Tuesday 14 January 2020

Three Books


Open Culture (link in side bar) lists the top ten borrowed books of all time at New York Public Library.

Six of the top ten are children's books.

That leaves four adult books.

The one adult book I haven't read (and don't propose to read) is Dale Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'.

My three adult reads are

 'Fahrenheit 451'
 'To Kill a Mocking Bird'
 '1984'
 
And I've read each of these books much more than once.

They are hereby five star  'Zen recommended'!


22 comments:

  1. These books are on the most borrowed list in USA and are borrowed endlessly by high school students because they are on set reading lists year in and year out. People are reading many books every day but not necessarily these ones.

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    1. My daughter persuaded me to read Mocking Bird having studied it for GCE. I didn't need much persuading having enjoyed the classic Gregory Peck film a couple of times.

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  2. Cider With Rosie, Jude The Obscure and Wuthering Heights would be my top three Gwil.

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    1. Now I wonder what my own top three should be. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, O Henry's 100 Collected Stories (Chosen by Sapper) and Haiku - The Poetic Key to Japan by Takahashi, Inoue and Takaoka would be strong candidates.

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  3. John Seymour's book of self sufficiency and my George Best annual would be two more to add to the collection.

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    1. My Rupert the Bear Annual if I knew where it was. I think it was the first book I read all the way through. How I devoured those little rhymes!

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    2. We are suppliers of second hand books. Today another rucksack full of free books to place in the old telephone box on the street corner outside one of the town's most well known bookshops.

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  4. Old Rupert the Bear annuals are very collectable and some fetch thousands of Pounds. Great idea for old books to be placed in the old telephone box Gwil.

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    1. Wish I’d known that about the Rupert the Bear Annuals when I was a nipper 🦀

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  5. Love the emoji. You know what to start collecting but don't tell anyone.

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    1. Read somewhere recently about a 100 year old man who collects Valentine cards. When I was a budding delinquent I used to comb the gutters for empty cigarette packets and stick them in a scrapbook. Amazing what people collect.

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  6. I think we are going to be on one of those hoarders programmes. We're charity shop and carboot sale mad. Oil paintings, books, plants, pottery, gardening tools, brass, copper, Japanese ornaments...?

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    1. I helped a friend at a car boot sale once. He stood before his assemblage of bricabrac for most of the day and didn’t sell a thing. Feeling sorry for him for having wasted his only day off I said to him: Give me the keys to your shop and I’ll go and get all that unsold bread 🥖 left over from Saturday. Needless to say we sold the lot. It went like hot cakes! In those days there were no no Sunday supermarkets and shops in petrol stations. Couldn’t happen now.

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  7. I have read the last two and thoroughly endorse your recommendation Gwil. As my Book Group book this month is Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South' with over four hundred pages I doubt I shall be reading much else.

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    1. A lot to get through then. I hope it’s large print. Don’t strain your eyes👁👁

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  8. I have had mornings like than when we tried selling stuff at carboot sales Gwil. We made 18 Euros one morning and spent twenty Euros on diesel getting there. Plants don't seem to sell well unlike the UK. Home baking and old clothes always seem to sell. Rather like your bread. I find carboot sales are best for buying rather than selling. Sounds like you had a light bulb moment selling the bread. An army walks on its stomach. I think Napoleon once said.

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    1. I read a fantastic book about his final imprisonment. It had maps and pictures. If I can find the title I’ll let you know.

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  10. Books tastes change with us and a list I might have made a few years ago would not be the same list I would make now nor the same list as 20 years ago. The most significant book I have read in the last five years is Bertrand Russell's autobiography.

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    1. Significant is a good word. I haven’t read many such books. I have Kissinger‘s ‚Diplomacy‘ but I doubt I’ll ever read it. It’s too heavy to carry never mind look into.

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    2. Russell's is full of interesting gems of information, humour and life; and of course written by him so is not someone's else's imagined view of why he did this and why he did that and dispels many untruths and myths surrounding him. I think it should be compulsory reading. He lived for nearly 100 years covering both world wars through the eyes of an adult.

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    3. That‘s surely more interesting than Henry’s tome on diplomacy or Tony Bliar‘s significant biography. I did read a collection of talks by Russell at least twice and I remember I enjoyed it. I liked his style. Maybe I still have it.

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