Book Bucket List

My friend asked me a fun question: if you were trapped on a desert island, and had the Bible, the Complete Shakespeare, and, say, a basic guide to desert island survival, what additional eight books (that you can actually buy, not an imaginary "ideal" compilation) and single album, would you want with you and why?

Here's my list.

The single album: a good recording of The Messiah. Although there are other pieces of music that I love (Beethoven's 7th and 9th, Chopin's Piano Sonatas 1 and 2, Brahm's cello concertos, Puccini's La Boheme, and Mozart's Requiem Mass, to name a few), I think Handel's oratorio offers the best mix of uplifting lyrics and transcendent music. If that was all I had to listen to for life, I think it would be enough.

The books.

• The Story of Art by Gombrich. It might not be the most lengthy of art books, and, as such, perhaps would not offer the extensiveness of books with 1001 Paintings, but I love the readability and intelligence of the text, combined with quality reproductions. A life without a bit of beautiful paintings: no thanks.
• The Wednesday Wars and
• Okay for Now, both by Gary Schmidt. These are my comfort food books, and I think comfort food is important. If trapped on a desert island, I would want these books to make me laugh and cry and remember human relations in all their joys, sorrows, brokenness and beauty. The first time I read The Wednesday Wars, I laughed hysterically and wept convulsively. They move me.
• Cry, the Beloved Country and
• To Kill a Mockingbird because I cannot imagine never being able to read them again. Their beauty haunts me.
• The Brothers Karamazov in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation (very important!). I read this once, and just got the basic plot. I want more time to explore it. And, at almost 800 pages, it would take a while to get through: a good thing, when limited in quantity.
• The Odyssey, probably in Fitzgerald's translation (though maybe I will find one I like more some day: I doubt it). Another classic that I love, that would repay repeated study.
• Dante's Divine Comedy. I am going to trust that there is a good translation of the entire thing, with notes enough to inform me of background information, though I don't have a specific one. I love Dante. I love the beautiful structure of the Commedia, I love the journey, the circles, the conception of the universe. I love the punishments that fit the crimes, that he has Virgil and Beatrice (bay uh TREE chay in Italian: so lovely!) to guide him. A creative masterpiece, a work of writing and organization so profound and lovely.

And even as I write this, I start to second guess myself. Would I really prefer to have Okay for Now over Corrie Ten Boom's outstanding story of the faithfulness of God in The Hiding Place? Would I grow weary of the philandering of Odysseus, or would I be constantly amazed by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the incomparable Penelope? (And would I actually prefer that epic over, say, the complete poems of Robert Frost, which I haven't read entirely? But I love most of Frost in anthologies.) And what about Gerald Manley Hopkins, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God"; "and ah! bright wings."

It's too hard.

A fun conversation starter; a horrifying thought.