I had this idea the other day . . .
I was looking at the bookshelf beside my bed. It’s rather small; essentially a nightstand. I have books in a couple of other places in the house but my total book count is about 10% of what it was when I was living in Grass Valley. Some of that attrition came through my divorce but most of it was making choices as I downsized through the last dozen years.
So, these books are important to me and I thought I would use a photo of them to talk (write) about why. It may be that details of the photo will be hard to see so I think I may have to list everything with comments. It’s not a big bookshelf but there are 20 or 25 books there nevertheless. This post will either be long or broken in installments. We’ll see . . .
So, here’s the photo:
Starting from the left, first group: Science Fiction:
- Larry Niven: Protector, All The Myriad Ways, Tales of Known Space, A Hole In Space, The Smoke Ring, A Gift From Earth, World Of Ptaavs, Ringworld. So-called ‘hard SF’, Niven’s books take a couple of leaps from today’s science to get started but they are carefully crafted stories with interesting characters and realistic alien worlds and races.
- Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five. Needs no explanation
- Pat Frank: Alas, Babylon. Somewhat dated now (written in 1959), it is the story of a small community in Florida that survives an all out nuclear exchange.
- John Brunner: Stand On Zanzibar. I was introduced to this book when I was a junior in high school by fellow student Ted Hile. More recently, Ted and I were friends on Facebook until I got tired of his ultra-conservative screeds. I ‘unfriended’ him before I understood that I could ‘hide’ people from my feed. Ted, if you’re reading this, let’s try again. I never look at this book without thinking of you. The book is a dystopian novel about
- John Varley: Demon. Third book in a trilogy imagining that a moon of Saturn (Titan, title of the first book) is actually a sentient being. The world of Titan is populated with more-or-less humanoid races with an Earth atmosphere so when the human crew of a NASA spacecraft (think 2001) arrives, there are many adventures. I have several other Varley titles on other bookshelves.
- Joe Haldeman: The Forever War. Haldeman served in the US Army in Vietnam and came away with a cynical view of wars and the militaries who prosecute them. Also, he’s a physicist so his ‘hard’ science is solid.
Second group , , , well it’s kind of a hodge-podge after Science Fiction.
- On High Steel by Mike Cherry. A book about an iron worker in New York in the 1970’s. He’s a union man so there is a lot of insight into East Coast unionism that I find interesting. He narrates several deaths due to a combination of drinking and pre-OSHA safety procedures.
- The Seven Sisters by Anthony Sampson. Somewhat dated now but a great snapshot of the oil business in the early ‘70s along with some great history of the Middle East.
- Basic Writings by Chang Tzu, trans Burton Watson. Le Guin (see below) was my entry point to this philosopher. Her book The Lathe of Heaven has chapter quotes from Chang Tzu and they resonated with me in a profound way.
- The Way of Chang Tzu by Thomas Merton
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, trans by Ursula K Le Guin
- The Land and Literature of England by Robert Adams. Kind of a strange conceit but it works. Adams uses the literature of England as a frame to write its history. One of the few books that weren’t mine that I got out of the divorce.
Then there’s the Tolkien. Copies of The Hobbit and the trilogy in editions that came out after the first Fellowship movie. I still have my copies of the paperbacks I bought while still in high school. I went at least ten years reading the trilogy annually. Despite my serious fandom for these books, I never read the other Tolkien books (Silmarilion). I do have an original paperback copy of the Harvard Lampoon’s Bored Of The Rings in storage. I find it hilarious. It takes nothing away from the original.
Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Wouk refers to these books as a ‘romance’. There is a love story but the framework it hangs on is solid World War Two history. I recently saw a documentary on the Battle of Midway and I was able to refer to these books for solid perspective. The protagonist is in a difficult marriage that he ultimately escapes from so I identified with him during my own hard times.
A modern paperback edition of the complete Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. Drawings by E. H. Shepherd. The hardcover set my father gave me in 1955 I still have carefully stored away Two books of stories and two books of poetry, for those who don’t know. Don’t ever watch the Disney version.
Hidden behind Winnie-the-Pooh is:
- A Band Of Misfits signed by the author, Andrew Baggarly. About the 2010 SF Giants championship baseball team.
- The Control Of Nature by John McPhee. Three essays originally published in The New Yorker. At one time, I had a bunch of stuff by McPhee, many concerned with natural things. Control of Nature examines three situations where humans attempt to control natural processes with varying degrees of success. The US Army Corps of Engineers trying to keep the Mississippi River in its course through New Orleans. The people of Iceland trying save a town threatened by a lava flow. Los Angeles dealing with the rocks and debris coming down out of the San Gabriel Mountains. Great stories and still relevant.
- Bill Graham Presents, My Life Inside Rock and Out by Bill and Robert Greenfield. An oral history. Bill was one of my heroes when I dabbled in promotion in high school. He was running the Fillmore at that time. Years later, I worked for BGP many times and got to know some of the people in the book.
- Things a Boy Can Do With Electrochemistry by Alfred Morgan. Copyright 1940 with Dad’s name on the inside front cover.