Desert Island Reads

If I were to be stranded on a desert island, or some other island, assuming it didn't have WiFi, and I could only take five books with me (presumably having planned to be stranded), they would probably be the following. I have only chosen books which were actually on my shelf, if I've survived without them in Tallinn then it seems reasonable they'd only get used as fire building material on the island...


Viktor Frankl - Man's Search For Meaning
Actually I've read this multiple times so it may be taking up valuable space in my survival kit that could otherwise have been taken up by a beta emitter, fishing line or condoms (excellent water carriers apparently). In any case the ultimate read in my view, by a survivor of Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps, but also a psychiatrist who had developed his own school of thought in Vienna before the war and got the chance to test his theories in the field so to speak. Triumph of the human spirit and other such platitudes cannot do it justice, just read it.


Phantastes - George MacDonald
The original fantasy novel, but don't be put off. One of a kind really, Anodos' travails through fairy land always seem to offer something new each reading. I don't think they have ash or alder trees in the tropics, so I'd be safe.


Guide to Rational Living - Albert Ellis and Rober Harper
Not sure if this would be really required in my hermitage, but it's a sensible book in a vast field. Nothing about how, as an infant, you'd wanted to murder your father and replace him in your mother's bed, surrendering to a higher power, or the secret of unleashing the hidden art of war for the soul, but rather a common sense approach to how we think ourselves into all sorts of jams - and thus can think our way out of them again (presumably including being down about being marooned).


Natasha's Dance - Orlando Figes
A cultural history of Russia which makes quite a refreshing change from his excellent 'People's Tragedy' survey of the Revolution, in that it doesn't have death, duplicity and damnation on every page. So much so that I've never really read it cover to cover, but dipped into it to such an extent that I must have read the bulk of it. My fave two paintings culled from the illustrations page - Surikov's 'The Boyar's Wife Morozova', and Malevich's 'Red Cavalry'.


Battle in the Civil War - Paddy Griffith
A little military book with lots of sketches, details the various logistical, tactical and strategic considerations that faced the armies in the (American) civil war. Doesn't sound too promising, and yet it's superb. I picked it up years ago in, I think, Foyles' in London. I would presumably have plenty of time on my island fastness to reenact, using sand and pebbles, where McClellan went wrong at Antietam.