Library Wish List

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The following is a list of books that various members of the Library Committee have suggested would be good acquisitions for the library. If you would like to contribute one or more of these books, please drop them off at the front desk or send them to the club c/o Library Committee.

Since this is a Wiki, you can, of course, also edit the list. Add your favorites; suggest alternatives; use the discussion tab above to talk about the books. (If you don't see the 'edit' or 'discussion' tabs above, you either haven't registered or you aren't logged in. You can register or log in here.)

Biography[edit]

  • Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer;
  • Winston Churchill by William Manchester (Visions of Glory and Alone);
  • Nell Gwyn by Charles Beauclerk;
  • The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman;
  • Nixon and Kissinger by Robert Dallek;
  • Tom Paine by Harry Harmer; and
  • Traitor to His Class (FDR) by H.W. Brands;
  • Ellis -- His Excellency George Washington, Founding Brothers
  • Fraser -- Six Wives of Henry VIII
  • Bailey-- Cheever
  • Berg -- Max Perkins
  • Lee -- Edith Wharton
  • Guy -- Queen of Scots
  • Massie -- Nicholas and Alexandra
  • Chernow -- Titan (John D. Rockefeller)
  • Lovell -- The Sisters, The Saga of the Mitford Family
  • Schonberg -- The Lives of the Great Composers
  • Mizener -- The Far Side of Paradise
  • Davenport -- Mozart
  • Ackroyd -- Shakespeare
  • Secrest -- Duveen


English Literature[edit]

Seminal[edit]

  • The King James Bible
  • Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
  • Collected Shakespeare
  • Seventeenth century poetry, especially John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries[edit]

  • Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
  • Richard Sheridan - Plays
  • Oliver Goldsmith - The Vicar of Wakefield
  • Jane Austen - any of the novels
  • William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
  • Charles Dickens - any of the novels
  • Anthony Trollope - The Way we live Now, Barchester Towers or any of the political novels
  • George Eliot - Middlemarch or any novel
  • Thomas Hardy - Tess of the Durbervilles, or any other novel
  • Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness, The Nigger of the Narcissus or any other novel
  • Henry James - The Europeans, The Bostonians, The Golden Bowl
  • Bronte sisters - any of the novels
  • Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Pope
  • Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White, The Moonstone

Late Nineteenth/Twentieth Centuries[edit]

  • E M Forster - any of the novels except ‘Maurice’, the short stories
  • George Gissing - anything
  • Somerset Maugham - short stories, The Moon and Sixpence, Of Human Bondage, The
  • Razor’s Edge
  • Graham Greene - any of the novels
  • Arnold Bennett - The Card or any other ‘Five Towns’ novel
  • Hugh Walpole - any of the four ‘Herries’ novels
  • Rudyard Kipling - short stories and poetry
  • Hillaire Belloc - anything
  • Samuel Butler - The Way of all Flesh
  • G K Chesterton - The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man who was Thursday, the Father Brown stories
  • Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
  • Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall, Put out more Flags, Brideshead Revisited, The Sword of Honour Trilogy
  • George Orwell - anything
  • Poetry of W B Yeats, Phillip Larking, T S Eliot, W H Auden, Ted Hughes
  • Saki (short story collection)
  • Max Beerbohm (Zuleika Dobson)
  • Doyle -- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  • Conrad -- Heart of Darkness
  • Huxley -- Brave New World
  • Lawrence -- Lady Chatterley's Lover
  • Durrell -- Alexandria Quartet
  • Orwell -- Animal Farm, 1984
  • Mitford -- Love In a Cold Climate, Pursuit of Love
  • Spark -- The Girls of Slender Means
  • Byatt -- Possession
  • Fowles -- The Magus
  • du Maurier -- Rebecca
  • Benson -- Make Way For Lucia

American Literature[edit]

  • Benjamin Franklin -- Autobiography
  • Edgar Allan Poe -- Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
  • Mark Twain -- Life on the Mississippi; Huckleberry Finn
  • William Dean Howells -- The Rise of Silas Lapham
  • Henry James -- The Spoils of Poynton
  • Frank Norris -- The Octopus: A Story of California
  • Edith Wharton -- The House of Mirth
  • Ambrose Bierce -- The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
  • Sarah Orne Jewett -- The Country of the Pointed Firs
  • Zane Gray -- Riders of the Purple Sage
  • Willa Cather -- My Antonia
  • Earnest Hemmingway -- A Farewell to Arms
  • John Dos Passos -- U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money
  • William Faulkner -- Light in August
  • James Thurber -- My Life and Hard Times
  • Zora N Hurston -- Their Eyes Were Watching God
  • Dashiel Hammet -- The Maltese Falcon
  • Raymond Chandler -- The Lady in the Lake
  • John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row
  • Eudora Welty -- Delta Wedding
  • John P. Marquand -- The Late George Apley
  • Jack Kerouac -- On the Road
  • Flannery O'Conner -- A good Man is Hard to Find
  • John Barth -- The Sot-Weed Factor
  • John Updike -- Rabbit, Run
  • Vladimir Nabokov -- Pale Fire
  • Joseph Heller -- Catch-22
  • EB White -- Points of My Compass
  • Robert Heinlein -- Stranger in a Strange Land
  • James Baldwin -- Go Tell it on the Mountain
  • Kurt Vonnegut -- Slaughter-House Five
  • Saul Bellow -- Humboldt's Gift
  • Elmore Leonard -- Cat Chaser
  • Wallace Stegner -- Crossing to Safety
  • David Guterson -- Snow Falling on Cedars
  • Carl Hiasson -- Nature Girl
  • Fitzgerald -- Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night
  • Cheever -- Wapshot Chronicle, Wapshot Scandal
  • Mann -- Magic Mountain
  • Salinger -- Catcher In the Rye
  • Ellison -- Invisible Man
  • Bellow -- Henderson the Rain King
  • Doctorow -- Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, Loon Lake
  • Pynchon -- Crying of Lot 49
  • Delillo -- White Noise
  • Roth -- Portnoy's Complaint
  • Irving -- World According to Garp, Prayer For Owen Meany, Cider House Rules
  • Leonard -- Get Shorty
  • Lee -- To Kill a Mocking Bird
  • Wolfe -- Bonfire of the Vanities
  • Walker -- Jazz, Color Purple
  • Capote -- In Cold Blood
  • West -- Miss Lonelyhearts
  • Ellis -- Less Than Zero
  • McInerny -- Bright Lights Big City
  • Nabokov -- Lolita
  • Porter -- Ship of Fools

Travel[edit]

  • In Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin (South America)
  • Songlines – Bruce Chatwin (Australia)
  • Going to Extremes – Joe McGinnis (Alaska)
  • Blue Highways – William Least Heat Moon (US)
  • Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron (Persia)
  • The Places in Between – Rory Stewart (Afghanistan)
  • A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush – Eric Newby (Afghanistan)
  • Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople – Patrick Leigh Fermor (Central Europe)
  • Love and the Caribbean: Tales, Characters and Scenes of the West Indies – Alec Waugh
  • Waugh Abroad: The Collected Travel Writing – Evelyn Waugh
  • Arabian Sands -- Wilfred Thesiger and Rory Stewart (Arabia)
  • A Vanished World -- Wilfred Thesiger (Central Asia & Kenya etc)
  • The Great Railway Bazaar -- by Paul Theroux
  • Kon Tiki: Across The Pacific by Thor Heyerdahl

Books about Boston[edit]

  • Seasholes, Susan: Walking Tours in Boston. MIT Press
  • McCord, David: About Boston. 1948
  • Kirker, Harold: The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch. Harvard 1969
  • Moore, Barbara and Weesner, Gail: Back Bay: a living portrait. Boston, 1995 (Moore-Somerset member)
  • Whitehill, Walter Muir: Boston: a topographical history. Harvard 2000 (latest ed.)
  • Howe, M.A. De Wolfe: Boston Landmarks. New York, 1946
  • Goodman, Phebe S.: Garden Squares of Boston. Hanover, 2003
  • Kay, Jane Holtz: Lost Boston. Boston, 1980
  • Southworth, Susan: Boston Society of Architects’ AIA Guide to Boston. 1992 (or later?)
  • McNulty, Elizabeth: Boston, Then and Now. San Diego, 1999
  • Krieger, Alex and Cobb, David, eds: Mapping Boston. Cambridge, 1999
  • Morison, Samuel Eliot: One Boy’s Boston. Boston, 1962

Other Books[edit]

  • Inferno – Translation by Michael Palma
  • Purgatory – Translation by W. S. Merwin
  • Atlas of World War II by Dr. John Pimlot (in color)