i do requests

My essay on the contents of my film library (digging through your wallet) elicited some responses that were unexpected -- but inevitable.

Several of you were curious about the books in my library. I could scratch that curiosity itch by listing the full inventory. It is short. As long as I do not include the books in my Kindle library.

When I sold the house in Salem, I gave away a couple thousand volumes to Goodwill, keeping only a rump of primarily biographies (for my mother) and a few theological works. I justified the loss thinking I could easily find anything online that I needed in the future.

There was a practical reason for cutting down on books. For the first six years I lived here as a renter, my philosophy was that I wanted to be free to move with little notice. The goal was to own nothing that I could not pack up and put in the Shiftless Escape within one hour. My landlords were always a bit nonplussed when I confided my secret in them.

When I bought my house in Barra de Navidad, that philosophy died the death that should have been reserved for nominalism long ago. With 4000 square feet of living space, I could start building up my library of dust-gathering books. And so I have.

But, rather than trying to list the books in my library, I will try a conceit several bloggers have used over the years. When I was in the Air Force, each night I would receive a pile of folders (known colloquially as "night table reading") that would take me three to four hours each evening to digest. I have long-suspected that is where I developed my habit of not getting to sleep until after 2 AM.

Because these are participatory essays, I will answer your queries by asking you a question: What is currently on your night table? What are you reading?

I currently have sixteen volumes in a Heathrow-sized holding pattern -- one that may take me over a year to clear if the recent past is any indicator.

Here they are:

• John Marshall: The Man who Made the Supreme Court. Richard Bookhiser. I have only a few pages left in this book that has reversed my perception of the fourth (and longest-serving) chief justice of the Supreme Court. My Jeffersonian bias has long painted Marshall as an activist caricature. Bookhiser has convinced me that his role on the court was to make it a co-equal balanced with the two other branches of the national government. We are better for it.
• Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. Benjamin Dreyer. As a writer I read for a lot of reasons. One of the most important is to improve how I write. I do not always agree with Dreyer, but his choices are always well-argued.
• Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems. Ted Kooser. I have been reading this volume of poems since my visit to San Miguel de Alende last August. That is exactly how good poetry should be read. In digestible bites to be savored. I will most likely complete this book before the end of the month. Too much more time would simply be self-indulgent.
• Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music. Jan Swafford. Some people think that reading about music has about the same relationship that pornography has to sex. But I disagree. Serious music requires analysis. And those analytical tools start on the page and are then applied in practice. Swafford does a great job of honing those tools by walking the reader through music theory within the context of its era and with short biographies of the best composers.
• The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination. Matthew Guerrieri. Guerrieri takes on the same task as Swafford, but he restricts his analysis to Beethoven's fifth symphony. The "human imagination" of the title is the bulk of his tale.
• The Labyrinth of Solitude. Octavio Paz. To live in Mexico without reading Paz is to strip oneself of several layers of understanding the culture in which we choose to live. I try to read this book every four or five years. Paz is a poet, not an anthropologist. That means that he has a far better eye for the country of his birth.
• Tata Chef y sus Nanas: Tres Miradas, Nuestras Raíces. Salvador Diaz Espinoza. Salvador (and I feel free to use his first name because I know him) was our guide when we visited the Purépecha outside of Zamora (coming of age in chilchota). It tells the story of how a group of community leaders have tried to preserve tribal traditions in an ever-modernizing world. The book includes several interesting recipes. In Spanish. For me, it is a slow read.
• What's So Amazing About Grace. Philip Yancey. This is Yancey's best-selling classic on the topic of Christian grace and how Christians fail to live up to sharing that grace with a world in need of it. I have taught several classes from this book over the years. It is time I read it again.
• Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News? Philip Yancey. In his most recent book, Yancey returns to the topic of grace, and how the behavior of Christans often undermine the gospel they espouse. I may teach a course on this book here during the winter. That means I may need to move it up in the holding pattern.
• Beethoven for a Later Age: Living with the String Quartets. Edward Dusinberre. Dusinberre brings his years of experience as a member of one of the world's best string quartets to finding new ways to interpret Beethoven for modern audiences.
• Pedro Páramo. Juan Rulfo. I have started Rulfo's quintessential Mexican novel several times. Its surrealism demands that it be read in one sitting. That should be easy. It is only 124 pages of enchanting and disturbing images of the human condition. I need to take another run at it.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel García Márquez. A lot of people think of Gabriel García Márquez as a Mexican writer. He wasn't. He was Colombian. But, he lived a large portion of his life in Mexico City. And that is where he died five years ago. One Hundred Years of Solitude was his War and Peace -- probably his best novel. I bought the novel in a bookstore in Bogotá. It is still in its shrink wrap.
• Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. Anne Lamott. Lamott is one of my favorite writers. Her politics are light years away from mine even though we do share the first principles of Christianity. (I can hear heads exploding of the strict Aristoleans amongst you. But it is true.)
  
  Her writing always avoid the sentimental triteness of many Christian writers. Her struggles with faith are honestly and openly displayed for all to see. She is Peter and Thomas wrapped in one fragile human package. That is evidenced when, on book tours, she encounters Christians who have political opinions that diverge from hers. She is always shocked that they profess their love for her -- and her writing. What binds us together in hope is far stronger than the transient politics that should not divide us.
• Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy. Anne Lamott. See Lamott above. And Yancey further above.
• A Brief Inquiry Into the Meaning of Sin and Faith. John Rawls. I cannot remember how this volume came into my hands. I brought it south with me in April 2009. Considering its philosophical bent, I would be willing to bet it was a gift from my friend John Hofer. But I could be wrong about that. I have thumbed through it. I need to read it.
• Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981 with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes). Stephen Sondheim. I have long been a fan of Stephen Sondheim's music. He writes in a medium -- Broadway musicals -- that is too often trite and predictable. Almost any popular tune can be completed by anyone with a modicum of music training by hearing only the first four bars. Not so Sondheim.
  
  But his true art can be found in his lyrics. The internal rhymes add charm (in the same way that they are distracting in prose), but they are more than that. If art is the tool we use to discover more about the mystery that is the human condition, Sondheim's lyrics are the equivalent of Dante's Virgil.
• Look I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany. Stephen Sondheim. More of the same. Just more recent.  

The pile will never go away. I buy new books from Amazon whenever I see something that interests me. Like David McCullough's Pioneers: The Heroic Stories of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West that I ordered yesterday.

And then there are my periodicals: The Oregonian, The Economist, National Review, The American Spectator, and The Oregon State Bar Bulletin -- plus my daily readings that take me through the Bible each year.

I suppose this is the point where I should say "to make a long story short --" to give you the opportunity to respond: "Too late." But I did say it.

Now it is your turn. What books are on your night table -- or in your library -- or by the pool -- or on the beach? And tell the rest of us a little bit about it. Do you like it? Would you recommend it? Why?

After all, we all need a mini-library of books stacked beside our bed to convince ourselves we can lie ourselves into immortality. Dying with a pile of unread books is simply something a gentleman could never entertain.