An Important Book that you admit you haven’t read: “David Copperfield.” I feel a little guilty about that. I’ve read other Dickens.
The book you most cared about sharing with your kids: I should say all these deeper things, but frankly my favorite is “The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My,” by Tove Jansson. We discovered it when we were in Finland. It’s just an awful lot of fun.
title: “A Life In Books James Billington” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Robert Autry”
“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. You can often learn more about today’s history by reading a novel than by reading a newspaper.
“The Possessed” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It describes terrorism before terrorism even existed. The best political novel ever written.
“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville. An amazing adventure that gets us all on the boat in pursuit of something other than happiness.
“The Nature and Destiny of Man” by Reinhold Niebuhr. He brought the depth of Saint Augustine to 20th-century America.
Keats’s poems. Lines that come back to me in “silent and slow times.”
“David Copperfield.” I feel a little guilty about that. I’ve read other Dickens.
I should say all these deeper things, but frankly my favorite is “The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My,” by Tove Jansson. We discovered it when we were in Finland. It’s just an awful lot of fun.
