Today is my father’s birthday – August 27th – he would be 102 today. Bill Noble had many loves, including his family, the California desert (where he lived), writing, and great literature. My sister Patty just uncovered this reading list that he wrote about books he read in the first 9 months of 1993, when he was 70 years old:
Reading: 1993 – in the order read
Jan. Alan Watts – “Cloud hidden: whereabouts unknown.” 1974. Ruminations, journal form, restatement of Tao.
Jan. Alan Watts – “In my own way.” Autobiography. Loaned to Bob Hoyk 4/8/93.
Jan. George Bernard Shaw – Complete plays. I had never read a play by GBS before now, probably because in college I read his “Quintessence of Ibsenism” which was really all about himself. Pompous, arrogant but with the wittiest cutting edge dialogue. Prologues and introductions are endless.
Jan. Henrick Ibsen – After Shaw I had to read Ibsen again. At UC I took a course in Scandinavian literature and read Hedda Gabler, Doll’s House; this reading of his plays 45 years later had the effect of endless slogging through thick cold mud. Especially after flippant Shaw.
Feb. Tony Hillerman – all 10 novels, crime on the Arizona and New Mexico Indian reservations, Navajo, Hopi. Get out AAA’s Indian country map and follow along. Good writing and good insights into Indian culture.
Feb. Benita Eisler – “O’Keeffe and Stieglitz” – biography. Overdone in parts but good racy reading about my favorite American artist.
Mar. Mary Austin – “Land of little rain” – plant, animal and human life in the border regions of Arizona and Southern California. Good nature writing but lags. Think she’s overrated.
Mar. Loren Eisley – “Not man apart.” Photography and accompanying poetry text by Robinson Jeffers on the Big Sur area.
Mar. James Karman – “Robinson Jeffers: poet of California.” Great biography, 4th or 5th reading. The only poet I can halfway understand and appreciate. At UC I took a course in English literature given by Benjamin Kurtz, his farewell lectures and he unloaded on us, the Iliad, Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare, Bergson’s “Creative evolution,” the “Bhagavad Gita,” Corneille’s play, “El Cid,” and the only thing I remember is Jeffers’ “Roan stallion,” “Tamar” and “Cawdor.”
Mar. Edith Hamilton – “Mythology.” – A classic, basic text, good reference for Jeffers reading. Been on the shelf for years – finally got through it.
Apr. Frederick Turner – editor of an anthology of Henry Miller’s work. Good reading.
Apr. Herb Caen and Dong Kingman – “San Francisco,” text by Caen, watercolors by Kingman. Caen is the San Francisco Chronicler and Kingman its artist.
Apr. Curt Gentry – “The last days of the late, great state of California” (1968) – history, must reading; hypothetical cataclysmic end of the state.
Apr. Annie Dillard – “Teaching a stone to talk.” Philosophy, nature, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” is still the best. Most of her writings are over my head. Edward Abbey said she was the only true heir to Thoreau. I think Thoreau is kind of boring but at least I can understand what he’s writing about.
May-June. Will Durant – “Story of Philosophy” – read parts of this in college in connection with a ‘Philosophy of Literature’ course. Found it in a used book store in Palm Springs this year and have been taking it in small sips, no big gulps.
May. John Steinbeck – “Log from the Sea of Cortez” – Baja marine life with Ed Ricketts, the “Doc” of “Cannery Row.”
May. Robert B. Parker – “Double deuce” – mystery, Boston, Spenser.
May. Sue Grafton – “J is for Judgment” – latest of the alphabetic mysteries from Santa Barbara.
May. Colin Dexter “Secret of Annexe 3” – British mystery – Inspector Morse and Sgt. Lewis.
May. Willa Cather – “Death comes for the archbishop” – about the 4th read on this. Great novel of New Mexico early settlement. Have never gotten interested in any other of her work but this is a classic.
June. Nelson De Mille – “The general’s daughter” – mystery – good, fast, wit.
June. Henry David Thoreau – read parts of “Walden Pond” and “Cape Cod.”
June. Nelson De Mille – “The Gold Coast” and “Cathedral.”
June. David Park Curry wrote the text to this great collection of impressionist art by Childe Hassam on Appledore Island in the Isles of Shoals 10 miles out from the Maine and New Hampshire coasts. Is called “An island garden revisited” – Celia Thaxter’s garden.
June. Isabel Allende – “Eva Luna” – sort of a picaresque novel of growing up in South America. Improbable situations.
June. Sara Paretsky – “Deadlock” and “Guardian angel” – good mysteries in Chicago area.
June. James Joyce – “Portrait of an artist as a young man” – read in the 50s. Then tried “Ulysses” and gave up.
June. Peggy Wayburn – “Adventuring in Alaska”
Steven C. Levi – “Alaska traveler”
National Geographic Society – “Alaska’s parklands”
In anticipation of the August cruise.
June. Jack Smith – “Smith on rye” and “Jack Smith’s LA” – collection of columns from LA Times.
June. Colin Dexter – “Last seen wearing” – mystery.
June. Frederick Franck – “Days with Albert Schweitzer” – a Lambarene landscape, book and pen drawing by a dentist who volunteered at the Congo compound for a year.
All July – too hot to do anything but read.
Edward Abbey – “Desert solitaire” – classic by the master, nature in Arches National Monument, Utah, Moab, Colorado River before the dam.
Eliot Porter – “The place no one knew” – Glen Canyon on the Colorado – photos of the way it was before the dam. Text by Porter and others.
John Wesley Powell – “Exploration of the Colorado River”
Leonard Hall – “Stars upstream” – nature, the current river in the Missouri Ozarks.
Marston Bates – “The forest and the sea” – a look at the economy of nature and the geology of man.
Ludwig Koch-Isenburg – “Realm of the green Buddha” – jungles of Thailand, birds, animals, Burma, Ceylon
M. Hatzioutou – “Greece through the ages” – history, art, culture
Rinn S. Shinn, ed. “Greece, a country study,” history, politics, economy.
Oliver Taplin – “Greek fire” – the influence of ancient Greece on the modern world, good illustrations but overrated.
Edmund C. Jaeger – “Desert wildlife” – descriptions of life and habits of critters in Southwest U.S. and Northwest Mexico
July. Joseph Wood Krutch – “The desert year” – pure poetry
July. Stuart Woods – “Santa Fe rules” – mystery – New Mexico
July. Henry Beston – “The outermost house” – a year of life on the great beach at Cape Cod. Probably the 40th read since the first in 1947. It restoreth my soul.
July. Jorge Luis Borges – “A personal anthology” – Borges is the only Latin American writer who inspires me. He is an incredible philosopher word-smith, he reminds me of Annie Dillard but even in translation he is more intelligible. Maybe Annie needs a translator. There are 50 or so essays in this anthology. This is a third reading and I need a few more to cull out the gemstones. See later.
July. John Steinbeck – “The pearl” – have most of Steinbeck – like this one. Actually, like just about everything he wrote, several times. I like to read “Cannery Row” over again on Sunday afternoons with a glass of wine and “Of mice and men” after no breakfast, just coffee. But, I need a full stomach for “In dubious battle.” Gut writing. I read most of Steinbeck once a year.
July-August. Edmund C. Jaeger. “The North American deserts” – describes the 5 deserts of North America and their subdivisions. Read this along with “The Sonoran Desert” publication of the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum.
Aug. George Adamson – “My pride and joy” – autobiography of a life in Kenya as game warden among wildlife, esp. lions – “Born Free, etc.”
Aug. ’93. Mccrum, Cran, & MacNeil – “The story of English” – great history of the English language.
Alan Paton – “Cry the beloved country” – I like to read this book every few years because of the way it is written, poetry in prose. It came out in 1948, there was as movie made of it. Just a beautiful book. But I’ve never read his “Too late the phalarope” – not sure why.
Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) – “Out of Africa” – another poet-prose-writer, and “Shadows on the grass,” one of the best. For warm summer nights and fans to cool the air.
Jeffrey Archer – “Honor among thieves” – contemporary (1993) novel of international intrigue that includes Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton. Suspense.
Sept. ’93. Rereading Peggy Wayburn’s update (1988) on the Sierra Club “Adventuring in Alaska, to refresh me on details of our cruise. Bought this in Anchorage.
John Muir, “Travels in Alaska” – ever loquacious, Muir found Alaska “beyond description.” Travels in 1879 primarily.
In addition to this reading list, he included some of his favorite writers, artists, entertainers, etc.
Nature writers: Henry Beston, Edward Abbey, Joseph Wood Krutch, John Muir
Historian: Bruce Catton
Photographers: Ansel Adams, Wilhelm Hester
Poets: Eudora Welty, Robinson Jeffers
Novelists: Tony Hillerman, John Steinbeck, Alan Paton, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Ross Lockridge, Jr.
Philosophy-nature-novel: Annie Dillard
Philosophy: Alan Watts
Artist: Georgia O’Keeffe
Entertainers: Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Ronald Colman, Peter Ustinov, Patrick McGoohan
Otherwise great writers: Jorge Luis Borges, Eric Severeid
Commentators: Jack Smith – LA Times, Herb Caen – SF Chronicle, John Ed Pierce – Louisville, Ky, Mike Royko – Chicago Tribune, Charles Kuralt – at large
Perhaps in retirement I’ll attempt to read the books on my father’s reading list, and write my own commentary on them.
Happy birthday, Papa!