A certain world & commonplace books

Came across the book A Certain World, Commonplace book by W H Auden. Quoting its Foreword in entirety. (I am just two pages in the book)









I guess I really enjoy such books that a) open many doors to unknown thoughts, authors, ideas and b) serve as a mental landscape of these writers.

I am thinking of Milosz and his idea of ABC which takes from the Hungarian idea of a personal ABC. Anthologies which are personal in nature - Primo Levi, In Search of Roots. And then Coelho's Inspirations - another anthology.


Booklist

On discussing with AI, a few other ideas come up. Noting them for exploration by and by:

• A Certain World – W.H. Auden
• The Commonplace Book of Robert Louis Stevenson – RLS
• The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert – Joseph Joubert
• The Pillow Book – Sei Shōnagon
• The Journal of Jules Renard – Jules Renard
• A Writer’s Notebook – Somerset Maugham
• Commonplace Book 1919–1931 – E.M. Forster
• The Commonplace Book of George Eliot – ed. J.W. Cross
• A Private Mythology – John Ashbery
• The Portable Paradise – John Julius Norwich
• The Reader Over Your Shoulder – Robert Graves & Alan Hodge
• Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic – Reinhold Niebuhr
• The Search for Roots – Primo Levi
• Inspirations – Paulo Coelho
• A Personal Anthology – Jorge Luis Borges
• My Life in Verse – Ruth Padel
• The Education of a Wandering Man – Louis L’Amour
• The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart – Bly, Hillman, Meade
• This I Believe – ed. Jay Allison, Dan Gediman
• The Education of a Wandering Man – Louis L’Amour
• This I Believe (original 1950s series & later revival)
• The Company of Strangers – Paul Theroux
• The Art of the Commonplace (Wendell Berry)
• The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
• The Burning Forest by Barry Lopez
• Reflections on a Marine Venus by Lawrence Durrell