The Content Reader

As I have much less space for books than I used to have, I had to come up with a system to choose which book would stay and which would go. I think I have mentioned earlier that I usually save nonfiction books, but only save fiction books that I really love. In this case I know that the books standing on my shelves are my absolute favourites. I don't throw away the other books but give them away to friends or second hand shops so other people can enjoy them. The other reason why I choose this way of preserving some books is that I rarely re-read a book. There are exceptions of course, but rare. I wanted to share with you my favourite books that I keep on my shelves. This series will be a list of nonfiction and fiction, starting authors on letter A.  Adkins, Lesley and Boy - The Key of Egypt, The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs Armstrong, Karen - A Short History of Islam Ashdown-Hill, John -  Eleanor, The Secret Queen - The Woman who put Richard III on the Throne   Alighieri,...

Last Classic Club Spin#24 ended on number 18. Under that number, I have Dante's The Divine Comedy of which the book is divided into three parts. Earlier I finished Hell  and for this month I read Purgatory. I have started Heaven which I should finish at the end of the week. It is not an easy book to read, but, I did find it more interesting than I thought.  I am trying to read more of the most famous classical literature, and this is one of them.  Even if I am not able to appreciate it like a professor in literature, it nevertheless gave me pleasure.  Cannot say I really will be able to analyse it, but there are others who can. On Wikipedia, you can find this summary of Dante's meaning with  The Divine Comedy. "The narrative takes as its literal subject the state of souls after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward, and describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven, while allegorically th...

The good thing with moving books from one place to the other is that you discover books that you have forgotten that you have. This is especially the case for rather big, fact books. I have had a book called  Levande Litteratur  (Living Literature) for many, many years. It is written by a famous Swedish writer/journalist/translator, Tore Zetterholm. He tells the history of the written word from the Greek antiquity to modern times. This is a book which you should enjoy in small doses at the time, so I use it (while here in Sweden) as my breakfast reading. I thought it would be interesting to see how many of these great work of arts that I have on my shelves, which ones I have read, which ones are still to be read and which ones I would like to read. I will try not to anger the gods with a possible 'hybris', so will try to be realistic in what I know I will manage to read. It all starts with Gilgamesh and the Bible. Although I will not be able to read the Gilgamesh epic I li...