Michael

(Image: Sigurð slays the worm Fafnir; from a Norwegian church door.)

It can be said without much exaggeration that books have ruled my entire life. Though I mostly read fiction, my reading list in nonfiction reflects my interests: namely folklore and traditional cultures (especially Japanese, Scandinavian, Western European, African,... more »

(Image: Sigurð slays the worm Fafnir; from a Norwegian church door.)

It can be said without much exaggeration that books have ruled my entire life. Though I mostly read fiction, my reading list in nonfiction reflects my interests: namely folklore and traditional cultures (especially Japanese, Scandinavian, Western European, African, and those of the Americas, etc.), history, traditions and traditional philosophy, Christianity, and some sparing science. Of fiction, my favorite authors are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez, and Kunio Yanagita, to name a brief few.

A year ago or so I began reading G.K. Chesterton, and he has risen to the top of my list of favorites as well. If reading Lewis is like scaling the heights, then reading Tolkien is like plumbing the depths. There is a high, bracing quality as of light piercing the body and soul in the writing of the one, while everything in the other comes as from a great distance, cloaked in age and great texture and growing as if organically from the very soil: even the light shines from a distant horizon, and this is, while different, inspiring and romantic itself; perhaps less inspiring but more romantic. But reading Chesterton is something wholly different. He is the happy medium: happy with the pleasures of home and hearth, of the familiar garden and road and vista: he sees the high romance in the mundane, the orthodox, and the everyday. His is the common sense and experience of old wives and weather-beaten farmers; but sharpened with the insight and intellect of the priest.

I work at a bookstore, and so I am constantly seeing or hearing of something new I want to read, and as a consequence my bookshelves at home are stacked with volumes I've yet to open, and I have a to-read list at least a hundred and fifty titles long. I have recently created a separate shelf for all the books I plan on reading, so that I don't forget them. That shelf can be seen at: http://www.shelfari.com/o1514556071/ « less