A Walled Garden
“I know also,” said Candide, “that we must cultivate our garden.”
A new home for culture on the internet, a place to gather the books, poems, essays and curios you love, and share them with the world.
Works
Explore more works →- The Sun Also RisesMineAt some point in my teens, having only read history for a few years, I decided to read a proper novel to see what they were all about. I went into the Easons on shop street and recognised the name Hemingway, so I started here. Hemingway is great, (For Whom the Bell Tolls is also a banger, and he has many great short stories), but this is still my favourite of his. Simultaneously uber macho and uber romantic, stylish, exotic, exciting.
- Parallel Lives - PlutarchMineSome of my favourite stuff ever written. Maybe the most fun and approachable ancient history. A big collection of short biographies of the leading men of ancient Greece and Rome. The author is a diligent, wise and fair minded Greek philosopher writing around the time of Rome's zenith. He tries to draw moral lessons from the lives of these men - examples of virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided. He condemns Caesar and Alexander for pride and ambition, for example, but cannot prevent himself from enjoying their exploits and excesses. A few centuries ago you would be considered a complete ignoramus if they you were not thoroughly familiar with the lives. Plutarch was of immense importance to the Founders, French revolutionaries etc. You cannot understand Napoleon, Jefferson, Hamilton, Robespierre and co. without having read Plutarch. The lives of the Grachii are a great place to start. if you are unfamiliar with Roman history and prepared to take the plunge, the life of Caesar is a good place to start if you want something that you are (probably) at least a little familiar with. If you are feeling more Greek start with Themistocles, which is the best of the bunch IMO. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/home.html - here are all the surviving lives freely available, courtesy of the university of Chicago. Penguin and Oxford have very good collections on the late Roman republic, and prime Athens.
- The Roman Revolution - Ronald SymeMineBrilliant but serious and difficult history of the fall of the republic/ rise of the empire. Wouldn't go for it unless you are already familiar. It's more his analysis of events, presuming a certain preexisting familiarity with events in the reader. It was written against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in the 30s and it bears that mark. Augusts/Octavian is the main character. This book really makes you appreciate how much of a genius and bastard he was.
- Histories - HerodotusMineThe father of history Literally the first history book in the sense that we understand the term, and what a great first effort. The focus is supposed to be the war to keep the persians out of greece, but he takes forever to get there One example of an anecodte in there thats been borne out... sailors south of the equator
- The Iliad and The Odyssey - HomerMineThe argument I would use to convince a sceptic to read these is the magnitude of their impact on everything that came afterwards. These are the ur-texts of western literature; essentially every educated person of the last 2500 odd years was throughly familiar with both, from Alexander sleeping with the Iliad under his pillow to yank hockey players reading the Odyssey at the last winter Olymics. Knowing these epics will bring a lot more life to other works, and not just books. If you walk into a random old building anywhere in Europe there's a good chance you will find references in sculpture or paint to episodes from Homer. Aside from that they are tremendous works in their own right (Duh! They wouldn't have survived for two and a half millennia, painstakingly and lovingly transcribed and transmitted by dozens of generations, scribes with quills twitching by candle light, monks fleeing barbarians with only time to grab a few precious items, and you don't even have the gratitude to read them!) Fagle's translations are the best modern translations in English. I have tried others. One very popular and very recent translation is not worth a moment of your time, it is so far from the spirit of the original. The Iliad comes first chronologically, but I think the Odyssey is more fun and more interesting, so probably a better place to start.
- Anna Karenina - Leo TolstoyMineDon't want to put both this and War and Peace. I know these can seem intimidating given their length and the fact they are "serious" 19th century Russian stuff written by a man with a terrifying beard, but they are just so brilliant. Anna Karenina is more conventionally a novel, war and peace is a big monster sprawling all over the place. But I love both. The good news is Tolstoy tends to write in short chapters and is constantly moving between his different narrative threads, so they are very rarely hard reading. With war and peace you may have to commit to giving it one hundred pages or before it really sucks you in.
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward GibbonMineClassic History. As important for its influence on the way we write history as for its inherent value. Gibbon does not hold your hand. It is enormously long so I have only yet read it in abridgement. If you want entertainment start with the parts about Atilla the Hun, if you want to hear Gibbons description of Rome at its height and analysis of the fall in short read the first few chapters.
- The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test & The Right Stuff - Tom WolfeMineTwo super journalistic near novels by Wolfe. The first follows a group of Hippies rampaging around the west in the late 60s, just as the wave was breaking. The second is about American test pilots competing for positions on the first space flights. They are both exciting, fun, serious works. Wolfe's style is masterful and completely unique and he is worth reading for those reasons alone, but his eye for character and superb, absurd situations are equally fantastic. I think the Right Stuff is better, but go with whichever topic is more interesting to you.
- The Ancient Athenian PlaysMineAny of the Athenian tragedies can be read in a few hours. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is absolute dynamite. Try to do it in one go, without distraction. We all know what is coming, and have done for a very long time, but it's still incredibly compelling. Antigone about Oedipus’ Daughter/half sister is also brilliant, though not as well known. The Oresteia by Aeschylus is a trilogy of tragedies, a weekend of reading and best read consecutively and uninterrupted. All the Athenian tragedies are mental, very interesting and very good reads. They allow you to step into the minds, morality and worldview of a completely alien culture. The classics remain classics because they still resonate with us, but they are also worth reading for how deeply strange they are: they allow us to step into a wholly alien, outrageous but complete civililsation. We get something similar from Homer's depiction of Achilles treatment of Hectors corpse, or Odysseus and the Suitors, but that feels less disconcerting because at that time the Greeks were savage. But Athens is the fount of western civ. It seems so wrong, at first, that they were so different to us. The core value of the tragedies is that by reading them carefully (and you really should try at least one from each of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides) we can begin to actually understand.
- Anabasis - XenophonMineXenophon was a student of Socrates and contemporary of Plato. This is his account of going to Persia, with the disapproval of his teacher, to fight as a mercenary for a want-to-be emperor. He gives a first hand account of his leadership of his fellow Greek mercenaries, after their leaders had been treacherously massacred, from the far side of Arabia back to the Mediterranean. A kind of ancient heart of darkness/apocalypse now.
- Civilisation - Kenneth ClarkeMineMight be one of the only cases where the TV series is better than the book. When the BBC was moving to colour in the 60s Mr Clarke was given a very long leash to make a series about western culture from the dark ages to the then present. If you're the type to watch youtube while eating, watch this. There is nothing else like it.
- The War With Catiline - SallustMineBrilliant near contemporary account of the Catiline conspiracy - an attempt to overthrow the republic by a gang of wretches led by a few brilliant rogues. This episode of Roman history is paid much less attention than it should be, overshadowed by later events. Sallust is super biased, which is something to keep in mind, but its great. Can be read in one sitting.
Quotes
Explore more quotes →“The hazards of war landed me among the crags of occupied Crete with a band of Cretan guerillas and a captive German general whom we had waylaid and carried off into the mountains three days before. The German garrison of the island were in hot, but luckily temporarily misdirected, chase. It was a time of anxiety and danger; and for our captive, of hardship and distress. During a lull in the pursuit, we woke up among the rocks just as the dawn was breaking over the crest of Mount Ida. We had been toiling over it, through snow and then rain, for the last two days. Looking across the valley at this flashing mountain-crest, the general murmured to himself: "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte..." It was one of the ones I knew! I continued from where he had broken off: nec iam sustineant onus silvae laborantes geluque flumina constiterint acuto," and so on, through the remaining five stanzas to the end. The general's blue eyes had swiveled away from the mountain-top to mine - and when I'd finished , after a long silence, he said: "Ach so, Herr Major!" It was very strange. As though, for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before: and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.”
— Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
“strawberry fields”
— nothing is real
“the entirely proper desire to be thorough”
— any kind of work
“bah bunny”
— bye bye
“Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed: I will break down its wall and it will be trampled”
— Isaiah, 5:3-5
“306 Greek ideal. — What did the Greeks admire in Odysseus? Above all, his capacity for lying, and for cunning and terrible retribution; his being equal to contingencies; when need be, appearing nobler than the noblest; the ability to be whatever he chose; heroic perseverence; having all means at his command; possession of intellect — his intellect is the admiration of the gods, they smile when they think of it — : all this is the Greek ideal! The most remarkable thing about it is that the antithesis of appearance and being is not felt at all and is thus of no significance morally. Have there ever been such consummate actors!”
— Nietzsche
“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be: Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales”
— Tenyson - Locksley hall
“saving?”
— a wretch like Me?
“How great thou art”
— elvis
Gardens
Explore more gardens →- Mine@gardenbio bio bio bio bi ob bio bio bio bio bi ob bio bio bio bio bi ob bio bio bio bio bi ob bio bio bio bio bi ob bio bio bio bio bi ob
- So@seriouz
- Teddys reading list@teedee
- bevcase we needd@hanfle
- Stretford@yanited
- Gardeners Garden@gardenerWaow
- paslve@aldo
- tesot@anothertest
- hereitcomes@sunsunsun
- Lingz@jay
- Stranger@wayfaring
Categories
Explore more categories →- RomeMineThis is very republic heavy, especially the late republic. I don't necessarily think the late republic is more interesting or important than the foundation of the republic, but we do have far more good sources on the late republic & early empire. Any of the Plutarch biographies can be read in a couple of hours, and those that have survived antiquity are all readily available online in good translations. Sallust's The War With Cataline is also readable in one sitting and is tremendous fun. If you do decide to jump in with these ancient sources, you will find you lack a lot of context. I think you just have to roll with it.
- Five Best Self Improvement BooksMineFor the hustlers
- Non-History Non FictionMinepretty self explanatory
- He likes to keep his fire engine cleanSoits a clean machine
- GreeceMine
- A section cutterSoI abandoned all thought of becoming a scientist
- Five Favourite NovelsMine
- 20th Century HistoryMineA gnarly century fr
- Short WorksMine
- Presidential biosSo
- PlaysMine
- times are hard whenbevcase we needdthings have got no meaning Ive f
About A Walled Garden
I intended this website first as a place where I could talk about my favourite books and poems, reading lists of favourite works, share interesting articles, quotes and curios with little bits of commentary.
I have extended things now so that anyone can create a garden of their own, centered around whatever they please, I think it’s pretty intuitive to do so. You can read more about the ins and outs of doing so here.
I do not intend for this site, like many other places on the internet, to commoditise your time and attention, we do not want to immerse you in the deliberately upsetting and controversial, the emotionally but not intellectually provocative. We want this to be a jumping off point to better things, a mode for sharing and discovering.
If successful this site will direct you outwards and onwards, to curiosities and works of art that add to life, we will not keep you captive in an endless stream of ephemeral slop that detracts from it.