Top Ten Books I Wouldn't Mind Santa Bringing Me

By -
This week's Top Ten, hosted at the Broke and the Bookish, is about what books we'd like for Christmas.  Which seems a little blatant, but I don't think anyone who gives me presents reads this blog anyway, unless my mom sees it.  (Hi Mom!)  So we can call this a fantasy wishlist.

10.  Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese -- it's an enormous book so I'd like to own it so I can take a long time to read it without having to return it to the library.

9.  Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing, by Gretchen Hirsch -- I've been following Gertie's sewing blog for a long time and would love to get my hands on her new book!

8.  Goldwork Techniques, Projects, and Pure Inspiration, by Hazel Everett -- another sewing book!  I'd love to learn to do goldwork embroidery.  Affording it is the tricky bit--usually I like embroidery for its low cost!

7.  The School of Freedom, ed. Marc Sidwell -- I read this collection of pieces on liberal education earlier this year, and I want to add it to my permanent library of classical education books.

6.  ALL of the Little Tim books by Edward Ardizzone, especially the rather obscure Ship's Cook Ginger.

5.  The Sagas of Icelanders, by Ornolfur Thorsson -- Just looks really good.  I want it.

 4.  The Long Ships, by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson -- same thing.  Just looks good.

3.  The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge -- I would like to get an old edition with the illustrations.  It was illustrated by C. Walter Hodges, one of the great illustrators, and the book was dedicated to him--and the new paperback edition took out the illustrations.  How does that make any sense?

2.  The Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, by Rosalie K. Fry -- this children's novel was the basis for the wonderful Irish movie, The Secret of Roan Inish.  I would love to get an older copy of this book with the original illustrations.

1.  Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy -- whatever the best translation is, and a really nice edition, not the cover with the inexplicable bare knees and hydrangeas (I think that's the one that calls Prince Oblonsky "Steve" anyway, right?  No, apparently that's the Wordsworth Classics).  It's on my must-read list for 2013.  (Later edit: Santa must have heard my wish, because I won a free copy!)


Other very nice ideas include Penguin English Library paperbacks, especially The Warden (or better yet all the Barsetshire books in a set!), and original copies of John Bellairs books with their Gorey dustjackets intact.  Yeah, that one's a pipe dream.



Comments

  1. Amanda RoperDecember 5, 2012 at 8:46 AM

    Wonderful list! I haven't read any Elizabeth Goudge books yet but I have a few on my shelf. I snagged a copy of The Long Ships at a library book sale and I'm super excited about it. And, yes, I too crave all the Barsetshire (and any Trollope for the matter) in a lovely set. The Penguin English Library paperbacks are very very lovely indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanDecember 5, 2012 at 11:58 PM

    They certainly are. And lucky you, that you have The Long Ships!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more