Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan, writer for The New Republic, The New York Times, and www.andrewsullivan.com, selects seven timeless literary favorites.
Montaigne’s Essays translated by Donald Frame (Bedford/St. Martin’s, $26.30). Still the best essays ever written: funny, smart, timeless, learned. The prose is earthy and deep.
My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley (New York Review of Books, $10.36). The ultimate dog book-by a British literary editor in the mid-20th century. One of the few books that brought tears of laughter to my eyes.
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Collected Poems by Philip Larkin (Noonday Press, $13.60). In my book, the best poet of the last century. Some of these verses are almost painfully beautiful. He writes about sadness better than anyone I know.
On Human Conduct by Michael Oakeshott (Clarendon Press, $39.95, out of print). Not for the beach, but the most underrated work of political theory in a century-written in elegant, elegiac prose. No stronger defense of modern liberalism has been written.
Animal Farm by George Orwell (Signet Classic, $6.25). No apologies for this one. No one can understand the contemporary American left or p.c. authoritarianism without reading this book.
Collected Poems by Emily Dickinson (Courage Books, $8.98). If I had to take one book anywhere, this would be it. So intelligent, so beautiful, so pithy, so American. It never fails to restore the soul.
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