The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Everyone seems to be compiling lists of this and that, so why shouldn't I. These are books that have been significant in one way or another to me. Not necessarily the best loved, or the best literature, or the most re-read (though some are all three), but significant and memorable, one way and another. Some represent just one book of many by an author (eg Austin, Dickens, Eliot, Fowles, Lawrence, Orwell, Salinger, Thurber, Updike, Wyndham). If there any titles or authors you don't know here, see if you can find them in your library.
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim Jane Austin Pride and prejudice HE Bates The darling buds of May John Braine Room at the top GK Chesterton The man who was Thursday Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and punishment Daphne du Maurier Rebecca George Eliot Middlemarch John Fowles The Magus John Galsworthy The Forsyte Saga Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm William Golding Lord of the flies George Grossmith Diary of a nobody Joseph Heller Catch-22 Richard Jefferies Bevis Jerome Jerome Three men in a boat James Jones From here to eternity Erica Jong Fear of flying Franz Kafka The trial HH Kirst Gunner Asch goes to war DH Lawrence Sons and lovers George Orwell 1984 Mervyn Peake Gormenghast Anthony Powell, A dance to the music of time JD Salinger Catcher in the Rye CP Snow Strangers and Brothers Richard Surtees Mr Sponge's sporting tour James Thurber The years with Ross JRR Tolkien Lord of the rings Robert Tressell The ragged trousered philanthropists John Updike Rabbit run John Wyndham The day of the Triffids
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)