The Private Book Collections of Four Famous Writers

David Foster Wallace

• Safety of Objects by A.M. Homes
• Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux
• The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity by Amir D. Aczel
• Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting by J. Hoberman And Jeffrey Shandler
• The Principles of Mathematics by Bertrand Russell
• The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
• Writing Past Dark : Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life by Bonnie Friedman
• Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell ; Foreword By Johnson E. Fairchild
• Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox ; With An Afterword By Irving Howe
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
• Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
• The Puttermesser Papers: A Novel by Cynthia Ozick
• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Fritjof Capra
• Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic by Geoffrey Hunter
• Insect Biology: A Textbook of Entomology by Howard E. Evans
• The Ultimate Rip-Off : A Taxing Tale by Iris Weil Collett
• Play It As It Lays: A Novel by Joan Didion
• Uses of Infinity by Leo Zippin
• Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey
• Compassion and Self Hate: An Alternative to Despair by Theodore I. Rubin
• Change Your Mind: A practical guide to Buddhist meditation by Paramananda
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Translated, and with an introduction, by Burton Raffel ; afterword by Neil D. Isaacs
• Pretty much all of Don DeLillo

Emily Dickinson

• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Poetical Works of George Herbert
• Confessions of an English opium-eater : and, Suspiria de profundis by Thomas De Quincey
• The poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• The Professor by Charlotte Brontë
• The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• The princess; a medley by Baron Alfred Tennyson
• The Poetical Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies and Poems of William Shakespeare
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Life of George Washington by Washington Irving
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• The frugal housewife : dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy by Mrs. Child
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë)
• Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Mark Twain

• Departmental Ditties, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses by Rudyard Kipling
• Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
• The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterson
• Memoirs of Hans Hendrik by the Arctic Traveller
• Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Cats’ Convention by Eunice Gibbs Allyn
• Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Log of a Sea-Waif: Being Recollections of the First Four Years of my Sea Life by F.T Bullen
• Oriental Rambles by George W., Dr Caldwell
• Bird Homes. The Nests Eggs and Breeding Habits of the land Birds by Arthur R. Dugmore
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• A Boy I Knew, Four Dogs and Some More Dogs by Laurence Hutton
• The Water-Babies. A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby by Charles Kinglsey
• Letters of Edward Lear Author of “The Book of Nonsense, to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford and Frances, Countess Waldegrave. Edited by Constance, Lady Strachey, Edward Lear

Charles Darwin

• The American beaver and his works by Lewis H. Morgan
• The anatomy and philosophy of expression by Charles Bell
• The beginnings of life : being some account of the nature, modes of origin and transformations of lower organisms. Vol. I. by Henry Charlton Bastian
• Botany for young people: Part 2, How plants behave by Asa Gray
• Cattle: Their breeds, management, and diseases by William Youatt
• Conjectures concerning the cause, and observations upon the phaenomena of earthquakes by John Michell
• The dovecote and the aviary by Edmund Saul Dixon
• Flowers and their unbidden guests by Anton Kerner von Marilaun
• Inquiries concerning the intellectual powers and the investigation of truth by John Abercrombie
• The Italian alp-bee by H.C. Hermann
• The physiology or mechanism of blushing by Thomas Henry Burgess
• Seasons with the Sea-Horses : or, sporting adventures in the northern seas by James Lamont

These four chosen from The Private Book Collections of 10 Famous Readers

Emily Dickinson - At Work

Emily Dickinson, born 10 December 1830, died 15 May 1886 was a reclusive American poet.

“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”

– Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson 

‘Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.’

A Coconut Cake Recipe From Emily Dickinson: Reclusive Poet, Passionate Baker

Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Cake, Retouched for the 21st Century

(This recipe was adapted and modified from the original — Letter #665 in The Letters of Emily Dickinson.)

2 cups Coconut Secret® coconut sap sugar
1 cup Earth Balance® butter substitute
2 cups brown rice flour (Arrowhead Mills® gluten-free “Improved Texture” mix works well)
6 eggs (separate yolks and whites)
1 ½ to 2 cups shredded, unsweetened coconut (can also use flaked coconut, coarsely chopped)
1 cup coconut milk

Rather than make a simple icing, standard fare in the 19th-century, based partly on the ingredients I had lying around, I decided to go with this topping instead. It worked very well.

1-2 cups flaked coconut, unsweetened
½ cup orange blossom honey
Zest of four limes
Juice of two limes

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, blend butter-substitute and coconut sugar. Add brown rice flour and beaten egg yolks. Beat egg whites until slightly frothy and add to batter. Gradually add shredded coconut and coconut milk, blending all ingredients thoroughly. Spray a 9 x 13 baking dish with coconut oil. Pour batter into the greased dish (the baking dish should be half full). Bake for 25 minutes in a convection oven (probably 30-35 minutes in a regular oven). Mix the coconut-lime topping. Remove from heat, let cool for a few minutes, spread the topping evenly over the cake.

Emily Dickinson’s manuscript of “Wild Nights”

Handwriting Analysis:

The relatively severe right slant of the letters indicates a writer who is “emotional and garrulous,” but the steadfastness of the line (without any rule marks, natch) indicates a controlled, goal-oriented individual, so we’re not sure what’s going on there. Her large writing suggest a need for attention and “elbow room,” which we’re not sure quite tracks either. But large loops are supposed to mean sensual and hungry, which we totally buy.