In response to my recent Substack article <https://muffyaldrich.substack.com/p/the-way-of-the-wasp-what-fills-the>, I received this question for the community:
Good morning, good article. If you are taking requests, I would be curious about what books you (and your audience) think should be on the bookshelf, stacked in the living room, or stacked next to the bed. Thank you.
Oliver Wiswell. a novel about the suffering of New England Tories 1775-1781
ReplyDeleteJust got this from the library. They had to get it from storage.
DeleteDepends on the room. One example, in our guest room we have some art books, collections of short stories / ghost stories / mysteries, my grandmother's dictionary, anthologies of various countries' literature and folk tales, a stack of National Geographic magazines, and a Farmer's Almanac from a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteDo they belong there? Who knows. They just found their way there and made themselves at home.
I LOVE finding ghost stories amongst guest room offerings and also include some in mine. Roald Dahl has some collections of super creepyt short stories that are perfect for guest reading.
DeleteAn anthology of Emily Dickenson's works perhaps?
ReplyDeleteKind Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich
Highlights from my parents' and grandparents' homes on Cape Cod:
ReplyDeleteIn the knick-knack-laden bookcase: Old editions of New England classics (Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Gorey), a complete Yeats, complete Shakespeare, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Druett's Petticoat Whalers, Kittredge's Shipmasters of Cape Cod, Bible, Beston's Outermost House, A Pictorial History of Sea Monsters and Other Dangerous Marine Life.
On the ledge of the bay window, next to the binoculars: Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds.
On the desk next to the fishing tackle and workbench: Chapman's Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling, Charles G. D. Roberts' Red Fox, Farmer's
Almanacs, Swisher's Selective Trout, gardening and pomology guides, Peterson's Atlantic Seashore guide, books on waterfowl hunting.
Draped over arms of chairs and on nightstands: Robert Service's poetry, In the Heart of the Sea, Mary Oliver's Dream Work, Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World.
Books you like or find interesting, or that your guests might like or find interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home is a memoir by George Howe Colt
ReplyDelete100% yes!
DeleteSchott’s Original Miscellany, if it’s not in there, you don’t need to know it.
ReplyDeleteMy m-i-l's bookshelf for her summer reading was complete sets of Trollope, Waugh and Austen. In tiny typeset, too. The Wooster series. Then there's the Social Register and Emily Post's original "Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage". She taught her children and grandchildren from the latter, which lead to some hilarity... but much of it took! Finally, Eliot's "The Harvard Classics", a fifty-volume set that took up a whole shelf.
ReplyDeleteit does not matter what books, as long as there are books
ReplyDeletegreat answer!
DeleteFor those who wish to convey a certain image, Self-Reliance by Emerson
ReplyDeleteAn appropriate mix of high and low, useful guides, and sentimental copies of classics from prior generations. Something for stormy days inside (mostly mystery anthologies) and on the beach (I have paperbacks of all the original Bond novels). Nothing I'd be embarrassed about if a colleague noticed it on the shelf.
ReplyDeleteI prefer magazines for travel and rarely keep more than a handful at a time. I rarely seek out "trending" books but might take a look if shared in our local lending book nooks or the annual book exchange at my child's school.
We have seriously scaled back the paper book footprint. I'm the voracious reader and have shifted every newspaper, magazine, and novel to either an iPad or a Kindle.
ReplyDeleteWhat remains on the shelves reflects who we are. We don't happen to be wasps: 1) novels that pre-date the electronics. J. D. Salinger, James Thurber, Faulkner, Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, among others. 2) Poetry books or collections. 3) references: an atlas, a dictionary or three, writing style books like The Elements of Style and English Composition, a copy of Gray's Anatomy. 4) trail guides and and books about hiking and mountaineering, anything from trip accounts to how to identify birds, wildlife and reptiles to references like Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. 5) law books. I long ago tossed the law textbooks but have many books about the practical aspects of trying cases, legal writing, evidence, and the Constitution. 6) books about music, in our case mostly jazz music and musicians.
You know, I have a Kindle. It was a gift. It’s a marvelous invention. I thought it would be perfect when travelling. But I found it was just something else I had to look after, keep charged, and make sure I didn’t leave behind somewhere. Normally I don’t read paperbacks. But I read them when I travel. I might bring three or four. When I finish one, I leave it in the airport lobby, a cafe, or the hotel room. Someone else likely will pick it up and enjoy it. “Sprinkling the infield” is what a friend calls it.
DeleteThis is an odd question. Are we talking about family home or summer home? Muffy's original piece refers to the family home but many of the commenters assumed summer home. I ask because for me this is a much different question. I would never tell someone what to have on their bookshelves in their own home.
ReplyDeleteSummer home is different because the books are not just for you. I think that question has been well-answered.
Can you rally have a New England home without Thoreau’s Walden?
ReplyDeleteThe back issues of Yankee magazine.
ReplyDeleteSo many choices. Poetry by Don Hall.
ReplyDeleteYes! Especially his New England classic “String Too Short To Be Saved,” titled after a small box in a cupboard filled with just that.
DeleteI think the important thing is to have books that you have read (or are going to read) together with reference books that you actually use. Filling book shelves for show with books that you will never open is pointless (and irritating).
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I think of Gatsby's library as what to avoid. :-)
DeleteExactly!
DeleteThere are different sections: mystery, history, non-fiction, literature, mythology, children's, humor, puzzle collections, nautical, family photo scrapbooks, Shakespeare, my wife's collection of Greek classics and plays, college class reunion books, and a few reference books. I volunteer to take unusable books dropped off at the local used bookstore to the dump. Some intriguing ones have surfaced there. Entire collections of 'estates' have been dropped off, revealing much about their reading habits.
ReplyDeleteIt depends what your interest are. I think it is like other things: do you read what you like or to impress others? Read what you like and do not worry about what others think. I think this goes for the car you drive or the clothes you wear. When you try and impress others you become their slave.
ReplyDeleteWe find reading an author’s letters fascinating. They can give you an idea of a writer’s real perspective and style, not filtered through an editor. You can comfortably dip daily into a writer’s thoughts and opinions, just a few letters at a time. If that is what you enjoy. We like the way Martha Gellhorn, EB White, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Groucho Marx, among others, including Nancy Mitford, communicate with their families, friends, and colleagues.
ReplyDeleteThere should be two types of books. Those you have read and those you want to read, but have not gotten to yet. Other books in a family house were one of the two categories for an ancestor or other family member.
ReplyDeleteThe applicable Silver Books.
ReplyDeleteAbbott Lowell Cummings:The Framed Housesof Massachusells Bay 1625-1725
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Bible—for historical and cultural reasons, as well as faith values. No book had more impact on the founding of the region, let alone the country. Classic version is King James, but let’s have one in more readable English, the New King James, perhaps. Second, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Third, the McGuffey Reader. Also: Webster’s Dictionary (I’ve gotten lazy and used Google. Shame on me. Any thing and everything (historical) by David McCullough and Joseph Ellis. If we don’t learn from our history . . . ; and finally, the Classics, of course. Teach your children well. Not much is paramount to that. -JDV
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure which books such a house should have. But I can tell you which books it does have.
ReplyDelete1) Non-fiction: Anything and everything by David McCullough and Barbara Tuchman, with some Ron Chernow and Nathaniel Philbrick for good measure. Maybe Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" and David Yergin's "The Prize." Maybe some Steve Coll. Hay and Farb's "The Atlantic Shore" will be there. There's usually some Garry Wills and Michael Lewis to be found along with a boatload of Eric Sloane's illustrated books. Churchill's historical works are usually presents. There are also lots of those big picture books that National Geographic used to publish: "This England," "American Historylands," "Men, Ships, and the Sea," etc. Depending on the owner's preoccupations there will be a massive library of obscure and rare books related to sailing, gardening, horses, flower arranging, Federalist furniture, Chinese porcelain, or watercolor painting. If the owners are religious, you may find some of C. S. Lewis's non-fiction.
2) Fiction: acres of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Beatrix Potter, C. S. Forester, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Esther Forbes. Probably nothing with explicit sex or violence, which eliminates most post-war fiction--although Patrick O'Brian and John le Carré will be present along with John P. Marquand, Louis Auchincloss, and James Herriot (semi-fictional).
3) Reference: Chapman's "Piloting and Seamanship," Bowditch's "Practical Navigator," Webster's "Third International," Peterson's "Field Guide to the Birds" along with any other relevant Peterson guides, a beautiful but out-of-date world atlas, Post's "Etiquette" and "The Personality of a House," and an ancient edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook.
4) Classics: Several generations of accumulated literary classics from Greek tragedies to Chaucer and Shakespeare to Austen and Dickens, to Twain, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck. There's very likely a complete set of Trollope and/or Thackeray that has not been opened for decades.
Depending on the age of the house and habits of its residents, you may find decades worth of magazines (some of which are now defunct): New Yorker, Gourmet, National Geographic, Yankee, Down East, and American Heritage abound.
Lordy, where to start!? Louis Auchicloss, Donna Tartt, Amor Towles, Charles Todd, Charles Finch, John Irving, David McCullough, Edith Wharton, Shakespeare, Louis Bayard, Ron Chernow, Joseph J. Ellis... That should be a good start. And of course, shop at Indy book shops, used book shops, and library book sales.
ReplyDeleteBased upon the comments, I think I have just built a reading list to last at least a decade or two. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteSome Cheever, Some Updike, maybe an Irving or two. A worn copy of the Book of Common Prayer (extra points if it's the 1928, not 1979, edition).
ReplyDelete