We’re not stupid! We’re just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction –Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Snow
Library Starter Kit
A great library is an unimaginable vast space with all of the books you forget about, and the ones you don’t. I can never remember that Middlemarch is the perfect novel, until I see it around and read all of George Eliot again. (If you haven’t read Middlemarch, read it, or at least read the New Yorker piece: “Middlemarch and Me”)
But maybe you are just starting to build your library, what are some books that you need?
A good library depends on each person’s tastes, of course. Personally, I love foreign fiction, biographies and old mysteries, so my library is full of Pamuk, Calvino, McCullough and Agatha Christie to name a few.
My musts would be:
- Snow, by Orhan Pamuk
- Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino
- Middlemarch, by George Eliot
- Anything by Agatha Christie
- Frida, by Hayden Herrera
- The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
That was painful, because I simultaneously know that I left out a bunch, bunch, bunch of books that I cannot live without, and that I can’t remember anymore books that I consistently reread…
As always, let the minions tell it like it is:
