They're having a book drive at work, and I'm using it as an opportunity to downsize my library. I decided to part ways with every book whose spine I can't imagine ever cracking again. Using this sole criterion, I marked 44 volumes for removal. They can be divided into five distinct categories:
Books I Dislike
After the Fall by Arthur Miller
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Books to Which I Am Indifferent
The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Valparaiso by Don DeLillo
Poor Folk and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans. by David McDuff
Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
The Author's Farce by Henry Fielding
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
Personal Memoirs of US Grant
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. by Edward FitzGerald
Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays by Tony Kushner
Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies
A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, trans. by Tiina Nunnally
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
Books I Like but Will Likely Never Reread or Regularly Consult
History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison by Henry Adams
Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing by Ian Buruma
Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer's by Thomas DeBaggio
The World of Christopher Marlowe by David Riggs
The Sagas of Icelanders
Eleonora Duse by Helen Sheehy
Books I Like but Can Remember Virtually Nothing About [only a vague fond feeling remains]
Famous Women by Boccaccio, trans. by Virgina Brown
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Close Up, 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism, ed. by James Donald, Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
A Multitude of Sins by Richard Ford
The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
Birds, Beasts and Flowers! by DH Lawrence
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
Duse on Tour: Guido Noccioli's Diaries, 1906-07, trans. by Giovanni Pontiero
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter
The Weather of Words by Mark Strand
Mayflies: New Poems and Translations by Richard Wilbur
James Madison by Garry Wills
Duplicate Copies [or, how many Hamlets does one person need?]
Four Major Plays by Henrik Ibsen, trans. by James McFarlane
Boris Godunov by Alexander Pushkin, trans. by Nicholas Rzhevsky
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
I think I'll do my CDs next.
I, for one, am sad to see Kristin Lavransdatter go. -BFF
Posted by: BFF | July 17, 2011 at 02:03 AM
You can have it if you like. Just lemme know.
Posted by: Zac Thompson | July 17, 2011 at 10:34 AM