books

A few months ago, after meeting a great T'ai Chi chap at one of my sessions in Sweden, he sent me an interesting email asking what books I have returned to again and again. It's taken me a while to get back to him, but I just did. However, the list below is not a list of books I 'return to again and again' (which would actually be my reading list on the website plus a few fungi, gardening and cookery books plus The Modern Antiquarian), but a list of books that jumped out at me as special when I just looked through my library notebook. This is a notebook I have kept since I was 11 years old of every book I have ever read... We had to hand it in each term to our English teacher at school from age 11-13, but once the habit of writing books down was set up, I never stopped. Some years I hardly read at all, it seems, others are a blizzard of words as I devoured a whole author's output. At the risk of folks' wild assumptions, here's my 'special' list of books from my list working backwards from today... I shall publish, and be damned.

2012
The Gary Snyder Reader - Gary Snyder
Taoist Classics Vol 1,2 & 3 - Thomas Cleary
The Wise Heart - Jack Kornfield
The Living Mountain - Nan Shepherd
Secret Knowledge - David Hockney
The Year of the Flood (and many others) - Margaret Atwood
The Master and His Emissary - Iain McGilchrist
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Far North - Marcel Theroux
The City and The City & Embassytown - China Mieville
Nothing Special & everyday Zen - Charlotte Joko Beck
Lost T'ai Chi Classics... - Douglas Wile
Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock
The Wooden Bowl - Clark Strand
Chronicles of Tao - Deng Ming Dao
Northern Lights trilogy - Philip Pullman
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha- Seung Sa Soen
Tofu Roshi - Susan Ichi Su Moon
Essence of T'ai Chi Chuan - Lo, Ammaker, Foe
The Dao of Taijiquan - Jou, Tsung Wwa
Art of Peace - Morihei Ueshiba
A Path With Heart - Jack Kornfield
2000
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche
Cave in the Snow - Vicki Mackenzie
The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama
Modern Antiquarian - Julian Cope
Mushrooms - Roger Philips
Crash (and many others) - J G Ballard
Invisible Cities (and many others)- Italo Calvino
Periodic Table  (and many others) - Primo Levi
Obabakoak - Bernardo Atxaga
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Open Secret, This Longing & Unseen Rain - Rumi (Trans Coleman Barks)
Siddharta & Demian - Hermann Hesse
Zen Flesh Zen Bones - Paul Reps
Food For Free - Richard Mabey
The Phantom Tollboth - Norton Juster
1983

There are at least a hundred other really important books I have left out: all my maps, some Classics, Borges, Sara Wheeler, all the science, nature, travel and maths books I have loved over the years, as well as some great fiction one-offs, but they didn't rise off the page just now, so I have let them be. It appears since I was very young that Zen, Tao, good SF and 'journey' stories have fascinated me. Little's changed.