The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau There is no better reading than Thoreau; and no worse than literary criticism of him.
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris One of the few spiritual quests everyone should read. Forget her subsequent books. Put this on the shelf next to Augustine.
Family by Ian Frazier A family history that does not put us to sleep like home movies. A good model for a narrative approach to your own.
Beyond the Wall by Edward Abbey Abbey, we need thee at this hour.
The Grass Harp by Truman Capote An entertaining story, full of Southernism. Forget the movie and read the book.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Seeking vs finding.
Appalachian Spring by Marcia Bonta Journal of the season.
Mightier Than the Sword by Kathleen Adams A book on keeping a journal.
Separate Pasts: Growing up White in the Segregated South by Melton A. McLaurin. Written by someone only a hair older than me from the same general area of the South. Reading this book brought back memories of the good and bad and helps me to know that Faulkner was right.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Hey,
I was born in Savannah so it's OK. Only in the South could this be an actual
nonfiction book and not a novel.
Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould on unabridged tape Science essays from the world champion of the genre.
The Devil's Stocking by Nelson Algren
The Bitter Berry: The Life of Bryon Herbert Reece by Bettie Sellers Byron Herbert Reece, once the Poet Laureate of Georgia, also taught at Young Harris College, and farmed a plot of land now Vogel State Park. The loss of his house site to a recreational lake is a historic preservation loss, but his poetry lives in the play Reach of Song performed at Young Harris College. One of his poems:
Roads
A pace or two beyond my door
Are highways racing east and west,
I hear their busy traffic roar,
Fleet tourists bound on far behests
And monstrous mastodons of freight
Passing in droves before my gate.
The roads would tow me far away
To cities whose extended pull
They have no choice but to convey;
I name them great and wonderful
And marvels of device and speed,
But all unsuited to my need.
My heart is native to the sky
Where hills that are its only wall
Stand up to judge its boundaries by;
But where from roofs of iron fall
Sheer perpendiculars of steel
On streets that bruise the country heel
My hear's contracted to a stone.
Therefore whatever roads repair
To cities on the plain, my own
Lead upward to the peaks; and there
I feel, pushing my ribs apart
The wide sky entering my heart.
Travels through America's Literary Landscapes by Fred Setterberg
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean on tape. Hemingway with long sentences.
From Time to Time by Jack Finney Time travel is such fun. Well, reading about it anyway.
Flyfishing Through a Midlife Crisis by Howell Raines on tape
Another transplanted Southerner. Another hymn to flyfishing. An interesting
sidebar on how Hoover (small government Republican, remember) used the
US Fish and Wildlife Service to build him a personal trout stream.
La Iglesia de Maraguez (PO-39): Investigations of a Local Ceremonial Center in the Cerrillos River Valley, Ponce, Puerto Rico by Patrick H. Garrow, Charles H. McNutt, Jr, Guy G. Weaver, and Jose R. Oliver. A technical archeological report. I read this stuff for a living. This one more interesting than most.
The Pistol by James Jones In the army, paperwork will, sooner or later, catch up with you. If you want to know about the army, read all of James Jones and then Heller's Catch-22. You will know it all.
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
91/2 Weeks by Elizabeth McNeill A tortured memoir. Not at all the same mood as the fun-filled movie.
Holy the Firm by Annie Dilliard A modern-day, female, Thoreau
Bulow Hammock by David Rains Wallace A well crafted natural history essay. Next time you find yourself at Daytona, go here instead of the beach or raceway.
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence Not only prurience, but an exposition of the complexity of love.
Lysistrata by Aristophanes Sex was not invented in the 1960s.
The Morning Watch by James Agee
Perusing St. Paul and Minneapolis used bookstores
Aran Islands by John Synge
Writers in America by Budd Schulberg A revealing portray of Fitzgerald, among others.
Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal by David Kline
Separate Country: A Literary Journey through the American South by Paul Binding
Afterlife by John Updike abridged tape read by him
Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway on tape
Berlin Diaries by Marie Vasselchikov on unabridged tape If this does not rank as the finest memoir of civilian life in Germany during WWII in English, please tell me what does.
Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman on tape, abridged but read by him. I like the idea of being able to identify single prehistoric potters by their pots.
The Dark Wind by Tony Hillerman on unabridged tape.
The Road Unseen by Peter and Barbara Jenkins The worst Jenkins walking book.
Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childres on tape If Fairhope, Alabama is so great, why does he live in Costa Rica? This story will make a riotous movie.
Through a Mirror by Jane Goodall What separates us from the chimps?
Not much. A heartfelt memoir of her time with the chimps.
The Book of Knowledge by Doris Grumbach
Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes. A critique of Sartes's What is Literature. Difficult analytical prose by Argentina's finest.
Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke on tape Dave Robicheaux is my favorite detective. After Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, of course.
Fear of Fifty by Erica Jong on tape
Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach A very fine memoir of a period of solitude not spent alone.
People, Places, and Books by Gilbert Highet A major discover in my literary life. Found for $1 outside a Charleston bookstore. He was the Harold Bloom of the preceding generation, only nicer and less obtuse.
Livingston and His African Journeys by Elspeth Huxley on tape
She wrote more than the Flame Trees of Thika.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday Through flashbacks, and the present (1950s), he moves through two worlds, one aboriginal and one American. The aboriginal is perfection, riddled with strong, good feelings like beautiful while snow on bare hands and then being warmed by strong hot coffee. The American world is populated by insensitivity, poor jobs, and alcoholism.
Field Notes by Barry Lopez He is the best nature essayist living. This though is a book of short stories. The field is ever present in them.
The African Queen by C.S. Forester on tape
How to Walk a Pig and Other Lessons in Country Living by Steven Coffman Mother Earth sort of stuff with a camera.
Mankiller by Wilma Mankiller on tape The modern Cherokee tribe
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca on unabridged tape The Mexican movie may be based on this but it is metaphysical while this is historical, autobiographical, and promotional. The earliest personal account from the southeast and Texas.
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront by Eric Hoffer
Hamlet by William Shakespeare Why do you hesitate?
On the Road by Jack Kerouac A frantic book. Dean Moriaty, the protagonist, is compulsive--obsessive. Like Kramer on drugs! Surely the model for every road movie ever made, even including Burt Reynolds.
Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks on abridged tape A highly popular book. Did it have a point?
The American Religion by Harold Bloom Bloom is excited by the depth and consistency of the American Religion as manifest in the Reagan-Bush national Republicans while at the same time politically appalled by his predicted outcomes. He dates much of the American religion from the Cave Ridge, KY camp meeting, spring 1801 (I would like to think it dates from my ancestors' Effingham County, GA camp meeting in the 1790s). He likens that event to American religion as Woodstock is to the present generation.
He addresses a question I always had about the Devil's character. Having once read the Bible from beginning to end, much of his popular culture description was not found. Bloom reports that E.Y. Mullins, the re-definer of the Southern Baptist theology, memorized Paradise Lost.
My father, a retired minister, and a fundamentalist friend took issue with Bloom. But I believe they missed--intentionally--the point. They construed his analysis as abject criticism when he was applying the tools of literary criticism to the writings of the American Religion.
The West Point Way of Leadership by Larry R. Donnithorne. This, read as a companion to Catch-22, will help you understand why the US Army Corps of Engineers is as it is.
High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
An Ounce of Preservation: A Guide to the Care of Papers and Photographs
by Craig A. Tuttle
Here is New York by E. B. White
Diary of Anais Nin, 1931-1934 Even though I made a promise not to read until they were truly uncensored and unedited, I had to finish the volume I had open. She spent a lot of time each night with her journal open.
Selected Journals of Henry David Thoreau As did he. Please buy me the complete set. HDT sits at the pinnacle of journalizing.
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver For three-fourths of this book, I enjoyed her little aphorisms, "as he shifted gears in the old truck it sounded like slamming the silverware drawer." Then it downed on me that this book was a real story with a problem, a complication, and a resolution. In the middle of the complication, the story and the people began to matter to me. By the end of the book, I suppose I got in touch with my feminine side since I was laughing and crying at the same time.
The Innocent Eye by Herbert Read
A War Diary (WWI) by Herbert Read What fine reading. He reads
and writes and coedits a literary journal, is an adjutant, and in the midst
of a cruel war did not stop. Another example of "no excuses."
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O'Connor edited by Sally Fitzgerald
Time and Again by Jack Finney on tape
Everything That Rises Must Converge and other stories by Flannery O'Connor
The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor
Some think she made up these characters. Growing
up in south and middle Georgia, I can tell you she did not. I have met
them all.
Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony by Lewis Thomas on tape
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©1998 Ernest W. Seckinger Jr