My desert island books

Now that my nights are insomniac and the radio keeps putting on music that I dislike, I keep 6 books by my bedside that I can turn to, and read as I wish, and can read in small doses. One is a new book, but the other 5 are from a list of 25 that I have read before and can read again and again.. The print has to be readable by an old old person. If I kept a collection of "read once only" books, they would be very different.

25 books to keep near my bedside, to choose 5 at a time right at my bedside:

1. Albery Nicholas, ed, - Poem for the Day, Book l, for a selection of poems old and new that support every mood.

2. Barrie John - Collected Works. Dear Brutus. This fat book and the equally fat book were bought by collecting coupons from popular newspapers eighty years ago – something that would not happen today. Dear Brutus is a cautionary tale of what could happen if we did make the choices that we now regret not making.

3. Bible – Ezekiel – a wild prophet with fiery wheels in the sky and dead bones rising – the old equivalent of horror-science-fiction.

4. Clarke .Arthur C. - Tales of Ten Worlds – imagination running wild with reason.

5. Cookson. Catherine - Our Kate – raw life in northern England, and feeling that is as true as Jane Austen.

6. Disney, Walt - Uncle Scrooge – a comics lesson to all capitalists in little spades and shovels.

7. Gardner, Martin (ed) –Great Essays in Science – what you would expect, but need to read again and again.

8. Goscinny, René & Uderzo Albert - Asterix and the Vikings– I disapprove of the violence, but the depiction of ancient nationalities and the wonderful translation of names and happenings is better than the Simpsons.

9. Kingsley, Charles. The Heroes – 4 Greek legendary heroes retold in heroic prose with heroic drawings

10. Malory, Thomas - Morte d'Arthur - back to the ages I seem to remember.

11. Mee, Arthur - Children's Treasure House - what it says it is. All sorts of information that it is not easy to get even on Google.

12. Montgomery L M - Chronicles of Avonlea – short tales of village life in which usually there is a late marriage.

13. O'Connor, Mark – Overloading Australia – just a reminder of the future.

14. Oxford Book of Quotations – like a book full of wonderful poetry and prose – in snippets

15. Palgrave's Golden Treasury – poems of death seem to be the most common, but comforting

16. Renault, Mary - The King must Die – Retelling of the Theseus legend with reimagining of the ways of gods and heroes in the Mycenaean age.

17. Scots Dictionary – a source of wonderful words that do not exist in English, to describe what the English do not think of.

18. Sellars & Yeatman - 1066 and all that - I would never have got a First in British History without this quotable aide memoire.

19. Shaw, G Bernard – Collected Works, Man and Superman – fancy making a play out of imagining a metaphysical future.

20. Smiles, Samuel - Lives of the Engineers – inspiring boys to become engineers, including my father. Girls unfortunately were not allowed.

21. Stratton-Porter, Gene. - Laddie – a small girl admiring her big brother and her Ginn's reading book, which guides her thoughts in old-time Idaho.

22. Twain, Mark - The Book of Beasts – a selection of Twain

23. White, T H - The Ill-made Knight – from The Once and Future King, the story of Lancelot, inimitably told.

24. Wodehouse, P. G. – Hot Water – I think this the funniest of all the funny Wodehouse books. I can never remember all the twists of plot and phrases of wonderful humour, so I can read it again and again.

25. Yule, Valerie – The Book of Spells & Misspells – ah what a genius I was then in 2005.