ABSTRACT
If you knew that you were to be marooned in a comfortable but remote mountain inn for the better part of a winter season, what books would you choose to have with you for that imprisonment? The question was asked after a discussion of the foolishness of choosing the ten books one would best choose to be left with on a desert island. The latter proposition carries with it a sense of permanency and so would require a different kind of selection. But a temporary imprisonment brings about the need for less concern with the giants, demanding only that one find amusement or comfort or general interest. A list of the best things for all time would sound pompous and overdone if it were to be offered for “a long winter’s night” of reading. So, on the evening when two of us were playing this little game of “books for a desert island,” we prepared our lists and then prepared to defend them.
