiction, poetry.) Thus, although I’d dearly love to list all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, I have restricted myself to Tender Is the Night. (And then cheated a little by slipping in The Great Gatsby as a novella, which—actually—I believe it to be.

So, please recommend some work or works by any of your favourite authors who do not yet appear on my list. Also, feel free to list a title of an author already on the list, but in a different genre. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron 

P.S. By the way, I’m sending this as an Excel spread-sheet alphabetized by author, but you should be able to rearrange it any way you like. If you do not have Excel or for some reason cannot open the file, let me know and I’ll send a Word version.