Personal Library / Bookshelf Tour 2021 - Classics, History, NonFic, and Beyond!

Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Marian H, and I review classic literature, history, nonfiction, but mostly classics. And today I'm going to be sharing with you my 2021 bookshelf tour. These are books that I have saved and treasured over the last 10-15 years. I mean, some of them are newer, but some of them do go that far back. And some of them are books that I found second-hand, so they found a forever home with me. There are a lot, but I really think that books are the one thing worth investing in. And whether you buy them second-hand or first-hand, it's just something that you will always be able to treasure throughout life and pass on to somebody else after you're gone. So to me, it's again the one thing I really think is worth putting time, effort, and money into. And I really hope you enjoy this bookshelf tour. Without further ado, let's get into it. So my organization philosophy this time around was just to put all the books together and not separate out the ones I haven't read yet. I pretty much know which ones those are, and I took a picture for reference. I just thought it would be a little bit easier to go ahead and organize everything together, and I think it looks a lot nicer than the previous version. So another big change I made is that everything is more or less chronologically ordered, but I decided to put all the kids' literature on its own shelf. So we've got the Hobbit, of course, which is kind of a no-brainer. I've got some Trixie Bell in here, which if you haven't heard of it, it's sort of like Nancy Drew. She's a girl detective in 1950s New York. New York. And it's just a really fun series. There's a whole bunch of books, but so far I only have the two. Watership Down, I still need to read that, but I found that beautiful copy, and I think I showed that in a previous video. The Chronicles of Narnia, I did an unboxing of that. Bambi is a really good children's classic that I think doesn't get enough credit. It's just beautifully written, even for adults, so go check that out if you haven't. Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, and we've got a wardrobe here for Narnia. I do love my children's classics, and I'm hoping to get a collection of Hans Christian Andersen at some point. So as I mentioned, I'm going roughly chronological order. As we go on, you're going to probably get more and more frustrated by my organization. It's really rough, but I think it's going to work really well for me. So with that in mind, one of the first books here is The Inheritors by William Golding, which is a book about Neanderthals, so naturally it goes really early in the ordering. Some Chinese poems, which I've read on the channel. The Odyssey, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, and I really don't have a lot of ancient works, so we go very quickly into the medieval with Ivanhoe, Christine Laverne's daughter, and then jumping suddenly to the Divine Comedy and Meditations, the philosophical work I haven't read yet. The other thing I'm doing is putting the nonfiction with the fiction, so I'm sure this ordering may seem strange, but my brain works very much on this chronological timeline, so I just, I will know where to look for things very easily. I've got my complete Shakespeare here, which I need to actually read. Some more historical fiction, The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it's prequel Sir Nigel. A couple of 1700s historical fiction, and then you can't really see it, but I've got Scarlet Pimpernel back here, a novel of the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Really fun book. I was really happy to discover I had a respectable Royal Navy Age of Sail collection here. This book is Men of War by Patrick O'Brien, and I actually got this from my grandparents' collection. They were getting rid of a lot of books. I have not read it yet, but I was very excited to see that. The first book in the Hornblower series from a publication standpoint, The Bounty Trilogy and Captain Cook's Diaries, which I talked about before. Okay, so then we move into the early 1800s, and again, a lot of these books you've probably seen before from other bookshelf tours I've done in the past, but one new one here is On War, which I found secondhand and simply couldn't resist. The Red and the Black, I think I've mentioned that one before too. And then I've got my Eugene Onegin collection, and you all know how much I love Eugene Onegin, so I've got my collection of translations there. I have this really nice book, a collection of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings, which I've actually looked at a little bit, but the text of it looked really decent, so I want to go back and actually read the text and not just look at the pictures. Maybe do a video on that. Here's the infamous seashell from my videos hanging out there. And then I kind of like the transition from our Byronic hero to Kierkegaard. Not that he's Byronic, but I do think that as you put nonfiction and fiction together, you start to see how people were, how ideas were kind of floating about in parallel or things that came right after something else, and I think that that existentialism and the Byronic era aren't really dissimilar, so it's kind of nice to see him coming up next here. Yeah, I love Kierkegaard. He's great. And then right from that, we go into Nathaniel Hawthorne, another favorite of mine. And again, going from existentialism to dark romanticism, both very, in this case, both very religious, so there's really a strong tie there linking the two, I think. Believe it or not, I have never read The Scarlet Letter, so that is something I need to do, even though I've read pretty much all his other novels that were completed. Got a little bit of Dickens here. I've read more Dickens than this, I just don't have, I don't have more than that at this point. I have two copies of The Woman in White. I like this little one a lot, but I didn't realize the print was so very small, so I'm not really sure if I would actually read this one, to be honest. But I do have this larger print, Barnes & Noble Classic. A memoir by Frederick Douglass, The Count of Monte Cristo, which I started once. This is one of the oldest new books in my collection. This is a copy of Little Women that my grandparents gave me when I was a child, and it's one of my, one of my favorite books. Now, as we get into the 1900s, the ordering will be extremely rough, because a lot of these authors were contemporaries, so we've got, you know, Bronte sisters now, and I have read all of their works thus far, except for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which I mentioned in my previous video. I need to, I need to read that one maybe, maybe later this year. Joseph Conrad, and I'll be quite honest, I don't remember when Pinocchio was written, so I just stuck him here. Could be completely off. The Prisoner of Zendes, one I tried to read. Now, this is a very, a very niche novel, I would say. The humor is very niche, so I wasn't able to really get into it, but I will try to read it at some point, because I know it's quite a famous adventure classic, and I like my adventure classics a lot. Dostoevsky, yeah, I need to increase my Russian literature collection, but that's what I have thus far. And then another copy of Lewis Carroll, this is his complete illustrated. Got this at Powell's Books in Portland, I think, years ago. And this is a nice collection, by the way, because if you're looking for his essays on, like, various obscure topics, or some of his poetry, this book has it. Now, the illustrated part is a bit of a misnomer, because I don't think Sylvian Bruno is illustrated in this, just Alice in Wonderland, but if you're looking for more of his writing that's hard to find, it's a good one. Okay, this is one of my favorite parts of my bookshelf, this is Jules Verne. Huge fan of Jules Verne, and have been for a long time, so I have a little setup here for Jules Verne. Yeah, not a lot to say, because I've really gone on about him a lot in other videos, and I wanted to make a video on him specifically, but yeah, if you are looking for Jules Verne to read, I mean, Around the World in Eighty Days, you can't go wrong with that one, really. It's, like, his most readable work, I would say. But I always try to get people to read Magillania, because it's so good, and pretty much nobody reads it. And then from there, nice little segue over to some adventure fiction and nonfiction. So Velocity of Z here. I watched this film, the film wasn't so good, but my parents recommend this book pretty highly, so I do want to read that. Lonesome Dove, which a lot of people recommended to me, and some female adventure memoirs here from the late 1800s. Isabella Bird and Mary Kinsey. These are both very dated, keep in mind, but still amazing accounts by female solo travelers. And then, of course, Tarzan. Moving down to Sherlock Holmes, got a picture of Jeremy Brett, who played Sherlock Holmes in the 80s and the 90s on public television. It's my favorite, my favorite adaptation, and by far the most faithful. I like Basil Rathbone too, but Jeremy Brett is awesome. And yes, I have an encyclopedia of Sherlock Hanna, and I think I've mentioned it before, but it's pretty dated. I mean, it doesn't have any of the new stuff from, like, the Benedict Cumberbatch series, but it's kind of a fun book, so I thought I'd keep it for now. And then this is really one of my favorite eras of literature, probably my most favorite now, which is the late Victorian, early Edwardian era. So we've got, you know, Chesterton, Picture of Dorian Gray, a little bit of H.G. Wells, but I really want to get all of the H.G. Wells novels at some point. Ibsen I have not read yet, but I have read Strindby. I did a little review of him a few months ago. Inside joke for a certain person watching, but I made note to put them side by side. Then I've got Mark Twain's biography, or autobiography. I really want to get at least Joan of Arc, which I read a long time ago. Really enjoyed that. So far, that's the only Mark Twain I have. A couple of history books, and Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, which I've talked about a few times. All right, another favorite sub-collection, my Shackleton polar exploration books. This one isn't Shackleton, this is In the Land of White Death by Valerian Albanoff. Would highly recommend that one, especially if you don't want to tackle something really long like South. I mean South's not that long, but it's pretty tedious because it's literally just a lot of the same stuff over and over again. This is a book which is also from my grandparents. I was over the moon to find this. It's exactly the kind of book that I was really wanting to get, which is a photo book of Shackleton's expedition. So that was exciting. And then I have the folio of Frank Worsley, the captain's version of the story, which will probably be the next thing I read in terms of the Shackleton expedition, because I took a peek inside and it seems really readable. And he seemed like such a cool guy, so I'm eager to hear what he had to say about it. Whereas, you know, Shackleton's account is great, but he's just a bit more reserved, I think. Then we've got Tesla. I have not finished this yet, but I will, I promise. And then Jacob von Gunten, which was quite an interesting book I read recently. I did a little review of this on my blog, so check that out if you're interested in that. And then, let's see, Forster and Wharton. Not a big fan of Wharton or Forster yet, but I need to read a little bit more of their works before I make any kind of decision on that. Testament of Youth is supposed to be really good. This is a book I have read. This is the poetry of the First World War. It's pretty bleak, but it's a good collection from both soldiers and civilians and men and women, so yeah. And then that just segues beautifully into my T.E. Lawrence collection. I mean, you all know what an obsession I have with his life and his writing. So these I've read except for this one at the bottom, which I've started. It's The Boy in the Mask. I think that's the newest biography to have come out about him, or one of newer ones. So we'll see how that is, but yeah. Now, when it comes to my 20th century collection, I feel like it's incredibly eclectic and not very well themed, so just bear with me here. Down here we have the Complete Lucia and Map series, which is supposed to be a comedy set in, I want to say, 1920s England. I haven't read it yet, but it sounded fun. Memories of the Future, a New York Review Books classic. This was one of the first books I read that was more on the, I don't know if experimental is the word, but the style was quite challenging. I did enjoy the writing style. I didn't understand a lot of it, so that's going to be one I'll reread in the future for sure. My Kafka collection, as of yet. I just got this edition of This Side of Paradise, which I really, really like. Yes, I read this a few years ago and it just left a big impression on me, and I think about it every so often, so I'm going to read that one again too. I've got two copies of The Great Gatsby, which is kind of funny because it's not even a huge favorite of mine, but one of them I found secondhand, so I just ended up picking it up. Brave New World, Woodhouse, Rebecca, Some Virginia Woolf, and several books here which I've talked about very recently. Yeah, I'm building my Somerset Maugham collection slowly but surely, and I cannot more highly recommend trying him out if you haven't yet, just because I think he's quite underrated compared to other of his contemporaries. Let's see here, Flannery O'Connor. This is where I'm with Flannery O'Connor short stories, and it's not for lack of interest because her writing is is just out of this world unique and incredible. I think I got a bit downhearted by the darkness of her stories in spite of really enjoying them, so I'm going to take a bit of a break from that and come back to it later. Malacroix, another NYRB. Really enjoyed the style of this book. Felt like the ending was a huge letdown though, but if you like a moody story with plenty of rain and mysteries, you might just enjoy it for that atmosphere. I don't have a lot of Agatha Christie, although I've read probably most of her works. Then I do have The Thirteen Problems, which is from the Miss Marple series. Very enjoyable. And then here's my Tolkien, C.S. Lewis collection. I've read all these except The Fall of Gondolin, so that's still TBR. So that was like the first half of the 20th century. Moving into my World War II books again. Actually, this isn't World War II. This is Jacques Cousteau's A Silent World. Not a gripping memoir, but not bad. Again, all the fiction and non-fiction together. You're going to see a lot more non-fiction now. This is my grandpa's copy of Bonhoeffer. And then Viktor Frankl, whom I'm a big fan of. And then I've got a couple of books on the Japanese experience. You know, I need to put these these two together. Oops, let me move this. The Japanese experience in World War II is one of my current reading, well, not obsessions, but one of the topics I'm currently interested in. I have not read The Emperor's Sea Eagle yet, which is a memoir by a Japanese soldier, but I have read No-No Boy and The Sea and Poison. Both very dark, but very good books. I just think it's such an interesting topic, whether you're talking about the Japanese in Japan or the Japanese Americans. And then Lord of the Flies, which is an appropriate segue from The Sea and Poison. Both very depressing books. And then To Kill a Mockingbird. I used to have Ghosts that are Watchmen, but I really did not care for that book, so I didn't end up keeping it. Although now I kind of wish I had, just for the sake of completion. But anyway, Independent People. I think this one is, this is Iceland. Yes, this is going to be my read for Iceland. Three Summers, which is a Greek classic. Evita, really good. Well, I say really good. The story is interesting. I wouldn't say this is the best biography I've ever read, simply because there's not that much information about her. And I think there's been some newer ones published since I read that, but still a fascinating story. The Cobra's Heart. This is an excerpt from a longer work by this journalist. It was really interesting. And then I've got Italo Calvino's Cosmic Comics back here. So now I'm going to go over to my other bookcase and show you late 20th century to present. So this is my overflow bookcase. This is one that my grandpa actually made. It's this beautiful mid-century design. And so I've got, I've got my more modern stuff here. My Ishiguro collection. Yes, I decided to keep Never Let Me Go, even though I didn't really like it. I've got his two Japanese novels, which are my favourites by him. I still need to get Remains of the Day, which is another one I liked by him. The Rings of Saturn. I think I reviewed this last summer. I really want to read more Sebald. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. A very new novel that I actually loved. An African in Greenland. So this is going to be another reading the world book. And then here's a book that I also got in Portland a while back and still haven't read it. This is Cancer Ward. I just love the cover design, by the way. I want to get all the books with these cover designs. I really enjoy design just in general, so I'm a sucker for those sort of things. Okay, and then sort of related to Soviet Union writings and stuff of that era, I've got Fear No Evil, which was quite an interesting memoir of a Jewish man's attempt to leave Russia and immigrate to Israel. And then Open Letters by Havel. This was a fantastic collection, if you're into politics, political science, social stuff. And then my fun books here, which are all really recent, mostly to do with Asia. Another reading obsession of mine, although Permanent Record isn't Asia, it's just one of the best memoirs I've read, honestly. Yeah, I mean, so far, so I haven't read this one. I started it, but I was like, no, this is depressing. I'm gonna have to read this later. I haven't read this one yet, or this one. I started that one as well, but the other ones I have read. This is The Red Years by Bondi, who is a North Korean writer. And he smuggled out some poems and some short stories. I have read the short stories from my library's collection, and they are so good. Heartbreaking stuff, but so good. And I don't recommend this as well. I would say the poems are not quite as good as the short stories, but I mean, they're really unique for what they are. If I were to recommend one book out of all of these, well, Permanent Record for sure. CEO China was really good, so I would recommend that one highly. And I did a three-part book review of that on my blog, so if you search for it, you'll probably find that. And then, over here, got... I just decided to put all the philosophy-ish stuff next to my bibles, because I guess it sort of made sense. This isn't really... So this is a book my brother was getting rid of. I don't know if I'm gonna like it, but I just put it here for now until I've read it and decide what to do with that. Jordan Peterson sequel book, which I haven't finished yet. The Courage to be Disliked, which is basically a retelling or a version of Adlerian philosophy, which, again, I know almost nothing about, so that should be interesting. And then these are my backup bibles. I read a new King James Version, which I showed in my bible reading video, but I've also got this paragraph King James Version NIV. This old, well, somewhat old King James Version. And this cute little pocket bible, which I found secondhand. It even has, like, a little zipper pouch. So, yeah, I really do like collecting bibles, but I usually read my NKJV. So that's pretty much it. I mean, I have a few more things here, but I'm not really ready to share those yet. They're vintage books from my grandparents, so at some point I will show those. And then a couple cookbooks, but I don't think anyone's here to hear about cookbooks, so. Yeah, thank you for watching. I really appreciate you sticking around for such a long video, and please like the video if you enjoyed it. I'll see you next time.