BooksList.Best
Search

The Crofter and the Laird: Life on an Hebridean Island

10 best books like The Crofter and the Laird: Life on an Hebridean Island (John McPhee): A Visit to Don Otavio, The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku, Original Letters from India, The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems, Eugene Onegin and Other Poems, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition: A Compendium of Knowledge from the Classical Islamic World, Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century, Naples Declared, Tattoo, Enemies of Promise

A Visit to Don Otavio
AuthorSybille Bedford
Before returning to the Old World after World War II, Sybille Bedford resolved to see something more of the New. I had a great longing to move, she said, to hear another language, eat new food, to be in a country with a long nasty history in the past and as little present history as possible. And so she set out...
The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku
AuthorKobayashi Issa
ISBN1570621446
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), along with Basho and Buson, is considered one of the three greatest haiku poets of Japan, known for his attention to poignant detail and his playful sense of humor. Issa's most-loved work, The Spring of My Life, is an autobiographical sketch of linked prose and haiku in the...
Original Letters from India
AuthorEliza Fay
ISBN1590173368
Eliza Fay’s origins are obscure; she was not beautiful, rich, or outlandishly accomplished. Yet the letters she wrote from her 1779 voyage across the globe captivated E. M. Forster, who arranged for their British publication in 1925. The letters have been delighting readers ever since with their...
The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems
AuthorJim Harrison
ISBN1556590954
Astonishing poetry collection. One of the few poets that I read cover to cover and then again few more times, untill I know each poem by heart.

Looking Forward to Age

I will walk down to a marina
on a hot day and not go out to sea.

I will go to bed and get up early,
and carry...
Eugene Onegin and Other Poems
AuthorAlexander Pushkin
ISBN0375406727
Eugene Onegin (1833) is a comedy of manners, written in exquisitely crafted verse, about two young members of the Russian gentry, the eponymous hero and the girl Tatyana, who don't quite connect. It is also the greatest masterpiece of Russian literature—the source of the human archetypes and the...
The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition: A Compendium of Knowledge from the Classical Islamic World
AuthorShihab al-Din al-Nuwayri
ISBN0143107488
An astonishing record of the knowledge of a civilization, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition catalogues everything known to exist from the perspective of a 14th-century Egyptian scholar and litterateur. More than 9,000 pages and 30 volumes--here abridged to one volume, and translated...
Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century
AuthorDaniel Hernandez
ISBN1416577033
MEXICO CITY, with some 20 million inhabitants, is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. Enormous growth, raging crime, and tumultuous politics have also made it one of the most feared and misunderstood. Yet in the past decade, the city has become a hot spot for international business, fashion,...
Naples Declared
AuthorBenjamin Taylor
ISBN0399159177
It is a city of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, simultaneously glorious and ghastly. And it is Ben Taylor’s remarkable ability to meld these contradictions into a whole that makes this the exciting and original book it is. He takes his stroll around the bay with the acute sensitivity of a lover,...
Tattoo
AuthorEarl Thompson
ISBN0881847275
Leaving behind his crumpled mother with competing feelings of disgust and longing for her glory days of radiant, knee-weakening red hair and run-free hose, Jack flees his taboo-transgressing penury in order to inveigle his way into the United States Navy and swap the dust and grime of urban-hopping...
Enemies of Promise
AuthorCyril Connolly
ISBN0892550783
An enduring classic by one of England's finest critics, on why so many gifted writers fall short of attaining greatness.
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.--Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) was one of the most influential book reviewers and critics in England,...
A Russian Gentleman
AuthorSergei Aksakov
ISBN0192815733
At the center of this chronicle of Russian provincial life in the reign of Catherine the Great stands the patriarchal figure of the author's grandfather, Stepan Mikhailovich. A man of great natural dignity, imbued with respect for tradition and love of the land, he is also despotic and virtually illiterate....
History of My Life, Vols. I & II
AuthorGiacomo Casanova
ISBN0801856620
In volumes 1 and 2, Casanova tells the story of his family, his first loves, and his early travels. With the death of his grandmother, he is sent to a seminary--but is soon expelled. He is briefly imprisoned in the fortress of Sant' Andrea. After wandering from Naples to Rome in search of a patron, he enters...
South from Granada: A Sojourn in Southern Spain
AuthorGerald Brenan
The First World War had a powerful effect on many of its participants; Gerald Brenan was one of those. Brenan came from an Anglo-Irish military family. He had the usual public school education, hated it and was bullied. He was expected to go into the army, but at 18 elected instead to walk to China with a...
Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
AuthorDorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 - June 7, 1967) was an American poet and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles.

From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a...
Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
AuthorGustave Flaubert
ISBN0140435824
At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a “sensibility on tour,” Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer’s impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of Flaubert’s traveling companion, Maxime...
The Hills is Lonely
AuthorLillian Beckwith
ISBN1888173424
The Hills is Lonely tells a simple tale: needing to recuperate from an illness, the author finds a suitable retreat on the Hebridean island of Bruach, whose inhabitants, routines, and rituals are as eccentric and entertaining as any reader could wish. Beckwith's narrative describing island life...
An Armenian Sketchbook
AuthorVasily Grossman
ISBN1590176189
An NYRB Classics Original

Few writers had to confront as many of the last century’s mass tragedies as Vasily Grossman, who wrote with terrifying clarity about the Shoah, the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Terror Famine in the Ukraine. An Armenian Sketchbook, however, shows us a very different...
Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia
AuthorClifford Geertz
ISBN0520004590
Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia is one of the most famous of the early works of Clifford Geertz. It principal thesis is that many centuries of intensifying wet-rice cultivation in Indonesia had produced greater social complexity without significant...
King Alfred of England
AuthorJacob Abbott
ISBN1406802409
Alfred is a remarkable figure in the history of England. He is credited with founding the English monarchy, codifying laws, founding the University of Oxford, and inventing the lantern.

I found Abbott's book a bit of a slog. And there is that section on pp 34-36 where he evaluates the Indian,...
Abbey's Road
AuthorEdward Abbey
ISBN0452265649
You are about to visit some of the most exciting places on earth. Not the sort of excitement that makes morning headlines or the nightly news. Instead it is the excitement that comes from experiencing the natural world as it always has been and should be, and seeing human beings living in tune with its subtlest...
Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides
AuthorAdam Nicolson
ISBN0865476365
In 1937, Adam Nicolson’s father answered a newspaper ad—“Uninhabited islands for sale. Outer Hebrides, 600 acres . . . Puffins and seals. Apply . . . ”.

In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with this enchantingly beautiful property, which...
First Footsteps in East Africa
AuthorRichard Francis Burton
ISBN1428017305
Chock full of ethnographical information about the Muslims of Somalia, Richard Burton's "First Footsteps in Africa" is a great look at a white man's first forays into that area of the continent. As an adventure novel, the book is kind of dry -- Burton essentially travels to an area, is held there by its...
Here's to You, Jesusa!
AuthorElena Poniatowska
ISBN0142001228
Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution's end in Mexico City, far from her...
The Bridge in the Jungle
AuthorB. Traven
ISBN1566630630
Regarded by many as B. Traven's finest novel, The Bridge in the Jungle is a tale of a simple, desperately poor people coming together in the face of a death that affects them all. The locale is "huts by the river, " a nameless Indian settlement deep in the Mexican bush, too small to appear on any map. A festive...
About
Feedback
© BooksList.Best 2024