"I think that a particular stress falls on the word 'good' in your phrase, and that with this predicate you intend to designate books to which one stands in rather the same relationship as to 'good' friends, to whom one owes a part of one's knowledge of life and view of the world - books which one has enjoyed oneself and gladly comments to others, but in connection with which the elements of timid reverence, the feeling of one's own smallness in relation to their greatness, is not particularly prominent.
I will therefore name ten such 'good' books for you which have come to my mind without a great deal of reflection.
- Multatuli, Letters and Works.
- Kipling, Jungle Book.
- Anatole France, Sur la pierre blanche.
- Zola, Fécondité.
- Merezhkovsky, Leonardo da Vinci.
- G. Keller, Leute von Seldwyla.
- C. F. Meyer, Huttens letzte Tage.
- Macaulay, Essays.
- Gomperz, Griechische Denker.
- Mark Twain, Sketches"
