David looked over my bookshelves and asked a good question. Could I make a list of essential books, and why they are essential. I'll try. I'm know I'll overlook some if I do this hastily, so there will be second, third and probably more thoughts on this later. But I'll start now.
To begin with, here are a few essential children's books: The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte's Web, and before either, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes to help beginning readers learn to read. I'm doubtful about fairy tales, Hans Christian Anderson or the Brothers Grimm, and I'm doubtful about the Dr Suess books. As I remember Anderson's fairy stories, they suggest that the meek shall inherit the earth or alternatively that virtue is unrewarded -- neither of which are helpful messages for small children. Dr Suess wasn't part of my childhood and although our kids loved The cat in the hat, Green eggs and ham, etc, I don't think they meant as much as other books; and that's the problem of the fairy stories too. I still have a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales that descended to me from my father, but I don't remember that any of the stories had an impact on me at all like the impact of other children's books. In my own childhood, the first two books I read on my own were Peter and Wendy, an abbreviated child reader's version of Peter Pan; and a similarly modified version of Robinson Crusoe. I still have both, and other children's books, A A Milne's two volumes of verse for children, or for parents to read to children, When we were very young, and Now we are six. And of course, I have Winnie the Pooh to go with them. A few years later I read Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer, two other essential books for boys, essential because each in its way introduces subtly some important values, such as the concepts of taking responsibility for one's own actions, being honest with others and true to one's-self. Louisa May Allcott's books may have a similar role for girls of the same age. Some time in early adolescence I read Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking-glass. These are essential books too. But they meant less to me in childhood than they have later, when every subsequent rereading discloses further layers of meaning I had previously missed -- first the mathematical meaning, then the symbolic logic, then the political commentary. A few years ago I reread Tom Sawyer, and was pulled up short when I realized that some of its language would be considered racist nowadays. So, undoubtedly even more so, would Huckleberry Finn. Yet it would be wrong to dilute or change Mark Twain's words and phrases, to change 'nigger' to 'coloured person' or 'African American' as some school boards evidently do, or to omit certain episodes because they describe actions or events that outrage modern sensibilities. What about Tolkein's Hobbits? They hadn't been written when I was a child; we read them aloud to our children, two of whom were already able to read themselves so they impatiently took off to read the books for themselves. I can't judge whether they should be part of the literary canon but I think perhaps it's rather too soon to say whether they will join the ranks of books for all time. Later in adolescence I came to Sherlock Holmes, and on a different wavelength and set in a different though timeless period of English class structured society, Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. I still have Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and I still have one of the P G Wodehouse books about Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. Why are they part of the literary canon? They are well-written. Doyle's stories reinforce a value system that distinguishes right from wrong. Wodehouse wrote beautiful prose about an imaginary time that might be Edwardian or England in the 1920s if there had been no Great War. Are his stories morality plays? No, they are amoral if they are classifiable on moral grounds. They do seem destined to survive though. In my school years I was blessed with curriculum planners who make wise - inspired - choices. Shakespeare was there of course, with a swashbuckling perspective on The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and The Tempest. That was a good way to become familiar with Shakespeare so later, more multifaceted interpretations became easier. It was the same with the poets, Milton, Byron, Shelley and Keats, Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Henley, Tennyson, Masefield, Sassoon, Wifred Owen and a dozen others from whose works I remember and can quote when the occasion merits it, a verse or a few lines. I was introduced to Pride and Prejudice too, in my last year at school, and have reread this, among the greatest of all novels in English, more times than I can count, each time finding gems I had previously overlooked. But here, I think, this first foray into the complex empire of words should end. I've said enough to make me realize that this subject is, for me anyway, far to large to deal with in one short note. There will be more, maybe next time on the ancient classics of Greece, or on books dealing with aspects of history.
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