About 'The Permanent Things in a Bookcase'

Howdy from the author of these pages! I have no formal liberal education, am not well-read, and make grammatical errors. Take whatever I propose with a grain of salt. I do have a great love for books; typically not the latest best-sellers, but old, musty books.

The Permanent Things in a Bookcase is a place to record thoughts about my readings. Hopefully the reader of these pages will find an occasional useful tidbit, and open some of the books for himself.

The books mentioned here typically do come from my bookcase. G.K. Chesterton proposed, in his autobiography, a game of self-limitation: “One very good way of playing it is to look at the nearest bookcase, and wonder whether you would find sufficient entertainment in that chance collection, even if you had no other books.” My particular bookcase is not exactly a chance collection, for nearly every book came by way of recommendation, and its contents does continue to grow. But the books I mention are the books that would be difficult to part with, because they are the very best books; books that could entertain a reader until the end of life.

“The Permanent Things” is also the subject matter. Many books in my bookcase (for example Numerical Analysis by Burden & Faires and The Messier Album by Mallas & Kreimer, will not make the cut. Neither will my treasured 1968 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia. They are excellent books, and while numbers and nebulas are permanent in their way, what is meant here is what Eliot and Kirk have championed as “the permanent things”: truth that binds humanity across borders and time.

Feedback is welcome! Email joe.tremblay@lobstermayo.com.

Thank you.

Joe Tremblay