Bookshelf Tour!  Classic literature, history, and more - 2018 - Part 1

Hi everyone, I hope you're doing well today on this beautiful Saturday morning. I thought I'd take you through my bookcase, my physical bookcase, a collection of books that I've picked up over the years and some books I've picked up from secondhand shops and one or two loners too. So I hope you enjoy this and let's get started. So the first books I wanted to talk about for this episode specifically were books that I am planning to read in the near future. I have a lot of books I've picked up that I have not read actually and I'm hoping to focus on that this summer to really read books that I already own and not buy any more if I can help it. So let's look at some of those right now. Okay the first one here is not even a book. This is the Sherlock Holmes Nemesis PC game. And to give you an idea of how old this is, the system requirements are Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. The graphics as you can kind of see here are based on Jeremy Brett, which is awesome because I love Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. And to be absolutely honest, I have not played this all the way through. So that's one of my goals and I know it's been years but I really haven't had a lot of time to play any kind of games. So yeah, I'm hoping to do that soonish. The next one we've got here is kind of an unusual book. This is one my grandpa loaned me and it's called Highlands and Hollows by Dallas Lorsharp. So I think this is a book that would be assigned to children to teach them to read. And I don't think he read it as a child. I think he picked it up like at an antique store or garage sale or something. Okay the next book is one I've read many times but I love reading this book. It's Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. I feel like this is a strongly underrated classic. I might have talked about it on my podcast but I feel like this book is every bit as good as Treasure Island and it's got that extra dimension of the portrayal of friendship between the main character whose name is David Balfour and his frenemy whose name is Alan Breck Stewart. And I say frenemy because they end up having some conflict in the book and that's one of the things I really love about this is how they find commonality even though they come from completely different social spheres and even cultural beliefs. So I really enjoy this book. If you haven't read it you should check it out because it's probably my favorite book by Robert Louis Stevenson even above Treasure Island and that's saying a lot. So the next book I have here is French for Reading by Carl C Sandberg and a few other authors. And it's sort of a day-by-day, step-by-step guide to reading French. And I've started it a couple of times. I really need to focus on it because there are definitely books I want to read in French. I need to spend some quality time with that book. The next one here is one I'm borrowing from my sister and it's called The Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson. I've never read any collections of Dickinson's poems so I think this would be a good place to start. It's supposed to be the first volume of her best poems and her best letters. So okay so this this is one that's been on my list for a long time. It's The Divine Comedy by Dante and this particular edition is translated by Longfellow of all people and it's got these amazing illustrations. You can kind of see here how amazing those are. I am really needing to spend some time with this too because I've started it once or twice and I find it a little hard to follow. It's not an annotated edition which could be helpful but I think if I can just find some time to read this through I think I would really enjoy it including this particular translation. So those of you who've been following my blog or my podcast will remember that I read William Faulkner for the first time very early this year and I still have this book which I bought at the same time as The Sound and the Fury and this is Light in August. I didn't really like The Sound and the Fury if you'll remember but this one actually sounds more promising. I don't think this one has as high ratings but I personally might like it based on the description of the plot. In any case, I do need to read this and decide if I'm going to keep it or not. I decide to keep The Sound and the Fury for now. That's on one of my other shelves. All right, here's another book that I want to reread very soon and that's The Lord of the Flies. On my podcast Classics Considered I've been reading a lot of dystopian literature lately and kind of trying to understand the progression of dystopian literature verses or in conjunction with the history of the 20th century, 19th, 20th centuries. So I think this would be a good one to read soon-ish. It's not necessarily next in line in terms of the chronology of dystopian literature but I want to read it again because it's been so long and I've only read it once. So yeah, I know what it's about. I know how it goes but I think there might be some nuances I'll catch on to this time which maybe I didn't catch on to in high school. The next book here is one which you've probably been looking at this whole time and that's All the Light We Cannot See and I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of this book. This is, for those who don't know, a more recently published historical fiction novel set in World War II I believe and it's supposed to be really good so I'm looking forward to that. I think the author either lives in eastern Washington or Idaho which is kind of interesting so that should be a good one. Next two here are the first two volumes of the Lucia and Map series and I've heard really good things about this series. The next book, The Boy in the Mask, is the most recent biography of Lawrence of Arabia that I know of and I am so excited to read this. I've been wanting to read it since, since it came out, since before it came out and this is by author Dick Benson Giles. I am so excited to read that. I just need to find the time. I've read a couple of biographies of him already but this one's supposed to have some new information and theories about who Lawrence's dedication poem is to because he wrote a poem at the beginning of his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and nobody knows who the poem is to and this is supposed to shed some light on that. I'm so excited. I really hope I find time to read that this summer. Okay, the next book is one I'm not going to pull out because it would be hard to get back in. It's called The 20th Century and it's a futuristic book by this author and what I know about it is it's got some really cool illustrations and I think it was published in either the 19th or the early 20th centuries. Probably the 19th century so that should be a fun book to read. I think it's similar to some of the futuristic writings by Jules Verne so that's gonna be fun. Got some Penguin classics here because what's a bookshelf without some Penguin classics. I've got The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of... hmm however you say that... by Anthony Hope. I've got The Moonstone which I've heard great things about and I've got The Red and the Black which is another French classic but this one's of course in translation. I picked up all of those at the thrift store I'm pretty sure and they're in pretty good condition so I'm happy about that. They've got some really awesome looking covers. This one I think is a still from the movie starring Errol Flynn. This one has a picture by Caspar David Friedrich, one of my favorite painters of all time. German painter. Really really love this edition because of that reason. I know. Priorities. And then The Red and the Black which is a pretty cool cover too. I like Penguin covers in general. Okay so here's another book that I once started. Oh I moved the bookmark. It was like right here and I did not finish this book. I've had this on the shelf forever. It's a long book and I know it's supposed to be really good so I think I'll like it once I've read it but I don't know finding the time to read something that long is so hard these days because I'm a slow reader. I don't skim read anymore. This is the Vintage Classics edition of Jane Eyre and I'll be honest I bought it because I like the cover art and I like the Vintage Classics typography and format and stuff so I have not read this in probably ten years so I need to read it again soon. This one's kind of an interesting book. This is called Recollections of Japan and it's supposed to be a memoir by one of the first Europeans to visit Japan. I thought that would be an interesting book. It's got some beautiful cover art and I don't know a lot about Japanese history so I thought this would be a good place to kind of start. Okay so this book is one I've tried to start so many times. You might know that I am sort of a fan of Joseph Conrad, at least his writing style and just how he changed the way I thought about books and writing after I first started reading him. This is Nostromo which is a fictionalized portrayal of Latin American history in a fictional setting in a fictional country and it's supposed to be really good so I need to I need to find some time to really focus on that one and not get distracted by other books. This is Rebecca the classic story of suspense and romance by Daphne du Maurier. I read this years and years ago. This is a much longer book than I remember it being but I think that's because I could hardly put it down when I first read it so I hope that rereading it I'll have the same experience. There's also a great adaptation of that starring Joan Fontaine as the main character so be sure to watch that if you have not. Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. My first introduction to this Russian author was his essay called Live Not by Lies and it's sort of related to another essay called The Power of the Powerless by Havel and I really recommend both those essays but I also wanted to read some of his other works and this one looked really interesting to me. It's about a group of people in a cancer ward and sort of talking about the Soviet climate of the time through the lives of these people who are being treated for cancer. Okay, moving on. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I've read this a couple times now. It's one of my favorites and this is a beautiful little edition from Macmillan. I forgot what this series is called but it's hardcover, pocket-sized. It's got the most gorgeous fly paper I've ever seen and the translator is F.P. Walter, I think is his name. I really like his translation. I read it on Project Gutenberg so if you're looking for a free translation of this story, I recommend his. Alrighty, just two books left. This one is The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Another favorite of mine from a long time ago. I want to reread this one. Having read some other books like this, I'm thinking of She by Rider Haggard. I think this would be a good one to return to and see if it's as good as I remember it to be. And this one right here, our last one, is Silas Marner by George Eliot. And once again, this is a book I read years and years ago. I want to see if I still enjoy the story. Well, I hope you enjoyed that little bookshelf tour. Like I said, I have a couple more shelves here to go through so hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to go through that and talk about a lot of classic literature. Most of it is classics, but that's what I like to read. So thanks for sticking around and I'll see you in my next post or video!