Since I could not travel to places, I had those places travel to me

The pandemic that cruelly tore through every major city in every country has not let up in its rampage. And governments that could have been more forceful or quick (like in the United States and the United Kingdom) are now locking down cities again. 

This means no visits to London soon. No choosing of a house for us to move into. Another set of air tickets will be pushed back, I think, and my dreams of having a carpeted and hardwood study and a roaring fire near the moors will be another year further away. 

I can console myself with literature. I just did a quick look at my most recent book list. I think there are something like 35 titles on it. I am waiting for all of these books to arrive. I will be spending the time I cannot travel reading these books. There are 30 of them. 

I am not sure of what the theme is for my choosing them. I think I wanted something dark and abstract. I also wanted to read the work of people writing a century ago, and writing in ways that defined thinking for generations; or wrote in ways that revealed truth that ignorance kept darkened, or distance and travel kept obscure. I chose books that are sincere. 

Book List for October and November


Finnegan’ s Wake by James Joyce 


Ulysses by James Joyce


Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 


The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 


A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles 


Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl 


A Train of Powder by Rebecca West 


Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West 


1900 by Rebecca West 


The Terrors of Ice and Darkness


Yeats by Harold Bloom


Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy


Renaissance Self-Fashioning 


The Printing Press as an Agent of Change


Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life 


London and the Reformation by Susan Brigden 


Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History 2nd Edition by Robert Bucholz


Medieval England, 500-1500: A Reader, Second Edition (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures) 2nd ed. Edition by Emilie Amt


The Making of England to 1399 (History of England, vol. 1) 8th Edition by C. Hollister


Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors by Peter Ackroyd 


The Usborne History of England 


A Social History of England 1200-1500


“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr 


“On the Road” by Jack Kerouac 


“Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman 


“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera 


“Love in a Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez



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