June 29, 2008: Desert Island Books
The books are getting a little thick and jumbly on the shelves again, and it's probably time for another major culling of the herd. My usual rules apply, i.e. that the books that stay have to be either emotionally significant in that particular copy, signed, hard to find, or within imminent danger of being read. Everything else just weighs upon me.
That said, there are some mass market books that I keep anyway because they're essentially reference books. One of these for me would be Stephen King's Different Seasons.
I was thinking while looking over the shelves today which of these books I'd take with me to a desert island. I'm assuming that I'd be allowed to go to this desert island with my trademark blue milk crate (the one in which I took all of my possessions to college, packing insanely light).
Here's the list:
- Night Shift, by Stephen King
- Skeleton Crew, by Stephen King
- Different Seasons, by Stephen King
- Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger
- Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
- Four Novels of the 1960s, by Philip K. Dick
- The Philip K. Dick Reader, by Philip K. Dick
- The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, by H.P Lovecraft
- Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier
- The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural
- The Modern Weird Tale, by S.T. Joshi
- The Complete Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe
- This Sweet Sickness, by Patricia Highsmith
- Portable Childhoods, by Ellen Klages
- Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link
- Zodiac, by Robert Graysmith
- Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi
- Boy's Life, by Robert McCammon
- The Essential Ellison, by Harlan Ellison
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
And yes, I have editions of these that, all together, would fit in that milk crate.
What are your desert island books?
