My 25 Favorite Books

I was originally going to title this "My 100 Favorite Books" after someone else's list. But as I got into it, I realized that that would take a long time to assemble. So I went with the short version (mind you, some of these are multiple volumes):

1. Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
2. Plato, Dialogues
3. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
4. Dante, The Divine Comedy
5. Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff and The Kingdom of Speech
6. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style and Sonata Forms
7. Joseph Kerman, Beethoven Quartets and Bach Fugues
8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
9. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
10. Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
11. J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
12. Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics
13. Richard Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music
14. Richard Taruskin, Text and Act
15. Lawrence Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin
16. Rainer Maria Rilke, Collected Poems
17. Theodore Roethke, Collected Poems
18. Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
19. Robert Graves, Collected Poems
20. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
21. Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker
22. Patrick O'Brian, the Aubrey-Maturin historical novels
23. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (in 11 volumes)
24. Wing Tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy
25. William Shakespeare: Complete Plays

Hm, now what would be a good musical envoi for this list? Aha, the ending of the excellent movie by Peter Weir on the Patrick O'Brian novels, Master and Commander, ends with a bit of delightful music making by Aubrey and Maturin. The tune is by Boccherini: