Dad was a good reader. He still is, though with less attention than he once commanded. I cannot discover the other side of Dad’s influence upon my reading life. His influence remains present. Books were in all of our homes, in Dad’s office, piled around his chair, in our bathrooms, and in Dad’s hands. I took up William Faulkner’s Light in August at 13 years old, and Dad assured me it was a tough read. Around that same age, I found his copy of The Lord of the Rings. I liked the idea of the book because I was enthralled by the cover art. Dad again told me the book was tough. He suggested that I start with The Hobbit. He found his copy of The Hobbit and handed it to me. The edition, like the other volume, had a magnificent cover. I soon went into Middle Earth. I don’t know why, but I felt an obligation to finish the books I started, even when they were too much for me. I continue to feel this obligation. Perhaps it was Samuel Johnson who said we are not obliged to finish a book. He argued, I think, that it was enough to start a book, gain a sense of its effort, and leave off, if we were so inclined. Johnson was a great reader, and I trust his advice, except I do not practice it. I try to finish the books I start, cover-to-cover. I hope people are still reading. There are readers to be sure, but reading literature has started to feel somewhat specialized, which, if that is true, then it is deep loss for all of us. Below is a list of books I read in 2024. I am fortunate that some of the books were gifted to me and some were gifted by the authors who wrote them. I am grateful to those individuals who sent their work to me or who gave to me the books of someone else. A warm thank you to those who did. Please know that I read the books. I take time to think about them and to discover where I could love them, even in moments, if not always in whole.
There is no order to the list below. However, like all lists, you could likely find a pattern if you desired to discover one. Regardless, I hope some of these books are new to readers. I hope some of them are already old friends.
- The Wind in the Willows—Kenneth Graham
- Immaculate Fuel—Mary Jane Nealon
- Rogue Apostle—Mary Jane Nealon
- The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold—Evelyn Waugh
- When We Cease to Understand the World—Benjamin Labatut
- The Wood at Midwinter—Susanna Clarke
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse—Charlie Mackesy
- Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Brothers Karamazov—Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy
- The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World—Wade Davis
- Sweetclover—Shann Ray
- The Gentleman from Peru—Andre Aciman
- My Half Orange: A Story of Love and Language in Seville—John Julius Reel
- Garden Time—W. S. Merwin
- A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel—James Salter
- The Lover—Marguerite Duras
- Impossible Creatures—Kathrine Rudell
- All Passion Spent—Vita Sackville-West
- The Solitudes—Luis De Gongora
- Deception—Philip Roth
- The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain—Kazuo Ishiguro
- Norwegian Wood—Haruki Murakami
- The Painted Bed—Donald Hall
- Without—Donald Hall
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All—Werner Herzog
- The Twilight World—Werner Herzog
- Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems—Harold Bloom
- Crossing the Visible—Jean-Luc Marion
- Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914—Stanley Weintraub
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being—Rick Rubin
- Everyman—Philip Roth
- The Dying Animal—Philip Roth
- River Teeth: Stories and Writings—David James Duncan
- The Warden—Anthony Trollope
- Poetry in the Making—Ted Hughes
- Bruce Chatwin: A Biography—Nicholas Shakespeare
- The Viceroy of Ouidah—Bruce Chatwin
- Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere—Andre Aciman
- A Year of Last Things—Michael Ondaatje
- A Month in the Country—J. L. Carr
- Hunger—Knut Hamsun
- The Picture of Dorian Grey—Oscar Wilde
- Ask the Dust—John Fante
- Time is a Mother—Ocean Vuong
- Lady Chatterly’s Lover—D. H. Lawrence
- All We Are—Anne Michaels
- Infinite Gradation—Anne Michaels
- American Pastoral—Philip Roth
- The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn—Solomon Volkov
- Duino Elegies—Rainer Marie Rilke
- Dark Days—James Baldwin (Penguin Modern: 38)
- The Breakthrough—Daphne Du Maurier (Penguin Modern: 03)
- Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence—Geoff Dyer
- What Am I doing Here—Bruce Chatwin
- Introductory Lecture 1892—A. E. Housman
- Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage—Lord Byron
- The Merchant of Venice—William Shakespeare
- The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos—Patrick Leigh Fermor
- The Body Artist—Don DeLillo
- The Greek Revolution of 1821 and Its Global Significance—Roderick Beaton
- The End of the Poem: “All Souls Night” by W. B. Yeats, An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University Oxford on 2nd November 1999—Paul Muldoon
- Burning in Water Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973—Charles Bukowski
- Byzantium: Capital of an Ancient Empire—Giles Morgan
- Lulu in New York and Other Tales—Robert Power (words) and Max Ferguson (paintings)