One of the few real pleasures in life are late summer afternoons lying under a grapevine arbor, sunlight flashing through leaves, touching on plump grapes and softly languishing in a lavender patch. The air is sweet, filled with the buzzing, chirping, singing, fluttering of bees, birds, butterflies and crickets. You are reading absorbed in different world, but then the light becomes encompassing, almost ethereal, both worlds start to merge, to overlap, to become one… Dreams and sweetness fill the air and you slip from reality to eternity and back, and, in that moment, caught between two worlds you understand the why better than you ever could.
As we slip into summer daze, we thought we’d share books we’ve loved, love and will love.
THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE/ Axel Munthe
THREE COMRADES/ Erich Maria Remarque
KAPUTT/ Curzio Malaparte
THE SKIN/ Curzio Malaparte
DULUTH/ Gore Vidal
SINUHE THE EGYPTIAN/ Mika Waltari
DEATH OF A HERO/ Richard Aldington
THE WIZARD OF EARTHSEA/ Ursula Le Guin
THE TOMBS OF ATUAN/ Ursula Le Guin
THE MASTER MARINER/ Nicholas Monsarrat
BLINDSIGHT/ Peter Watts
LORD OF LIGHT/ Roger Zelazny
CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS/ Roger Zelazny
THE IMMORTAL/ Roger Zelazny
THE COLOUR OF MAGIC/ Terry Pratchett
THE BROTHERS LIONHEART/ Astrid Lindgren
LABYRINTHS/ Jorge Luis Borges
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD/ Gabriel Garcia Marques
LOVE IN TIME OF CHOLERA/ Gabriel Garcia Marques
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE/ Gabriel Garcia Marques
THAIS THE ATHENIAN/ Ilya Efremov
THE GOLDEN ASS / Apuleius Longus
DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID/ Octave Mirbaux
THE MADMAN/ Gibran Khalil Gibran
VATHEK/ Thomas Beckford
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE/ J. D. Salinger
THE ABBESS: A ROMANCE/ William Ireland
CARNIVAL DE FER/ Serge Brussolo
WIDE SARGASSO SEA/ Jean Rhys
DEAD SOULS/ Nikolay Gogol
CHRIST RECRUSIFIED/ Nikos Kazantzakis
MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY/ Brothers Strugatsky
HARD TO BE A GOD/ Brothers Strugatsky
SOLARIS/ Stanislaus Lem
JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT/ Louis-Ferdinand Céline
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN/ John Fowles
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS/ James Fenimore Cooper
THE FORSYTE SAGA/ John Fowles
TARTARIN OF TARASCON/ Alphonse Daudet
WINNETOU/ Karl May
THE ABYSS/ Marguerite Yourcenar
THE PETER WHIMSAY BOOKS/ Dorothy Sayers
THE BIG SLEEP/ Raymond Chandler
ARSENE LUPIN, A THIEF AND GENTLEMAN/ Maurice Leblanc
A HIGH WIND OVER JAMAICA/ Richard Hughes
THE NAME OF THE ROSE/ Umberto Ecco
ALL MEN ARE MORTAL/ Simone De Beauvoir
THE PILLOW BOOK/ Sei Shonagon
THE FAIRY TALES OF OSCAR WILDE
THE FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
VILE BODIES/ Evelyn Waugh
A HANDFUL OF DUST/ Evelyn Waugh
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH/ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO/ Horace Walpole
THE LITTLE PRINCE/ Antoine De Saint- Exupery
THE STORY OF SAM/ Per Olof Sundman
