Starting to think about my forty books....

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Since reading "Howards End is on the Landing," I've already started to think about my forty books. The idea behind this comes from Susan Hill's "Desert Island Discs" inspired list - she set out to make a list of 40 books that she could subsist on for the rest of her life, if she wasn't allowed to read anything else. This is, of course, a hypothetical list. If someone told me I could only have 40 books, I might have to punch them and then start crying.

In "Desert Island Discs," the guest is allowed "The Bible" and "The Complete Works of Shakespeare." Under Susan Hill's rules there are no givens, and the complete works would be cheating. A Shakespeare play counts as one of your choices.

This might take a few posts to work through - I'd hate to rush into this and be stuck with 40 bad books.

I think I would need:
- some favourites that I know I like and would be happy to re-read. Comfort reading...
- some books I have always intended to read
- I'm not a huge poetry fan, but I think I might at least need some John Donne
- there would have to be a bit of Shakespeare. But what?
- any other plays?
- what percentage of fiction to non-fiction?
- at least a couple of really thick books to keep me going for longer?

I think I need to think about this for a bit longer....