Century Bookshelf: A Memoir in a 100 Books

By David Macpherson

About the Book

 

What are the books that make up your history?

 

For every reader, there are the books that linger. There are books that are more than just entertainment. They mean something. 

 

David Macpherson, a reader and a writer, has written about 100 books and how they matter to him. For every year from 1923 to 1922, he has chosen a book. 

 

There are tales to tell. There are things to remember and discover.

 

What are your books that fit on your century bookshelf? What is your autobiography as seen as titles written on spines? 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: Dec 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223258469

Book preview

1923 The Waste Land by T. S. Elliot

Yesterday, it hailed and then snowed. Today is 70 degree weather. My son says that this month is crazy. I say, April is the cruelest month. My son has no clue why I would go to such an extreme. Sure the weather is weird, but calling it cruel?

My wife rolls her eyes. Don’t worry about your father. He is just quoting the first line of a pretty famous poem.

This does not assuage my son. He wonders if he should know this poem. No, my wife states. It is famous, but no one understands it. I disagree and I tell them so. It’s a powerful poem.

My wife asks, You think it’s great, but do you understand it? For all the times you have read it, and I see you with your little copy of it. For all the times, have you ever understood the damned thing?

I reply, If I understood the damned thing, why the hell would I keep on reading it?

1924 Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

I love walking and reading. I will always get the dog leashed up and then grab a book. Some books are better to read than others. A big fat book is out of the question. You want a paperback. Better yet is something with a simple narrative. Short story collections are ideal for reading while walking the dog. You only have to keep the story in mind for ten or fifteen pages.

My friend, Ted, lent me his copy of this book. I didn’t know Poirot had short stories. These were fun. Don’t ask me what happened in the book. Neither the dog or myself can recall.

1925 The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reader by Edgar Wallace

These are fun, puzzle mysteries with a pretty mild detective. I enjoyed them. But I don’t recall a single plot or concept from these stories. What I remember is that I had it on my Kindle reader and I was reading the last forty or so pages one Sunday while my son was running around at a local playground.

He was two or three and the joy of swings and climbing apparatus was high for him. I was enjoying the stories, but I really wanted to finish it that afternoon. Don’t ask me why, I probably just bought another book that I wanted to get to.

Every few sentences, I looked up from the device to make sure my kid was doing fine. After a while, he came to me and said he wanted to go home. He was hungry. Kids are always hungry. I only had a handful of pages to go.

I asked him if he could just wait until I finished the book. He looked at me confused. Unsure of what I meant. I was not going to win. I bundled him up and took him home. Another solution to a mystery postponed.

1926 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

After my first semester of college, I got sick. I was feverish. I could not eat. I was taken to the hospital. They told us I had a fever. We were aware of that. Eventually, I started to get better. But any movement exhausted me and I lost twenty pounds. I was pretty skinny to start with, so now I was skeletal.

My mother was guilty that she had to go to work and leave me by myself. Somehow, I came up with a way to appease her. I asked her to pick up her favorite books and I would read them while I recuperated.

She got me The Sun Also Rises and The Importance of Being Ernest. I never read or saw the Oscar Wilde, but I read the Hemingway. I liked the prose. I liked the idea of Paris in the 20s.

The macho crap was almost as tiring to me as walking down to the kitchen to get more water. I think the last line was Isn’t pretty to think so. I believed in that line, even if I never completely understood it.

1927 archy and mehitabel by Don Marquis

My 7th Grade English teacher, Mr. Allen, was a huge fan of this book. He would read us parts of it throughout the year. He would tell the funny story that it was written by a cockroach, archy, who typed by jumping from key to key, which is why these poems don’t have capitalization or punctuation.

I think the lesson he was giving to us, is that you can forgot to capitalize words or fail to utilize the comma properly only if we were a bug.

1928 Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag

We didn’t have a lot of books in the residential room for kids with special needs. You would think that there would be a lot of books and things to do for them, but we were pretty bare. The cupboards were not overflowing with books and games and puzzles. Well, we had a bunch of puzzles, but they didn’t have all the pieces.

One of the books we did have was Millions of Cats. I don’t know why. It was famous for its time. One of the kids living there picked books for his afterschool activity. The only book I could find was this one. I read it to them. The plot was of an older couple adopting a cat and then another cat and then another. Eventually, they had a lot of cats. The title said it was millions and who am I to disagree?

But there were too many cats and the couple asks them to decide amongst themselves. We don’t see what happens next, but there is a huge cat fight. The cats all kill and eat each other. When we go outside with the old couple, all the cats are gone. Decimated. Only one cat remained and that’s the cat they take in and love. The end.

The student asked for me to read the story again. I really didn’t want to. I was wondering why this Squid Game like morality story was ever thought good for kids. But I was a good teacher and I read it again. And again. I read it to this student so often that it stopped being weird and uncomfortable. Familiarity. It flattens all opinions.

1929 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erique Marie Remarque

My crazed ninth grade English teacher had a lot to say about the power of the written word. He said, We are going to read the Lottery by Shirley Jackson. For those of you who have not read it yet. I envy you. Reading it will change your life. I found it funny that he thought anyone had read it before we were assigned it. Like we were just scouring our English textbook for stories that will change our lives.

The teacher spoke about the power of All Quiet on the Western Front. He told of a