Thursday, February 19, 2009

The top of my bookshelf

So I'm re-booting this blog a bit. Making it more of a direct response to Candy over at KTH, and to all the fine ladies out there who insist that their way is the only way to be a great homemaker.

Today Candy put out a post bragging about how she is such a great reader, savoring the classics and taking part in the Great Conversation. And then she informed us that the top shelf of her bookshelf (She may have two shelves, but no more. She's published enough photos of her home to prove that.) contained three boxed sets of children's books,
The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and one of the American Girl collections.

Ahem.

In reply, here is the list of what is on the top shelf of one of our book shelves:

  • A collection of the writings of Plutarch
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  • The Journal of John Woolman
  • Fruits of Solitude by William Penn
  • Don Quixote by Cervantes
  • The Divine Comedy by Dante
  • A collection of Aseop's fables
  • A collection of Grimm's fables
  • A collection of the works of Hans Christian Anderson
  • Jonathon Swift by Thackery
  • A collection of essays by various authors, including Ruskin, Stevenson and Thoreau
  • A collection of poetry by various poets, including Tennyson, Emerson and Longfellow
  • A collection of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • A collection of the works of Homer
  • A collection of American documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
  • 1,001 Nights
  • 1,001 Nights in the original Arabic
  • A collection of the works of Christopher Marlowe.
  • A complete Shakespeare
  • Howard's End by E. M. Forester
  • The Great Gadsby, by Fitzgerald
  • A collection of Emily Dickenson
  • Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  • The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris andJean de Meun
  • The Glimpse of the Moon by Edith Wharton
  • Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
  • Nature's end by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
  • A collection of writings by Edith Wharton
  • QV VII by Leon Uris
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
  • And yes, a KJV

Now, I admit, I haven't read all of them. But I have read 2/3 -3/4 of them, including the KJV, and would like to read the rest in the near future.

And I have ten more bookshelves in the house just this big. Each one holding 3-5 shelves full of books. And I have read most of those.

So yes, I'm sorry. Reading the KJV over and over and over again, while not even reading a children's book is not my idea of a great reader.