Odyssey Online

…back in May I prepared a reading list for a young man who was interested in having a librarian put together a summer reading list.  It occurred to me the other day that this would be a good list for Odyssey Online…this list of books about the American experience. Now, two big disclaimers, 1) this list is in no way representative of the diversity of American experience, 2) and this list does not reflect any systematic approach to American Literature.  It is, however, a pretty interesting list of books and would tide one over nicely, in an American way, for the month of August.

• The Blithdale Romance by Nathanial Hawthorne
• Leaves of Grass : the Complete 1855 and 1891-92 Editions by Walt Whitman (introduction by John Hollander)
• Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
• A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
• A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
• The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow
• House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
• Miracle of Catfish by Larry Brown

…ahh midsummer, and for many midsummer means being out on the road.  With that thought in front of us like a double yellow line rushing beneath, a list of our newer books of travel writing:

• The Best American Travel Writing 2010 Edited by Bill Buford
• The Best American Travel Writing 2009 Edited by Simon Winchester
• The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing Edited by Ros Pesman, David Walker, Richard White
• Anywhere Out of the World : Essays on Travel, Writing, Death by  Nicholas Delbanco
• Other Routes : 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing Edited by Tabish Khair
• Moving lives : Twentieth-Century Women’s Travel Writing Edited by Sidonie Smith
• Women at sea : Travel Writing and the Margins of Caribbean Discourse Edited by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Ivette Romero-Cesareo
• Return Passages : Great American Travel Writing, 1780-1910 Edited by Larzer Ziff
• Wanderlust : 20 Extraordinary Travel Adventures : 500 Years of Travel Writing by Explorers of Jewish Origin, 1492-1992 Edited by Jay Garfinkel
• Tourists with Typewriters : Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing by Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan

…with the 4th of July weekend upon us, what better thing than making some time for some heavy reading.  Here are a list of titles, new books from the Browsing Collection, all on history. Admittedly, a list that is as much of a hodgepodge as the fare at a 4th of July picnic, but perhaps somewhere here an appetizing title?

• When London was Capital of America by Julie Favell
• Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen by Anna Whitelock
• Hero: the Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda
• Caesar’s Wives: Sex Power and Politics in the Roman Empire by Annelise Friesenbruch
• Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela
• Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie McCurry
• Lincoln on War Edited by Harold Holzer
• The Quotable Abigail Adams Edited by John Kaminski
• A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of Charles I of English to Henrietta Marie of France by Katie Whitaker