Thread by @SCyFlynn, 1. FAV BOOKS THREADI will start a periodic list of favs in [...]

1. FAV BOOKS THREAD
I will start a periodic list of favs in the major categories in my library: novels, short fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry. Novels lists are fairly common, so let's start with:
POETRY

2. No order, just as they appear on my handwritten list.
POETRY FAVS:
Beowulf
100 Poets (Japan)
Szymborska
Machado
Faerie Queene...

3. Poetry favs continued (no parricular order):
Roethke
Saba
Milton - Paradise Lost
Plath
Eliot

4. Poetry favs from my library continued:
Rumi
Heine
Lucan - Pharsalia
Camoes - Lusiads
Seferis

5. More poetry favs from the self-isolated library:
Eluard
Tasso - Gerusalemme Liberata
Ovid - Heroides
Ungaretti
Mandelstam

6. The world is melting down, so what better time to share some more favourite poetry:
Dante - Divine Comedy (ovviamente!)
Wordsworth
Byron
Wallace Stevens
Boiardo - Orlando Innamorato (ma certo!)

7. I am separated by pandemic from my library in Italy (the empty space in this old photo was filled long ago), but here are some more poetry favs contained in it:

Juvenal
Trakl
Neruda
Yeats
Donne

8. Some more fav poets that you might want to check out in this time of siege and exile:

Akhmatova
Gottfried von Strassburg - Tristan
Lucretius
Vicente Aleixandre
Wolfram von Eschenbach - Parzival

9. More great poetry from my library for @lhommielette
and everyone:
Ariosto - Orlando Furioso
Tennyson
Cummings
Celan
MacNeice
Clare

10. Last poetry favs:
Iliad (of course)
Martial
Langston Hughes
Pulci - Morgante
Lorca
Shakespeare's sonnets (because of course)

I have almost recovered from the underwhelming response to my previous list of favourite poetry, so my next futile endeavour:
DRAMA

I read quite a lot of drama, although I know not many people do. You have to get used to it, but I really like to get the essence of a story in play form. And when the best drama economically communicates the subtext between characters, it is magical.

Favourite drama (no particular order:

Euripides - Oresteia
Sophocles - Oedipus plays
Jonson - Volpone
Osborne - Look Back in Anger (I once did the music for a production of this one, featuring future star Frances O'Connor)...

Fav drama 2:

Pirandello - Six Characters
O'Neill - The Iceman Cometh
Buchner - Woyzeck
Shaffer - Equus
Chekhov - Seagull
Noh dramas (too many to list)
Moliere - Misanthrope
Wilde - Earnest
Shakespeare (yeah, yeah)...

Capek - RUR
Kraus - Last Days of Mankind (long ago, when I could still read German, I was so desperate to read this that I ordered and read it in German - ALL THOUSAND PAGES OF IT. Ah, youthful madness and energy, in lockdown for years now).

Ionesco - Chairs
Dorfman - Death and Maiden
Beckett - Godot
Lorca
O'Casey - Juno
Sartre - No Exit (the perfect lockdown play)
Brecht - Mother Courage
Williams - Streetcar
Strindberg - Dance of Death (saw Ian McKellen in this long ago in London)

Ibsen (saw a production directed by Ingmar Bergman in London not long before he died)
Chikamatsu
Miller - View from a Bridge
Lessing - Nathan the Wise
Bennett - Talking Heads
Yeats (his plays on Irish mythological themes are great)

Last drama favs:

Wilson - Ma Rainey
Caryl Churchill - Top Girls

That's all, folks. When I am sufficiently recovered, I will be back with another category.

Given that some kind souls were nice enough to humour me last time, I am back with a treat for the kids:
SHORT FICTION

As usual, there will be a mix of the predictable and the slightly less predictable. So get comfortable and ready to snooze...

Short fiction favs 1

Akutagawa
Andersen - Snow Queen
RL Stevenson
Hemingway (yeah, yeah)
Flaubert - Three Tales
Faulkner (more famous as a novelist, but very strong in short fiction as well)
Tolstoy (yeah, yeah)
Balzac (another famous novelist strong in short fiction)...

Fav short fiction 2

London - Klondike stories
CP Gilman
Kipling -Jungle Books
Flannery O'Connor
Turgenev
Fitzgerald (I did not claim to be solely daringly original in this list)
Melville (his "Piazza Tales" must be one of the greatest collections ever)
Hardy -Wessex Tales

Fav short fiction 3 (no order here, btw - just as they appear on the list I compiled)

Maupassant
Dickens - Commercial Traveller (another novelist who wrote great short fiction)
Poe
Pu Songling- Tales from a Chinese Studio
Mansfield
Lucian

Fav short fiction 4

Bulgakov - Doctor's Notebook
Akinari - Ugetsu
Dostoevsky - Gambler
T Mann
Hawthorne
CS Lewis - Screwtape Letters
Sillitoe - Long Distance Runner
Anderson - Winesburg
Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes
Wilde - Fairy Tales

Fav short fiction 5

Hugo - Condemned Man
Buchner
Chekhov (OK, OK)
Runyon - Guys and Dolls
Twain
Machiavelli - Belfagor
Leskov - Lady Macbeth

That's all, folks...

Has been precisely two months since I added to this thread, so let's go on with my 100 favourite non-fiction books (ten at a time, no particular order):

1. Augustine - Confessions
2. Goethe - Italian Journey
3. Dinesen - Out of Africa
4. Graves - Goodbye to All That
5. Douglass - Narrative
6. Stendhal - Henri Brulard
7. London - John Barleycorn
8. Thoreau - Walden
9. Asser - Alfred the Great
10. Vasari - Lives of Artists...

More non-fiction:
11. Diogenes Laertius - Philosophers.
12. Shackleton - South.
13. Xenophon - Anabasis.
14. Sturluson - Heimskringla.
15. Orwell - Catalonia.
16. Behan - Borstal Boy.
17. Darwin - Beagle.
18. Philostratus - Apollonius.
19. Gaskell -
Bronte.
20. C. Levi - Eboli.

....21. Little Flowers of St Francis.
22. Einhard - Charlemagne.
23. Suetonius - Caesars.
24. Rousseau - Solitary Walker.
25. Jung - Memories, Dreams.
26. Tibetan Book of the Dead.
27. Montaigne - Essays.
28. Didion - Bethlehem.
29. Pico - Dignity of Man.
30. Weber - Protestant

Some more non-fiction favs:
31. Henry of Huntingdon.
32. Bauman - Retrotopia.
33. Plato.
34. Arendt - Origins.
35. Tacitus - Germania.
36. Eagleton - Culture.
37. Spengler - Decline.
38. Brecht on Theatre.
39. Searle - Mind.
40. Lenin - State and Revolution.

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