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Favourite Titles

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings

Catch-22

Catch-22 is an extremely well-written novel taking place during World War II. The author, Joseph Heller, made full use of his extraordinary wit. The whole novel takes on a light view, looking into an American military camp in Italy. The story is superbly set up as a camp of foolish bombardiers headed by egotistical power- and glory-hungry generals. The story shifts from character to character, spending only a few pages on each. As the story progresses, previously introduced characters come in contact with each other, setting up the plot. Yossarian (the main character) is a defiant young man whose only objective is to keep himself alive.

During the various missions he is sent to carry out, none of his actions are aimed at completing his mission, but rather they are aimed at saving his own skin from enemy fire. When one particularly dangerous mission is announced, he sneaks out in the middle of the night and tampers with the placement of the enemy line, to keep himself from flying the mission.

Invariably, every time Yossarian nears the number of missions required to be sent home, the number of missions is raised. He is regularly admitted to the hospital, in an attempt to keep from flying missions, and is constantly asking doctors to send him home on grounds of insanity. Doc Daneeka, however, refuses to do so because of Catch 22. Throughout the book many things are blamed on this mysterious "Catch 22" - which is never actually seen written down in a book by any of the characters.

Near the end of the book Yossarian is given the opportunity to go home, however he has to pretend to be friends with a rather disagreeable superior. At first Yossarian sees no problem with this, and jumps at the chance to go home. Upon further thinking, though, Yossarian decides that he can't do that, and instead of taking such an easy route home, he decides to run away.

Heller wrote the book ten years after the war was over, but he still was able to grasp the general ideas of a military camp. Heller realized though that his novel was going to be much too serious if he kept it completely factual, so he changed a few details, which altered the novel from being serious to funny. His wit provided an amusing storyline that no other book from World War II has, making Catch-22 truly one-of-a-kind.

I loved the book. It's incredibly funny from beginning to end, delving into the officers' personal and professional lives, divuldging secrets and insecurities, while illustrating the circles that the government runs while trying to complete the simplest of tasks.

The Pilgrim's Progress

An allegorical account of Christian's journey toward heaven or hell. Bunyan wrote the first part of his allegory while in prison for his faith and this experience adds extra urgency and depth to his story of Christian pursuing his pilgrimage through Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond and Delectable Mountains towards the Celestial City.

Tau Zero

The epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine will take her and her fifty-strong crew to a planet some thrity light-years distant. But, because the ship will accelerate to close to the spped of light, for those on board subjective time will slow and the journey will be of only a few years' duration. Then a buffeting by an interstellar dustcloud changes everything. The ship's deceleration system is damaged irreperably and soon she is gaining velocity. When she attains light-speed, tau zero itself, the disparity between ship-time and external time becomes almost impossibly great. Eons and galaxies hurtle by, and the crew of the Leonora Christine speeds into the unknown.

This is an entertaining and highly-readable SF novel, original and imaginative.
Although the scenario of spaceflight-gets-into-trouble is a well-worn one in SF, this novel succeeds for two reasons. First of all it is such a pleasure to read, being written in a light and almost poetic style. Secondly, the story itself is highly-ambitious, ending in mind-boggling fashion. There are some good characters, and the spaceship and its propulsion system is beautifully imagined. I won't give away the ending here obviously, but I haven't come across it in any other SF novel.

Sophie's World

First, think of a beginner's guide to philosophy, written by a schoolteacher for teens and young adults. Next, imagine a fantasy novel -- something like a modern-day version of Through the Looking Glass. Meld these disparate genres, and what do you get? Well, what you get is an improbable international best seller.

The foil for Gaarder's pedagogic fantasy is Sophie Amundsen, a spunky 14-year-old whose philosophic journey begins when a pair of timeless ontological posers--"Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?"

As Sophie ponders these questions, a follow-up envelope containing typewritten pages titled "What Is Philosophy?" orient her on a correspondence course in the history of philosophy that eventually turns into a Socratic tutorial. At first by letter and then in person, a mysterious guru who calls himself Alberto Knox guides Sophie through the ideas of great thinkers, from the pre-Socratics to Jean-Paul Sartre. Philosophy's quest for truth, Knox tells his pupil, "resembles a detective story."

Meanwhile, Sophie has to play detective on another front. From time to time she gets postcards that are intended for another 14-year-old, Hilde Moller Knag, who by coincidence also has an absentee father, serving with the U.N. forces in Lebanon. Who is this Hilde? Why is her mail addressed to Sophie? And is it just coincidence that Hilde and Sophie have the same birthday? Suffice it to say that the answers involve a talking dog and a magic mirror, as well as the relation of illusion to reality, free will vs. predetermination and -- shades of Pirandello -- fictional characters seeking to escape their author's plot.

Nothing could be further from the truth (at least until the Kierkegaard chapter, when things do get a trifle psychedelic). Although Sophie's tutor, Alberto Knox, grounds the philosopher's project in maintaining a sense of wonder, his disquisition is clean and sober indeed. What keeps the novel moving are the tricks Gaarder plays with what we used to call the old r. and i.--reality and illusion. Sophie begins receiving postcards addressed from a United Nations observer in Lebanon to his own 15-year-old daughter, Hilde. As Sophie gradually becomes aware of her existence within a book (within a book (within a book)), the philosophical question gradually take on an existential tinge, embracing problems of determinacy and free will. While not nearly as highfalutin as such would-be popularizers as Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, or Stephen Hawkins, it's loads of fun in a cool, Scandinavian Alice-in-Wonderland fashion.

The book is for children of all ages, so don't expect detailed synopses of the world's major philosophers, systems, or contexts. The risks Gaarder takes in the interests of simplicity and clarity definitely pay off, however. These include the translation of nearly all technical terms, the omission of the hundreds of titles that would otherwise clutter the book, and his emphasis on the echoing persistence of philosophical themes from the pre-Socratics (whose modernism is conveyed elegantly) to the existentialists Gaarder nutshells right before dropping a few gee-whiz notions about ecophilosophy and how star gazing constitutes a cosmic journey into the past ("Yes, we too are stardust", croons Alberto).

Ongoing advertisements for environmental activism and world federalism via the United the Nations add to the novel's liberal agenda--which is about where my enthusiasm ends. Gaarder's well-measured conciliatory tone masks the rhetorical (and physical) violence philosophic discourse has generated over the past few thousand years, so don't expect to find Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, or Derrida--even Heidegger and Nietzsche earn s little as a paragraph each. As noted above, Gaarder holds no truck with the outlaw alternatives sold under the New Age and mysticism rubrics. "The difference between real philosophy and these books," grumps Alberto, "is more or less the same as the difference between real love and pornography" (357). Do we detect an old-fashioned moralist in this dismissal? Gaarder, having stripped down the canon's arguments to their leanest Western cuts, thereby ignoring Muslim or pagan can't or won't see philosophy's manfully conceptualized recourses to faith, transcendence, and immanence as actually forming much of the spiritual bedrock for crystal worship or ufology.

At worst, Gaarder's book is a philosophical Ikea, whose clean lines and slick marketing offer a one-size-fits-all coziness masking the bitter ideological rivalries and utter radicalism characterizes so much of the field's history. On the other hand, any Sophie's World reader inspired to further investigation will collide with all that soon enough, which suggests an even more provocative sequel.

The Odessa File

The Odessa File is of course a piece of fiction, but many of the characters that populate it -- especially the unsavory ones -- aren't fictitious at all. SS Captain Eduard Roschmann, for instance, really was the Butcher of Riga, and he really did sneak past the mob of tribunals and other judiciary apparatuses that sprung up after the war (at least as far as anyone knows). Peter Miller, the reporter who hunts him down, we may confidently assume to be an authorial invention; but as for everyone in between -- who knows?
Therein lies much of the novel's suspense. What really happened to the German-designed rockets that Nasser was supposed to have ready in time for the Six Day War? How did the SS acquire new identities for its members so quickly after the war's end and where did it get the money needed to do so? Could the head of the company that made your coffee machine be a former officer of the SS and a wanted war criminal? These questions and more will be answered to the reader's delight and amazement in Frederick Forsyth's second novel.

From the moment the diary of a broken and desolate concentration camp survivor lands in Peter Miller's lap, the reader is pulled along into a world of crazed Nazi revanchists, wily and vengeful Mossad infiltrators, obstructionist German bureaucrats, and a pathetic, browbeaten printer who's just a little too clever for his own good. Miller is warned off, shoved around, ambushed, and almost blown up; but he manages eventually (with a little help from Simon Wiesenthal) to find his way into the heart of the shadowy organization known as the ODESSA.

The story's characters are vividly imagined (if they are imagined at all), and in the 23 years since its first publication, they've lost none of their energy. One has no trouble imagining a zillion copies flying off the shelves when Austrian president and former UN secretary general Kurt Waldheim was exposed as an ex-officer of the hated Nazi secret police. And it sure can't hurt that the Jews and the Arabs are still trying to bomb each other back to biblical times. It is compact, credible, as politically sophisticated as his first novel, The Day of the Jackal, and (although it didn't make as good a movie) more skillfully researched and much more neatly written.

Frankenstein

Excuse me? I thought I knew this story. I have seen the movies despite my dislike of horror. Anybody living in our culture knows the story of Frankenstein and his creature without having read the book. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This is not the story of a man creating artificial organic life. This is not the story of grave robbing, stitching together body parts, dank, dark castles, thunderstorms and electricity bringing life where there was none. In fact, bringing the creature to life probably has the least focus in this novel. This horror story deals instead with Victor Frankenstein. Why did he bring the creature to life? What happened afterwords?

Horror or not, this is a fascinating book. I still do not know where Mary Shelly got this vision. The fear is in the telling and the build up, not the actual acts of violence, let alone the reactions to the violence. The creature is not the innocent I expected. Nor is he to be blamed. This is an experiment gone wrong, and all are to be pitied.

An Innkeeper's Diary (John Fothergill)

First published in 1931, by John Fothergill who was the 1st to make the profession of innkeeping smart and respectable. This is an intriguing, witty and provocative diary on the art of innkeeping. Under Fothergill's guidance, the Spreadeagle in Thame became a mecca for the glitterati and his personality notorious for his belief that the customer is not always right.

Moby Dick

Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire.
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Perhaps no other great book suffers to the degree that Melville's classic does from the tendency to abridge the Great Books for easy consumption by High School students. Sure, when you read it, in 10th grade or whenever, you get that essential tale of Ahab's monomaniacal pursuit of the White Whale, but you don't get much of the fascinating detail of the whaling industry nor much of the symbolism that makes the book one that rewards repeated readings.

In fact, Melville's fiction is so densely packed with symbolism and allusions that it's sometimes hard to believe that he has any central message. This is particularly noticeable in the great short story Bartleby, the Scrivener. One finishes the story with no idea whatsoever why Bartleby has stopped working and given up on life, but the story is so open that you can give it any number of meanings and argue them all plausibly. Moby Dick is similarly amenable to many different interpretations. After initially being understood as a tale of the struggle against evil, it is now taken, mainly in the academy, to be an indictment of capitalism and industrialization.

Personally, I like to think of it as a joyous answer to the dour Existentialists, with their insistence that life is meaningless drudgery. It is a curious thing that we should so admire men like Ahab, clearly grown demented in his pursuit of Moby Dick, or even a character like Don Quixote, whose immersion in the fiction of chivalry has obviously left him brain-addled. What is it we find so compelling in such figures ? I think it is their unalterable sense of purpose, however deranged. What after all is existentialism but an expression of the desire that they too were guided by such a singular vision of the purpose of life ?

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back on the compass. Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

We easily recognize that this is not the vow of a well man, but it's awfully hard not to get caught up in the passion, and the absolute conviction, that he evinces. To me it suggests that any man's life can be made heroic by his devotion to a noble purpose; though, as the tragedy that ensues makes clear, this devotion is best tempered by some sense of perspective.

In the end, perhaps what Melville is best at isn't conveying a conventional moral or a message; perhaps what he does best is to tangle the reader up in the psychological mood of his central characters. Though the novel incorporates many classic themes--particularly the Biblical themes of crucifixion and resurrection and the great American theme of men fleeing the suffocation of civilization--it is truly unique. If you haven't read it since you were a teen, give it another try now; you'll be surprised at the complex and multi-layered tale you'll find in these pages.

The Consolation of Philosophy

Boethius composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture, condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy, when he fell foul of the Gothic emperor Theodoric, became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, at the edge of Empire, to be tortured to death.

Widely translated over the ages by Henry VIII among others this book has had a far-reaching influence down the years. Interestingly Boethius was a Christian but turned to philosophy rather than religion when he was up against it.

To Kill a Mockingbird

A contemporary classic, Harper Lee's only novel is the prime literary example of the racial inequalities, hatred and simple unfairness that existed in the American Deep South during the 1930s.

The book provides an insight into a specific case and town in which the racial divide is so stark as beggars belief by modern standards, but this harsh widespread reality quickly becomes accepted as read as the book continues, this is any town in the Deep South of America in the '30s.

Tom Robinson, a black man accused of the statutory rape of a white girl by a white father, never stood a chance in a court with a jury of twelve men, good, honest but white. His case is told through the eyes of the defending lawyer's daughter, making the case equally as intriguing, maturing and horrifically sobering for the reader as the narrator. The personal struggle of the defendant (Tom Robinson) and his torment is never clearly displayed to the reader, a clever ploy by the author, drawing the reader's attention to even the slightest detail. What is known, however, are the feelings and torments of the defending lawyer's family. Scout's commentary is, at times, completely unrelated to the case (making the facts of the case hard to pick out) but the character of the lawyer (Atticus Finch), his daughter (Scout), his son (Jem) and their friends and neighbours are described in detail and a clear picture of them and how they are affected by the case can be built in the reader's mind. Enabling the society in which the case is taking place to be understood, thereby easing the understanding of how Tom will never be assuaged of the punishment for the crime he blatantly did not commit.

The Great Gatsby

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout.

Brave New World

Written in 1932, when the Western world was poised on the brink of social and scientific revolution, this novel is Huxley's nightmare vision of the future.

Brave New World tells the story of a future time when society and everyone's fate is engineered by advanced technology and brain washing. The aim of this brave new world is to ensure that everyone is happy, and as a matter of fact, this aim is almost perfectly achieved. It portrays a world where humans have mastered the necessarily technology to play God, and this technology is used to achieve happiness at the expense of freedom, individuality, and several other basic human rights. This price is so high that for most readers these people have lost most of their humanity, the characteristics that make us human. I think that Brave New World is a must read. It expresses the believe, or the possibility, that technology and progress may in future damage the human race beyond repair. I also find it amazing that this book was written in the early thirties, before the space age, before computers, before genetic engineering, before nuclear weapons, well when we were much more distant than we are now at being able to play God.

The Cuckoo's Egg

Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter" -- a mystery invader hiding inside a twisting electronic labyrinth, breaking into U.S. computer systems and stealing sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own, spying on the spy -- and plunged into an incredible international probe that finally gained the attention of top U.S. counterintelligence agents. The Cuckoo's Egg is his own view of a what he makes a wild and suspenseful true story -- a year of deception, broken codes, satellites, missile bases, and the ultimate sting operation.

Although the story happened "ages" ago (1986/87), before the Internet days, it's quite interesting to follow, almost as a diary, the development of a small accounting error (75 cents!) into a huge quest for a hacker. Written in a simple style, it does not seek to alienate the non-techie reader, adding to its appeal. More intriguing is the fact that it is a real story from an era when the web was not as evolved as we know it now. In that it also becomes an interesting historical narrative of some of major technological developments in that era. To enjoy this book would take only some curiosity, that will take you through to the end of the story and some desire to see a challenge carried through to its deserved conclusion.

The Hammer of the Gods (Arthur C. Clarke)

First off, the name 'The Hammer of God' in reference to an asteroid that could destroy mankind is evocative and a perfect tone-setter for Clarke's writing.

Once again Clarke manages to create genuine characters among the hi-tech of the future which manages to ground the book in a way that many modern sci-fi books lack. The tone of the book is very much one of impending doom and Clarke switches between the doom of Earth and the immanent self-sacrifice of the members of Spaceguard. I'll admit I was surprised by what happens to the crew of Goliath at the end.

The story is driven by two things, the past and present of the Goliath's captain and the desperate efforts to avert the disaster. The captain, Robert Singh, leads an endearingly tragic and lonely life that is mirrored in the characters Heywood Flyod and Frank Poole from Clarke's Space Odyssey series.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Inspired by Malory's Morte D'Arthur, The Once and Future King was published in four parts between 1939 and 1958. T. H. White's style is gloriously irreverent, from the descriptions of the fabled characters - Lancelot is 'a sort of Bradman, top of the battling averages' - to his vivid vision of a medieval England inhabited by unicorns and griffins. Suffused with humanity, charm, absurdly recondite learning and a powerful sensitivity to the natural world - the light gradually fades as Arthur approaches his 'glorious doom' - The Once and Future King remains the most readable and entertaining depiction of the Arthurian legend. The first book in this collection, the Sword in the Stone, is a rumbustiously delightful re-envisioning of Arthur's youth as a second class child in the home of Sir Ector and his son Kay. There are two things which make this book delightful. The first is the character writing, which is witty and insightful. This is something that runs through the entire sequence of books. The second is the rampant imaginative disregard for any kind of historicity. This book is a firework display of deliberate anachronisms. The famous set pieces, including the magician's duel, crop up frequently in comprehension pieces in schools. TH White has no compunction in putting Robin Hood in with the mix, even though five centuries or so separated the purported dates of Arthur and Robin. Before you imagine this to be a flaw, think again. The nature of the Arthurian cycle, whether in Chretien de Troyes, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the anonymous middle-english ballads, or Mallory's late sometimes tedious, sometimes brilliant retelling, is that they mix things from all over the place. Almost none of the adventures attributed to Arthur could have taken place in the time of the war-leader that the historian Nennius describes - even if they were possible anyway. So T H White has in many ways captured the excitement of storytelling which characterises the Arthur cycle far more accurately than any of the attempts to place Arthur in a historical context. So, instead of a tedious historicity, T H White lets rip and we have a book which sparkles on every page with detail and adventure. What then, about the books that follow? First, these are really for an older audience. They are much darker, and become steadily more dark as they progress. White's brilliance of imagination is still there, but it is subdued behind a deeper purpose. It is very hard to knit together the Arthur cycle into anything which seems like coherence. Roger Lancelyn Green achieves it in his 'King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table', but, in doing so he never achieves the psychological immediacy that White offers us. So, T H White offers us a portrait of the Arthurian cycle which is based in the psychology of the characters - and especially in the way in which Arthur's enemies used his trusting, open-hearted nature against him with increasing effectiveness as the story moves on. From my perspective, the only way to enjoy the entire sequence is to read the first book with an eye to understanding Arthur (Wart). From here, the books flow naturally onwards, opening up a dark, disturbing, but also satisfying and rewarding reworking of the cycle. The Wart is a perfectly ordinary medieval boy - restless, inquisitive, happier out of doors than in - albeit one growing up in rare and mysterious privilege at The Castle of the Forest Sauvage. One sublime summer day while out hawking he meets Merlyn, a bizarre old gentleman who keeps dead mice under his skullcap and the complete Encyclopaedia Britannica on his bookshelf. Merlyn has come from the future to guide the boy toward his ultimate destiny - for the Wart, when he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, will be revealed as Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon and 'rightwise King of all England'. A must for Arthurophiles, but people coming from the Disney film may well find the first book enjoyable and the rest of the sequence discouraging. Warmly recommended, nonetheless.

The Devil's DIctionary by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was a minor genius. As an epigrammatist, he was not quite Oscar Wilde; as a short-story writer, not quite Edgar Allan Poe; and as a man of action, not quite Teddy Roosevelt, but as a combination of man of letters and man of action, he trumped them all. He also became a new-style 'yellow' journalist, at once independent-minded and a slave of deadlines, though never of his proprietors, one of them the legendary William Randolph Hearst, about whom he was typically irreverent in The Devil's Dictionary. The Devil's Dictionary is a compendium of wilfully perverse and sarcastic definitions and spoof quotations taken, in large part, from Bierce's newspaper columns. Karl Kraus (who was of the same aggressive style) once defined a journalist as 'someone who, given time, writes worse', an entry akin to Bierce's own definition of Scribbler in the Devil's Dictionary, 'A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own.' Bierce was not without literary ancestors. Aristophanes' description of a philosopher as someone who could 'make the worse appear the better cause' was not less mordant, and the playwright's parodies presaged those in the anthology of doggerel and fantasy to be found in The Devil's Dictionary. Bierce wound up going off at the age of seventy-one, with Quixotic improbability, to fight for, or at least alongside, Pancho Villa in one more Mexican revolution. No one knows exactly what happened to him, but he clearly expected, or perhaps hoped, not to come back: his last written words were to his niece, telling her not to be surprised if she heard that he had been 'shot to rags' against some Mexican wall. He seems likely to have died in January 1914, at the siege of Ojinaga. If he was fighting for a cause, it is forgotten, and was probably betrayed. He was an ironist who contrived an ironic end for himself. Bierce's classic Civil War story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, is a masterpiece of brevity, compassion and callousness. Its 'hero' is mistakenly hanged as a Union spy and, in the moment of the drop, convinces himself, and the reader, that he has escaped his unjust fate. Bierce's donnee has the force of myth and was reinvented in a recent movie, The 25th Hour. I will not go into the daunting life cycle which eventually led to the compilation and publication of this book. Suffice it to say that few publishers wanted to publish this collection for its own sake, and it only eventually went to print as part of a collection of the author's Complete Works. Bierce was maifestly malicious about this, as is apparent from his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield: Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours [on the Dictionary], has it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. Like all dictionary's, this is not a title meant to be read at one go, but is a worthy reference, especially for quote collectors like myself.

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi