Books I’m Not Recommending This Year – Part 1

So it’s time for that annual list I compile of books I’m not recommending for Christmas. I don’t recommend them because I’m likely over-sensitive to buying (or suggesting) books for other people. However, I can get around the recommendation issue by simply listing those books I truly enjoyed but would never suggest to anyone that they read them.

Makes sense? (Not to me, either).

This year, I’m dividing the list into two parts. Today is poetry books and non-fiction books related to poetry or about poets; tomorrow will be books on faith, fiction and general non-fiction.

And here we go. (And note the number of books connected to the poets of World War I – 2014 was the centenary of the beginning the war.)

Poetry

A Year in the Weetamoo Woods by Chris Yokel.

Living in the Nature Poem by Mary Harwell Sayler.

View from the North Ten by Dave Malone.

Idiot Psalms by Scott Cairns.

The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson.

Love, Etc.: Poem of Love, Laughter, Longing and Loss and The Mischief Café by L.L. Barkat.

American Psalm World Psalm by Nicholas Samaras.

The Abandoned Eye by J.P. Dancing Bear.

Caribou by Charles Wright.

Holy Luck by Eugene Peterson.

This Day by Wendell Berry.

Beowulf, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien.

In the Dark Before Dawn by Thomas Merton.

Poetry of the First World War, edited by Tim Kendall.

Upon the Blue Couch by Laurie Kolp.

Scape by Luci Shaw.

The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise.

Glitter Bomb by Aaron Belz.

Once in the West by Christian Wiman.

All the Wasted Beauty of the World by Richard Newman.

Non-Fiction Related to Poetry or Poets

Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914 – 1918 by Brian Gardner.

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan.

Edgar Allen Poe: The Fever Called Living by Paul Collins.

The Poetic World of Emily Bronte by Laura Inman.

Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew by Max Egremont.

Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life by Jane Potter.

Some Corner of a Foreign Field: Poetry and Art of the First World War by James Bentley.

The Poet and the Vampyre by Andrew McConnell Stott.

Photograph by Vicky van de Kerckhoven via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.