Miss Lonelyhearts

Flannery O'Connor said that Miss Lonelyhearts and As I Lay Dying were her two favorite modern novels.

I finally got around to reading Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, and I am glad I did. But reading it kept bringing to mind Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (and sometimes made me wish I was reading that short novel instead). I fear that I will forget Wise Blood before too long. Miss Lonelyhearts has haunted me since I first read it over 30 years ago.

An excerpt:

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts --

I am sixteen years old now and I dont know what to do and would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do. When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block makeing fun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nites, but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose--although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.

I sit and look at myself all day and cry. I have a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I cant blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me, but she crys terrible when she looks at me.

What did I do to deserve such a terrible bad fate? Even if I did do some bad things I didnt do any before I was a year old and I was born this way. I asked Papa and he says he doesnt know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I dont believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?

Sincerely yours,

Desperate

The Reading and Writing of Presidents

 

 

NYT, 1/16/17

"Not since Lincoln has there been a president as fundamentally shaped — in his life, convictions and outlook on the world — by reading and writing as Barack Obama."

Oh, please. Talk about recency effects!

What about James Garfield ("the professor President" and one of the last Presidents fluent in Ancient Greek), Theodore Roosevelt (who wrote 20 books before becoming President, and then a score more afterwards), the odious but certainly bookish Woodrow Wilson ("the scholar-President"), and even, saints preserve us, Richard Nixon (about whom this anecdote is instructive) -- all of whom most certainly were more fundamentally shaped by "reading and writing," and who wrote many more books, than Mr. Obama.

This New York Times piece is sickening hagiography. Oh for the days when journalists despised and mistrusted politicians!

Reading List from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, author of Maps of Meaning

Go ahead and take the next 12 months to read these books. A purgative for the soul.

JBP Blog

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Notes from Underground
The Devils
The Idiot

 

Tolstoy

Confessions
The Kingdom of God is Within You

 

Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita

 

Solzhenitsyn

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
The Gulag Archipelago

The First Circle

Cancer Ward

 

Other books of critical importance:

 

Carl Jung

The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
Aion

Symbols of Transformation 

Answer to Job

 

Erich Neumann

The Origins and History of Consciousness
The Great Mother

 

George Orwell

1984
The Road to Wigan Pier
Animal Farm
Down and Out in Paris and London
Homage to Catalonia

 

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World
The Doors of Perception

 

Other Works

The Discovery of the Unconscious (Henri Ellenberger)
The Neuropsychology of Anxiety (Jeffrey Gray)
Affective Neuroscience (Jaak Panksepp)
The Emotional Brain (Joseph LeDoux)

 

 

 

 

"One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly"

"Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual. One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could really be disturbed by a question of salary. One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off, And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems!"

-- Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier (1967/1971, p. 223)

VMI Summer Reading (Unoffical): 50 Books for 2016

VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): The American Revolution (1 to 5)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): The Civil War (6 to 10)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): World War I (11 to 15)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): World War II (16 to 20)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Vietnam (21 to 25)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Spy Novels (26 to 30)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Recreational Fiction (31 to 35)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Recreational Non-fiction (36 to 40)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Inspirational (41 to 45)


VMI Summer Reading (Unofficial): Classics (46 to 50)

Saul Bellow teaches his favorite novels

This is the type of classroom in which I learned the most. If this isn't a part of your college experience, you are probably being ripped off.

Hazlitt

"In 2000, I was one of a dozen students in Bellow’s class at Boston University. We were culled mostly from the arts and sciences college; I was the odd man out, from the film school program. We all understood our weekly meetings of An Idiosyncratic Survey of Modern Literature to be a gift.

Each Wednesday, the students sat around a conference table, while members of the Evergreen program—senior citizens who, for a small fee, could audit university classes; Elie Wiesel’s was a hot ticket—filled out the room’s periphery. They would place a bottle of iced tea at the head of the table, for Bellow. He ambled in, never late.

Bellow chose novels he loved: Denis Johnson’s Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, James Joyce’s Ulysses. During the first class, we asked Bellow why, unlike Wiesel, whose class I’d taken the prior semester, he declined to teach his own work. That, he replied, would be needless self-aggrandizement. He was fond of a Yiddish proverb: Why chew your own cabbage twice?

For ninety minutes, Bellow led a loose discussion of the week’s text. He allowed us to unspool theories about the books, and would gently correct us. We were young and often wrong. But that was okay. He didn’t condescend to students or compromise the material. As Freedman-Bellow, who took her husband’s class as a graduate student, told me, “If there was something he felt we didn’t know, he was going to give us the background and have us delight in it. If I know it, you can know it, too.”"

David Bowie's 100 favorite books

This is going around the internet. People generally seemed awed by it, probably because most people don't know anyone who has read a hundred books. (If you did read 100 books over the next 3 or 4 years, you wouldn't be the same person you are now.) But a lot of Bowie's books seem like the sort of thing that weekend readers indulge in, just "passing fancies." The majority I have not read, and probably will never. But there could be some gems in there somewhere.


I was heartened to see some classics, books I would consider essential reading for any aspiring clinical psychologist:


Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inferno by Dante Alighieri


And some interesting ones, too, that I have read and liked but which might not make it on my own list of 100 favorites:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
White Noise by Don DeLillo


And a few that reminded me that I have been meaning to read them:

Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
The Bridge by Hart Crane
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima




Here's the entire list:


Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

Franz Kafka, The Trial, Chapter Ten, The End

"The only thing I can do now," he told himself, and the regular correspondence between his steps and the steps of the other two confirmed his thought, "the only think for me to go on doing is to keep my intelligence calm and analytical to the end. I always wanted to snatch at the world with twenty hands, and not for a very laudable motive, either. That was wrong, and am I to show now that not even a year's trial has taught me anything? Am I to leave this world as a man who has no common sense? Are people to say of me after I am gone that at the beginning of my case I wanted to finish it, and at the end I wanted to begin it again? I don't want that to be said."

-- Franz Kafka, The Trial, Chapter Ten, The End

Moynihan's Reading List for Nixon

Anecdotal Evidence

"Early in his first term, [U.S. President Richard] Nixon named [future U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick] Moynihan – a liberal Harvard professor with close ties to the Kennedys – his urban affairs adviser. Hess calls them “the oddest...of all the odd couples in American political life.” 

In a chapter titled “Tutorial,” [author Stephen] Hess reports the president asked Moynihan for a list of his favorite political biographies, and quotes Nixon as writing in a memo to Moynihan: “As you know, I do quite a bit of evening reading, and I want to be sure that I’m reading the best!” One is touched by Nixon’s earnestness and eagerness to please his staff intellectual. Limiting himself to ten titles, Moynihan leaves out Erik Erikson on Gandhi, Arthur Link on Woodrow Wilson and Catherine Drinker Bowen on Oliver Wendell Holmes. Here is the list Moynihan gives Nixon: 

Autobiography, John Adams (1802)

Abraham Lincoln, Lord Charnwood (1917)

The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams (1918)

Talleyrand, Duff Cooper (1932)

Melbourne, David Cecil (1939)

Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock (1952)

The Republican Roosevelt, John Morton Blum (1961)

Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution, Clinton Rossiter (1964)

Disraeli, Robert Blake (1966)

Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, John Womack Jr. (1969)" 

 

What my fellow blogger fails to mention is that Nixon shocked Moynihan not long afterwards by saying, "I've read them all, now let's discuss them." Moynihan himself had not read Disraeli, which is close to 900 pages.

I can't say that political biographies are really my thing. I didn't like Henry Adams, which apparently some people think is the greatest work of 20th century non-fiction in English. I have owned the Bowen, Bullock, Blum, and the Blake, but can't say I ever read them all the way through. I might take a look at Erikson on Gandhi. Duff Cooper's Tallyrand looks pretty fun. I feel a duty to read the Charnswood on Lincoln, which probably means I won't.

A chacun son gout.

Historian Jay Winik's Six Favorite Books

Well I'm not afraid to admit that I haven't read any of these. I listened to the audio-book version of Einstein, but that doesn't really count. I have read Manchester's Churchill books and other books by Boorstin and Massie. Looks like a good list, though. I think I would be most likely to read Nicholas and Alexandra or A World Lit Only by Fire first.

The Week

"Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson (Oxford, $20). The finest single-volume work on the Civil War out there. Written with verve and panache, it's filled with rich character portraits and fresh interpretations of the key political, social, and military events. I loved this book when I wrote April 1865, and love it still.

Einstein by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, $20). The improbable story of a patent clerk who couldn't get a teaching job and ended up unlocking the mysteries of the universe. How can the reader not find Einstein's life captivating? Bravo to Isaacson.

The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon S. Wood (Univ. of North Carolina, $35). The 1790s were the critical first decade of the United States, but Wood's account of the years 1776–1789 deftly lays bare the underpinnings — the establishment of a distinctly American political system and a new enlightened age. A must-read for students of American history.

The Americans: The National Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin (Vintage, $18). This rich little book opens with the story of how the "City Upon a Hill" prospered because it was really a city on the sea. That marvelously evocative detail begins the voyage that is the story of America. Boorstin was the Librarian of Congress, and his quirky insights and erudition shine on every page. His prose sparkles.

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie (Random House, $20). Massie is a master story-teller, and this book is his finest. It is at once an epic human drama and a compelling tapestry depicting an empire crumbling in slow motion. Here is the fall of the Romanovs; here are the deaths of the well-meaning, often hapless royals; and here are the events that gave birth to Soviet communism.

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester (Little Brown, $16). I am partial to William Manchester's books on Winston Churchill, but time and again I'm drawn to this elegantly crafted portrait of medieval Europe, a civilization on the verge of collapse that then experienced a remarkable rebirth. The book is filled with exquisite details as well as unforgettable heroes and villains.

—Historian Jay Winik is the best-selling author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval. In his new book, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, he takes the measure of another fulcrum point in the story of Western civilization."

The Annals, Book 4, Chapter 32 -- Tacitus

Tiberius

"Much what I have related and shall have to relate, may perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to record. But no one must compare my annals with the writings of those who have described Rome in old days. They told of great wars, of the storming of cities, of the defeat and capture of kings, or whenever they turned by preference to home affairs, they related, with a free scope for digression, the strifes of consuls with tribunes, land and corn-laws, and the struggles between the commons and the aristocracy. My labours are circumscribed and inglorious; peace wholly unbroken or but slightly disturbed, dismal misery in the capital, an emperor careless about the enlargement of the empire, such is my theme. Still it will not be useless to study those at first sight trifling events out of which the movements of vast changes often take their rise.

All nations and cities are ruled by the people, the nobility, or by one man. A constitution, formed by selection out of these elements, it is easy to commend but not to produce; or, if it is produced, it cannot be lasting. Formerly, when the people had power or when the patricians were in the ascendant, the popular temper and the methods of controlling it, had to be studied, and those who knew most accurately the spirit of the Senate and aristocracy, had the credit of understanding the age and of being wise men. So now, after a revolution, when Rome is nothing but the realm of a single despot, there must be good in carefully noting and recording this period, for it is but few who have the foresight to distinguish right from wrong or what is sound from what is hurtful, while most men learn wisdom from the fortunes of others. Still, though this is instructive, it gives very little pleasure. Descriptions of countries, the various incidents of battles, glorious deaths of great generals, enchant and refresh a reader's mind. I have to present in succession the merciless biddings of a tyrant, incessant prosecutions, faithless friendships, the ruin of innocence, the same causes issuing in the same results, and I am everywhere confronted by a wearisome monotony in my subject matter. Then, again, an ancient historian has but few disparagers, and no one cares whether you praise more heartily the armies of Carthage or Rome. But of many who endured punishment or disgrace under Tiberius, the descendants yet survive; or even though the families themselves may be now extinct, you will find those who, from a resemblance of character, imagine that the evil deeds of others are a reproach to themselves. Again, even honour and virtue make enemies, condemning, as they do, their opposites by too close a contrast. But I return to my work."

This House of Grief -- Helen Garner

Possible required reading for Forensic Psychology, Spring 2016.

Text Publishing

"On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father’s Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner’s obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict.

In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the courtroom with its actors and audience – all gathered to bear witness to the truth – players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the quest for justice."

Robert Conquest, RIP

New Criterion

"The opening line in most obituaries of Robert Conquest, who died on August the third, described him as a “historian and poet.” That would be a capacious enough description for most men of letters. In Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, Charon keeps A. E. Housman waiting on the banks of the River Styx for a second arrival since he is expecting two people, “a poet and a scholar,” until Housman says shyly: “I think that must be me.” In Bob’s case Charon would have been waiting for a historian, a poet, a novelist, a satirist, a critic, a diplomat, a strategist, a soldier, a social and political theorist, a limerickist, and of course a scholar—and I have almost certainly left out some of Bob’s other professional identities. Charon probably brought along a second boat."

 

Marilyn Monroe's book collection

Marilyn Monroe on Norman Mailer: "He’s too impressed by power, in my opinion."


If she read even half of the books on this list, well...that's impressive. She did marry playwright Arthur Miller -- if she wasn't an avid reader, I can't imagine why would she be attracted to him.

Book Tryst



 Below, a list of books owned by Marilyn Monroe, auctioned at Christies-NY, October 28-29, 1999, in individual lots or grouped:

1) Let's Make Love by Matthew Andrews (novelisation of the movie)
2) How To Travel Incognito by Ludwig Bemelmans
3) To The One I Love Best by Ludwig Bemelmans
4) Thurber Country by James Thurber
5) The Fall by Albert Camus
6) Marilyn Monroe by George Carpozi
7) Camille by Alexander Dumas
8) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
9) The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt-Farmer
10) The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
11) From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
12) The Art Of Loving by Erich Fromm
13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran
14) Ulysses by James Joyce
15) Stoned Like A Statue: A Complete Survey Of Drinking Cliches, Primitive, Classical & Modern by Howard Kandel & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Martin (a man who knew how to drink!)
16) The Last Temptation Of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis
17) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
18) Selected Poems by DH Lawrence
19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 editions)
21) The Portable DH Lawrence
22) Etruscan Places (DH Lawrence?)
23) DH Lawrence: A Basic Study Of His Ideas by Mary Freeman
24) The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
25) The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
26) Death In Venice & Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann
27) Last Essays by Thomas Mann
28) The Thomas Mann Reader
29) Hawaii by James Michener
30) Red Roses For Me by Sean O'Casey
31) I Knock At The Door by Sean O'Casey
32) Selected Plays by Sean O'Casey
33) The Green Crow by Sean O'Casey
34) Golden Boy by Clifford Odets
35) Clash By Night by Clifford Odets
36) The Country Girl by Clifford Odets
37) 6 Plays Of Clifford Odets
38) The Cat With 2 Faces by Gordon Young
39) Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
40) Part Of A Long Story: Eugene O'Neill As A Young Man In Love by Agnes Boulton
41) The Little Engine That Could by Piper Watty (with childish pencil scrawls at end, possibly MM's)
42) The New Joy Of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer & Marion Rombauer-Becker (with some cut recipes, page markers, a typed diet sheet and manuscript shopping list, apparently in MM's hand, laid in)
43) Selected Plays Of George Bernard Shaw
44) Ellen Terry And Bernard Shaw - A Correspondence
45) Bernard Shaw & Mrs Patrick Campbell - Their Correspondence
46) The Short Reigh Of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
47) Once There Was A War by John Steinbeck
48) Set This House On Fire by William Styron
49) Lie Down In Darkness (William Styron?)
50) The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone by Tennessee Williams
51) Camino Real by Tennessee Williams
52) A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (with notes by MM)
53) The Flower In Drama And Glamour by Stark Young (inscribed to MM by Lee Strasberg, Christmas 1955)

American Literature

54) Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
55) The Story Of A Novel by Thomas Wolfe
56) Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
57) A Stone, A Leaf, A Door (Thomas Wolfe?)
58) Thomas Wolfe's Letters To His Mother, ed. John Skally Terry
59) A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
60) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
61) Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
62) Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
63) Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
64) The American Claimant & Other Stories & Sketches by Mark Twain
65) In Defense of Harriet Shelley & Other Essays (Mark Twain?)
66) The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
67) Roughing It (Mark Twain?)
68) The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
69) A Death In The Family by James Agee
70) The War Lover by John Hersey
71) Don't Call Me By My Right Name & Other Stories by James Purdy
72) Malcolm by James Purdy

Anthologies

73) The Portable Irish Reader (pub. Viking)
74) The Portable Poe - Edgar Allen Poe
75) The Portable Walt Whitman
76) This Week's Short Stories (New York, 1953)
77) Bedside Book Of Famous Short Stories
78) Short Novels Of Colette
79) Short Story Masterpieces (New York, 1960)
80) The Passionate Playgoer by George Oppenheimer
81) Fancies And Goodnights by John Collier
82) Evergreen Review, Vol 2, No. 6
83) The Medal & Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello

Art

84) Max Weber (art book - inscribed to MM by 'Sam' - Shaw?)
85) Renoir by Albert Skira
86) Max by Giovannetti Pericle
87) The Family Of Man by Carl Sandburg
88-90) Horizon, A Magazine Of The Arts (Nov 1959, Jan 1960, Mar 1960.)
91) Jean Dubuffet by Daniel Cordier

Biography

92) The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham
93) Close To Colette by Maurice Goudeket
94) This Demi-Paradise by Margaret Halsey
95) God Protect Me From My Friends by Gavin Maxwell
96) Minister Of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story by Quentin Reynolds, Ephraim Katz and Zwy Aldouby
97) Dance To The Piper by Agnes DeMille
98) Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It by Mae West
99) Act One by Moss Hart

Christian Science

100) Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
101) Poems, Including Christ And Christmas by Mary Baker Eddy

Classical Works

102) 2 Plays: Peace And Lysistrata by Aristophanes
103) Of The Nature Of Things by Lucretius
104) The Philosophy Of Plato
105) Mythology by Edith Hamilton
106) Theory Of Poetry And Fine Art by Aristotle
107) Metaphysics by Aristotle
108-111) Plutarch's Lives, Vols 3-6 only (of 6) by William and John Langhorne

Counter-Culture

112) Bound For Glory by Woody Guthrie
113) The Support Of The Mysteries by Paul Breslow
114) Paris Blues by Harold Flender
115) The Shook-Up Generation by Harrison E. Salisbury

Foreign-Language Texts And Translations

116) An Mands Ansigt by Arthur Miller
117) Independent People by Halldor Laxness
118) Mujer by Lina Rolan (inscribed to MM by author)
119) The Havamal, ed. D.E. Martin Clarke
120) Yuan Mei: 18th Century Chinese Poet by Arthur Waley
121) Almanach: Das 73 Jahr by S. Fischer Verlag

French Literature

122) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
123) The Works Of Rabelais
124) The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
125) Cities Of The Plain by Marcel Proust
126) Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
127) The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust
128) The Captive by Marcel Proust
129) Nana by Emile Zola
130) Plays by Moliere

Freud

131) The Life And Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones
132) Letters Of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernest L. Freud
133) Glory Reflected by Martin Freud
134) Moses And Monotheism by Sigmund Freud
135) Conditioned Reflex Therapy by Andrew Salter

Gardening & Pets

136-137) The Wise Garden Encyclopedia, ed. E.L.D. Seymour (2 editions)
138) Landscaping Your Own Home by Alice Dustan
139) Outpost Nurseries - publicity brochure
140) The Forest And The Sea by Marston Bates
141) Pet Turtles by Julien Bronson
142) A Book About Bees by Edwin Way Teale
143) Codfish, Cats & Civilisation by Gary Webster

Humor

144) How To Do It, Or, The Art Of Lively Entertaining by Elsa Maxwell
145) Wake Up, Stupid by Mark Harris
146) Merry Christmas, Happy New Year by Phyllis McGinley
147) The Hero Maker by Akbar Del Piombo & Norman Rubington
148) How To Talk At Gin by Ernie Kovacs
149) VIP Tosses A Party, by Virgil Partch
150) Who Blowed Up The House & Other Ozark Folk Tales, ed. Randolph Vance
151) Snobs by Russell Lynes

Judaica (MM officially converted to Judaism upon her marriage to Miller).

152) The Form of Daily Prayers
153) Sephath Emeth (Speech Of Truth): Order Of Prayers For The Wholes Year In Jewish and English
154) The Holy Scriptures According To The Masoretic Text (inscribed to MM by Paula Strasberg, July 1, 1956)

Literature

155) The Law by Roger Vailland
156) The Building by Peter Martin
157) The Mermaids by Boros
158) They Came To Cordura by Glendon Swarthout
159) The 7th Cross by Anna Seghers
160) A European Education by Romain Gary
161) Strike For A Kingdom by Menna Gallie
162) The Slide Area by Gavin Lambert
163) The Woman Who Was Poor by Leon Bloy
164) Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
165) The Contenders by John Wain
166) The Best Of All Worlds, Or, What Voltaire Never Knew by Hans Jorgen Lembourn (is this the same guy who later wrote '40 Days With Marilyn'?)
167) The Story Of Esther Costello by Nicholas Montsarrat
168) Oh Careless Love by Maurice Zolotow (MM biographer)
169) Add A Dash Of Pity by Peter Ustinov
170) An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (filmed as A Place In The Sun - MM admired Elizabeth Taylor's performance)
171) The Mark Of The Warrior by Paul Scott
172) The Dancing Bear by Edzard Schaper
173) Miracle In The Rain by Ben Hecht (co-author of MM's autobiography)
174) The Guide by R.K. Narayan
175) Blow Up A Storm by Garson Kanin (later wrote screenplay 'Moviola', featurning an MM-based character)
176) Jonathan by Russell O'Neill
177) Fowlers End by Gerald Kersh
178) Hurricane Season by Ralph Winnett
179) The un-Americans by Alvah Bessie (later wrote The Symbol, a novel loosely based on MM's life)
180) The Devil's Advocate by Morris L. West
181) On Such A Night by Anthony Quayle
182) Say You Never Saw Me by Arthur Nesbitt
183) All The Naked Heroes by Alan Kapener
184) Jeremy Todd by Hamilton Maule
185) Miss America by Daniel Stren
186) Fever In The Blood by William Pearson
187) Spartacus by Howard Fast
188) Venetian Red by L.M. Pasinetti
189) A Cup Of Tea For Mr Thorgill by Storm Jameson
190) Six O'Clock Casual by Henry W. Cune
191) Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong (the movie 'Don't Bother To Knock' was based on this novel)
192) The Gingko Tree by Sheelagh Burns
193) The Mountain Road by Theodore H. White
194) Three Circles Of Light by Pietro Di Donato
195) The Day The Money Stopped by Brendan Gill
196) The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins (Hollywood-set bestseller, featuring a Jean Harlow-based character, Rina Marlowe. Marilyn's secretary, Margerie Stengel, recalls that Marilyn was reading a Robbins novel in her New York apartment in 1961.)
197-198) Justine by Lawrence Durrell (2 editions, possibly read during filming of The Misfits)
199) Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
200) Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
201) The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
202) The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
203) Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog by Dylan Thomas (Marilyn met Thomas in Shelley Winters' apartment circa 1951)
204) Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, by Malcolm Lowry

Modern Library

205) The Sound And The Fury/As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
206) God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell
207) Anna Christie/The Emperor Jones/The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill (Marilyn played Anna in a scene performed at the Actor's Studio in 1956)
208) The Philosophy Of Schopenhauer by Irwin Edman
209) The Philosophy Of Spinoza by Joseph Ratner
210) The Dubliners by James Joyce
211) Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson
212) The Collected Short Stories by Dorothy Parker (Friend of Marilyn's, lived nearby her Doheny Drive apartment in 1961)
213) Selected Works by Alexander Pope
214) The Red And The Black by Stendhal
215) The Life Of Michelangelo by John Addington
216) Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (Niagara director Henry Hathaway wanted to film this with MM and James Dean. It was eventually made with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey.)
217) Three Famous French Romances (W. Somerset Maugham?)
218) Napoleon by Emil Ludwig
219) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (a second copy?)
220) The Poems And Fairy-Tales by Oscar Wilde
221) Alice's Adventures In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass/The Hunting Of The Snark, by Lewis Carroll
222) A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes
223) An Anthology Of American Negro Literature, ed. Sylvestre C. Watkins

Music

224) Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J.W.N. Sullivan
225) Music For The Millions by David Ewen
226) Schubert by Ralph Bates
227) Men Of Music by Wallace Brockaway and Herbert Weinstock

Plays

228) The Potting Shed by Graham Greene
229) Politics In The American Drama by Caspar Nannes
230) Sons Of Men by Herschel Steinhardt
231) Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin (MM auditioned for the movie, but Judy Holliday got the part)
232) Untitled & Other Radio Drams by Norman Corwin
233) Thirteen By Corwin, by Norman Corwin
234) More By Corwin, by Norman Corwin
235) Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill (a second copy)
236) Best American Plays: Third Series, 1945-1951
237) Theatre '52 by John Chapman
238) 16 Famous European Plays, by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell
239) The Complete Plays Of Henry James
240) 20 Best Plays Of The Modern American Theatre, by John Glassner
241) Elizabethan Plays by Hazelton Spencer
242) Critics' Choice by Jack Gaver
243) Modern American Dramas by Harlan Hatcher
244) The Album Of The Cambridge Garrick Club

European Poetry

245) A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman
246) The Poetry & Prose Of Heinrich Heine by Frederich Ewen
247) The Poetical works Of John Milton, by H.C. Beeching
248) The Poetical Works Of Robert Browning (H.C. Beeching?)
249) Wordsworth by Richard Wilbur
250) The Poetical Works Of Shelley (Richard Wilbur?)
251) The Portable Blake, by William Blake
252) William Shakespeare: Sonnets, ed. Mary Jane Gorton
253) Poems Of Robert Burns, ed. Henry Meikle & William Beattie
254) The Penguin Book Of English Verse, ed. John Hayward
255) Aragon: Poet Of The French Resistance, by Hannah Josephson & Malcolm Cowley
256) Star Crossed by Margaret Tilden

American Poetry

257 and 258) Collected Sonnets by Edna St Vincent Millay (2 editions)
259) Robert Frost's Poems by Louis Untermeyer (Marilyn befriended Untermeyer during her marriage to Arthur)
260) Poe: Complete Poems by Richard Wilbur (a 2nd copy?)
261) The Life And Times Of Archy And Mehitabel by Don Marquis
262) The Pocketbook Of Modern Verse by Oscar Williams
263) Poems by John Tagliabue
264) Selected Poems by Rafael Alberti
265) Selected Poetry by Robinson Jeffers
266) The American Puritans: Their Prose & Poetry, by Perry Miller
267) Selected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
268) Poet In New York by Federico Garcia Lorca
269) The Vapor Trail by Ivan Lawrence Becker (inscribed to Arthur by the author, there is also a note to MM)
270) Love Poems & Love Letters For All The Year
271) 100 Modern Poems, ed. Selden Rodman
272) The Sweeniad, by Myra Buttle
273) Poetry: A Magazine Of Verse, Vol.70, no. 6

Politics

274) The Wall Between by Anne Braden
275) The Roots Of American Communism by Theodore Draper
276) A View Of The Nation - An Anthology : 1955-1959, ed. Henry Christian
277) A Socialist's Faith by Norman Thomas
278-279) Rededication To Freedom by Benjamin Ginzburg (2 copies)
280) The Ignorant Armies by E.M. Halliday
281) Commonwealth Vs Sacco & Vanzetti, by Robert P. Weeks
282) Journey To The Beginning by Edgar Snow
283) Das Kapital by Karl Marx
284) Lidice by Eleanor Wheeler
285) The Study Of History by Arnold Toynbee
286) America The Invincible by Emmet John Hughes
287) The Unfinished Country by Max Lerner
288) Red Mirage by John O'Kearney
289) Background & Foreground - The New York Times Magazine: An Anthology, ed. Lester Markel (a friend of MM)
290) The Failure Of Success by Esther Milner
291) A Piece Of My Mind by Edmund Wilson
292) The Truth About The Munich Crisis by Viscount Maugham
293) The Alienation Of Modern Man by Fritz Pappenheim
294) A Train Of Powder by Rebecca West
295) Report From Palermo by Danilo Dolci
296) The Devil In Massachusetts by Marion Starkey
297) American Rights: The Constitution In Action, by Walter Gellhorn
298) Night by Francis Pollini
299) The Right Of The People by William Douglas
300) The Jury Is Still Out by Irwin Davidson and Richard Gehman
301) First Degree by William Kunstler
302) Democracy In America by Alexis De Tocqueville
303) World Underworld by Andrew Varna

Prayer

304) Catechism For Young Children (1936, so may be from Norma Jeane's childhood)
305) Prayer Changes Things (1952, inscribed to MM - perhaps from Jane Russell?)
306) The Prophet by Kahlil Bibran (a second copy?)
307) The Magic Word L.I.D.G.T.T.F.T.A.T.I.M. by Robert Collier
308) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (a third copy?)
309) His Brother's Keeper by Milton Gross (3-page extract from Readers' Digest, Dec 1961)
310) Christliches ergissmeinnicht by K. Ehmann
311) And It Was Told Of A Certain Potter by Walter C. Lanyon (1922, so may be from childhood. Several newspaper poems and prayers tipped in.)
312) Bahai Prayers (inscribed to MM, 'Marilyn Monroe Maybeline. A gift for my darling Maybeline, with all my love, Charlzetta' - dated 1961.)

Psychology

313) Man Against Himself by Karl A. Menninger
314) The Tower And The Abyss by Erich Kahler
315) Something To Live By, by Dorothea S. Kopplin
316) Man's Supreme Inheritance by Alexander F. Matthias
317) The Miracles Of Your Mind by Joseph Murphy
318) The Wisdom Of The Sands by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
319) A Prison, A Paradise by Loran Hurnscot
320) The Magic Of Believing by Claude M. Bristol
321) Peace Of Mind by Joshua Loth Liebman
322) The Use Of The Self by Alexander F. Matthias
323) The Power Within You by Claude M. Bristol
324) The Call Girl by Harold Greenwald
325) Troubled Women by Lucy Freeman (who later wrote 'Why Norma Jean Killed Marilyn Monroe')
326) Relax And Live by Joseph A. Kennedy
327) Forever Young, Forever Healthy by Indra Devi
328) The Open Self by Charles Morris
329) Hypnotism Today by Leslie Lecron & Jean Bordeaux
330) The Masks Of God: Primitive Mythology, by Joseph Campbell
331) Some Characteristics Of Today by Rudolph Steiner

Reference

332) Baby & Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (pub. 1958)
333) Flower Arranging For Fun by Hazel Peckinpaugh Dunlop
334) Hugo's Pocket Dictionary: French-English And English-French
335) Spoken French For Travellers And Tourists, by Charles Kany & Mathurin Dondo
336) Roget's Pocket Thesaurus, by C.O. Mawson & K.A. Whiting

Religion

337) What Is A Jew? by Morris Kertzer
338) A Partisan Guide To The Jewish Problem, by Milton Steinberg
339) The Tales Of Rabbi Nachman, by Martin Buber
340) The Saviours Of God: Spiritual Exercises, by Nikos Kazantzakis
341) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran (4th copy?)
342) The Dead Sea Scrolls by Millar Burrows
343) The Secret Books Of The Egyptian Gnostics, by Jean Doresse
344) Jesus by Kahlil Gilbran
345) Memories Of A Catholic Girlhood, by Mary McCarthy
346) Why I Am Not A Christian, by Bertrand Russell

Russian Literature

347) Redemption & Other Plays by Leo Tolstoy
348) The Viking Library Portable Anton Chekhov
349) The House Of The Dead, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
350) Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
351) Best Russian Stories: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Seltzer
352) The Plays Of Anton Chekhov
353) Smoke by Ivan Turgenev
354) The Poems, Prose & Plays Of Alexander Pushkin
355) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (not in the Christies' catalogue. But friends of MM recall her reading it as a young actress, and she had hopes of playing Grushenka. Her own remarks in interviews make it clear that she had read the novel.)

Science

356) Our Knowledge Of The External World, by Bertrand Russell
357) Common Sense And Nuclear Warfare, by Bertrand Russell
358) Out Of My Later Years by Albert Einstein
359) Men And Atoms by William Laurence
360) Man Alive by Daniel Colin Munro (inscribed to Renna Campbell from Lorraine?)
361) Doctor Pygmalion by Maxwell Maltz
362) Panorama: A New Review, ed. R.F. Tannenbaum
363) Everyman's Search by Rebecca Beard
364) Of Stars And Men by Harlow Shapley
365) From Hiroshima To The Moon, by Daniel Lang
366) The Open Mind by J. Robert Oppenheimer
367) Sexual Impotence In The Male, by Leonard Paul Wershub

Scripts And Readings

368) Medea by Jeffers Robinson
369) Antigone by Jean Anouilh
370) Bell, Book And Candle by John Van Druten
371) The Women by Clare Boothe
372) Jean Of Lorraine by Maxwell Anderson

Travel

373) The Sawbwa And His Secretary by C.Y. Lee
374) The Twain Shall Meet by Christopher Rand
375) Kingdom Of The Rocks by Consuelo De Saint-Exupery
376) The Heart Of India by Alexander Campbell
377) Man-Eaters Of India by Jim Corbett
378) Jungle Lore by Jim Corbett
379) My India by Jim Corbett
380) A Time In Rome by Elizabeth Bowen
381) London by Jacques Boussard
382) New York State Vacationlands
383) Russian Journey by William O. Douglas
384) The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer

Women Authors

385) The Portable Dorothy Parker
386) My Antonia by Willa Cather
387) Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather
388) The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (befriended Marilyn when she first moved to New York)
389) The Short Novels Of Colette (A second copy?)
390) The Little Disturbances Of Man by Grace Paley

Here are a few other books which weren't included, but Monroe was reported either to have read or owned them. Most on the list are cited in the Unabridged Marilyn.

391) The Autobiography Of Lincoln Steffens (read during The Fireball)
392-403) Carl Sandburg's 12-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln
404) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Marilyn gave a copy to Joe after their wedding)
405) Poems Of W.B. Yeats (Marilyn read his poems aloud at Norman Rosten's house)
406) Mr Roberts by Joyce Cary
407) The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd
408) The Actor Prepares by Konstantin Stanislavsky
409) The Bible
410) The Biography Of Eleanora Duse, by William Weaver
411) De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Study Of Human Bone Structure) by Andreas Vesalius
412) Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
413) Gertrude Lawrence As Mrs A, by Richard Aldrich
414) Goodnight Sweet Prince by Gene Fowler
415) Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton
416) How Stanislavsky Directs by Mikhail Gorchakov (posted earlier by Felicia)
417) I Married Adventure by Olso Johnson
418) The Importance Of Living by Lin Yutang
419) Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (read during All About Eve)
420) Psychology Of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud
421) The Rains Came by Louis Broomfield
422) The Rights Of Man by Thomas Paine (read during some Like It Hot)
423) Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
424) To The Actor by Michael Chekhov (Marilyn's acting teacher from 1950-1955)
425) Captain Newman, M.D. (Novel based on Dr Ralph Greenson’s as an army doctor in Korea. Marilyn was said to be reading this on the week of her death.A film based on the book was released in 1963.)
426) Songs For Patricia by Norman Rosten (posted by Paju)
427) A Lost Lady by Willa Cather (Marilyn hoped to film this with her production company. But an earlier adaptation was so disappointing to the author, that she withdrew the film rights.)
428) Lust For Life by Irving Stone
429) The Deer Park by Norman Mailer (Hollywood-based novel. Marilyn commented on the book, ‘He’s too impressed by power, in my opinion.’ Mailer tried unsuccessfully to meet Marilyn, and after her death wrote several books on her.)
430) The Rebel by Albert Camus
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