Book Meme
June 19, 2005 I was tagged by the Headmistress over at The Common Room to answer this question:Imagine that a local philanthropist is hosting an event for local high school students and has asked you to pick out five to ten books to hand out as door prizes. At least one book should be funny and at least one book should provide some history of Western Civilization and at least one book should have some regional connection. The philanthropist doesn't like foul language (but will allow some four-letter words in context, such as expressed during battle by soldiers). Otherwise things are pretty wide open. What do you pick?
Well, I fear that I was not able to keep my list to the "five to ten" asked for above. I suppose I would have to donate some of them on my own.
1. Pride and Prejudice
(I took this book with me on a family camping trip in New Hampshire. Needless to say, I had my flashlight on well into the night in our little tent. My husband was patient, but really didn't understand what all the giggling was about.)
Since I grew up in New England, these two books would have to be my regional picks:
2. Walden
4. Young Folk's Story of the World by Lou V. Chapin
(This is a huge tome and is long out of print, but it has a special place in my heart. It was written in 1896 and includes beautiful pen drawings. The book has sections covering Egypt, Ethiopia, Assyria, Media, Babylonia, Persia, Asia Minor and Neighboring Kingdoms, India, China and Japan, Carthage, Greece, Rome, France, England, Germany, Scotland and Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia, Spain, Modern European Kingdoms, Netherlands, Austria, Turkey, Italy, America, British America, and Spanish America. The introduction to this book, written by the author, is a prize in itself. From the introduction:
"Fact and truth, in a historical sense, are of course nearly related, but the seed of the highest truth may lie in a legend or tradition created by the poet or a story-teller, while the most undeniable fact may have in it no spiritual truth, no impulse to quicken the mind, enlighten the soul and make men truly wise.
There are millions of facts that have no real bearing upon historical truth in the story of a nation. They are trivial, even though considered so important by the old historians that all who came after them religiously copied them in writing history.
To be sure these records of fact should be kept as works of reference, and they will always be so preserved, but the age of twenty-volume histories has gone by, and the historian of to-day who would reach the public, and especially that portion of the public that is to become the nation-builders---the youth---must tell his story in a few words, and must have some rational excuse for telling it at all.
That "the noblest study of mankind is man" is not empty vaporing of a poet. The individuals compose the nations, and the biography of individuals is the history of the world. Their great deeds raised nations to power, their mistakes wrecked empires, and from them all we may draw lessons of incalculable value.
No man can be accounted truly educated who has not a general knowledge of the world's history. No man can be truly enlightened who is not able to trace the development of his kind from a lower to a higher plane, and above all, no man can have that deeply reverent attitude toward the God who created our earth and all of its creatures, which is the natural relation of a soul towards its Maker, unless he is able to see in his own existence the outworking of the immutable laws that since the beginning of time have ruled the universe.
Through all the ages one increasing purpose runs like a thread of flame, lighting up dark and bloody pages in the world's story, showing to all men, God in the humblest and highest places, manifesting Himself as unchanging, teaching men over and over the folly of trying to disarrange the rules of cause and effect, and endeavoring to stem with the puny strength of mortal hands and wills the resistless current of the Divine.")
5. The Bible
6. The Complete Works of Josephus
7. Eusebius, The Church History
8. Plutarch's Lives Vols. 1
9. Mere Christianity
10. The Kingdom of God Is Within You
11. Collected Shorter Fiction Vols. 1
12. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
13. The Oxford Book of American Verse
14. The Oxford Book of English Verse
15. The Yearling
16. The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
17. How Green Was My Valley
18. To Kill A Mockingbird
19. Fahrenheit 451
Those are just off the top of my head. I know I could keep adding more, but I will spare those poor high school students. Anyway, I am now tagging Amanda at Wittingshire, Kristen at Walking Circumspectly, Javamom at Take Time To Smell The Coffee, Anne at PalmTree Pundit, Amy at Amy's Humble Musings and anyone else who wants to join in.
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Comments:
Thanks for thinking of me. I'll try to respond later today. I'll have to think about this one for a little while...
Posted by: Anne at June 21, 2005 6:58 PM
I'd be hard pressed to do this exercise, though I like the interaction with books. We're working, among the Forthright Magazine columnists, on a book list now.
I found you thanks to somebody who clicked through your link to Forthright.
Posted by: JasRandal at July 4, 2005 8:30 PM
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