Read

Last month a prominent newspaper ran an article that listed the 100 best books of the 21st century as determined by a group of esteemed authors. I surveyed the titles hoping to find some correlation with my own list. Not many. A few days later the same newspaper printed a similar list as determined by its readers. Fewer still matched mine.

One of my (many) fantasies is to open a bookshop. Small. Dark wooden bookshelves. Brass lamps with Edison lights. Maybe a cat. Live preferably. Certainly, a dog. Also living. No cell phones. There would be a radio for news in the event the world is ending, and from which select musical formats would play. There would be tufted leather armchairs. Complimentary espresso and single malt scotch, if I like you. I would wrap the purchased books in brown paper and tie it with twine. I’m certain international spies would meet to exchange information among the stacks when it rains. It would be that kind of place.

In my bookshop I would stock the shelves in the following manner: A section of required reading for everyone who wants to be an educated and informed part of humanity. This section would include the classical canon - Greek, Roman, Persian, and other authors and philosophers whose ideas are foundational to an understanding of who and what we are, and dare I say, should be. This is bedrock stuff. How to think and engage in the world.

Another section would be for the humanities, you know, the stuff we used to teach in schools before STEM became the mantra of soccer moms and local school boards. This is the recipe that nurtures an appreciation for beauty, gratitude, and EACH OTHER. These titles would include history, philosophy, languages, art, music, and the like.

Next there would be a section for spirituality, from C.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis to Buddha and Bono and everything in between. It would be a big section. There would also be a section dedicated to wellness. Both physical and mental, even dying. This section would also include sex. Not just because it’s sex but because, ok, because it’s sex. I would have a huge section for literature. Biographies, memoirs, and essays. And poetry damn it. Foreign language, yes. Physics, yes. Non-fiction, for sure.

Here’s what you would not find in my bookshop: books on how to clean your house so that you will be happy. Fashion. And nothing really on bowling.

Of course, I would stock books I think are among the best of any century. I would surely include “Walden,” by Thoreau, which is, to my mind, required reading for every high school graduate. And Plato’s “The Republic,” required reading for every college graduate. And between those two milestones of one’s education, I’d have them read “Lincoln at Gettysburg” by Garry Wills, whose deconstruction of the Gettysburg speech encapsulates the great ideals on which our country was founded. I would include “Black Like Me,” by John Howard Griffin, and “A Time to Die” by Tom Wicker, books that lead the reader to ask big questions about the truer aims of social justice. William Least Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways” would be included, as would “The Razor’s Edge” by Somerset Maugham for those who face an uncertain path in life. For adventure, I would have “Cannery Row” by Steinbeck, the biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor, “An Adventure,” by Artemis Cooper. Other biographies would include Lee Server’s “Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing,” and “The Tender Bar” by J. R. Moehringer. Everything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For pure readable joy, I would have to include “A Gentleman of Moscow” by Amor Towles and “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett. Poetry by Seamus Heaney and W.H. Auden. And so many more.

But whether my list of books looks like your list of books isn’t as important as you having a list, and a bookstore or library from which to indulge your desire to read them.