100 Books Like Goethe

I read this book when I was struggling. 

I kept walking into wonderful medieval cathedrals or looking at extraordinary works by Renaissance artists and feeling the loss of an enchanted worldview that was theirs and is no longer ours. This is what C.S. Lewis calls  the “discarded image.”

With a depth of knowledge particular to his nonfiction, he reveals how the stars used to shine with life in the medieval imagination, not just light, and myths spoke of a living vitality because they illuminated a deeper perception of things, not just offering moral insights.

This book taught me that the world can be viewed afresh with the right imagination. 

I was surprised and delighted by every page of this book: it tells a pacey story of history, from the first farmers to our lives today, by unpacking the meaning of words from across time.

It's the story of our deep inner life conveyed in language. I love etymology because words are what Barfield calls “fossils of consciousness”. To dig up when words first appeared or how they have profoundly shifted in meaning is to truly rediscover the inner lives of our ancestors.

Did you know that nihilism only surfaced in the 18th century or that the ancient Greeks had no word for “blue”? Such details delight in this book.

I never knew Kathleen Raine but wish that I had.

A poet and scholar of William Blake, she is one of those people who can only ever say fascinating things – not just in terms of insight, but the kind of things that are arresting because they change your experience of life.

I found my sense of what the imagination is profoundly deepening with each chapter of this book. She quotes lots of Blake, so you have the energy of his poetry to enjoy, and Raine was a poet, which must be why her prose packs loads of punch.

I did a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, asking why Plato has such a massive influence on how we experience life. But strangely, although I learned a lot and am glad that I did it, the doctorate did not really answer my question.

I realized why, in part, by reading about the imagination, and this book is a brilliant account of its history. Harpur is a poet and mystic and understands that the imagination is not a private faculty that some lucky folk have, but is the very dynamic that fills our inner lives and everything around us.

I came out of this book excited by life – and also much more aware of why Plato and others so inspired our forebears.

If I were allowed to have only one novel about German culture and the coming of the Nazis, this would be it. And, if I were allowed only one novel about the price paid by those who create great art, this would also be it.

I have never read a better fictional account of what it means to make music, and there is something truly thrilling (but also quite chilling) about the story of the composer Adrian Leverkuhn’s Faustian pact with the devil.

I was also captivated by the way that Thomas Mann has his narrator tell this story, from the recent German past, from the “present” of bombs falling on Germany at the end of World War II.

Meghan Quinn’s books are the reason I chose to be a romantic comedy author. No other author has made me almost pee my pants laughing in one chapter, then turn me on in another chapter only to reduce me to tears in the next chapter! Her writing is brilliant!

The Romantic Pact tells the story of two family friends, and their adventure together in a foreign country at the request of the Hero’s grandfather who has passed away. Not only do the characters experience several hilarious adventures together but they rediscover themselves in an emotional and heartfelt way. As someone who has had to rediscover myself in my adult life, this story personally struck a chord with me in a very strong way.

An ideal complement to Goodrick-Clarke’s study of the links between Nazism and Ariosophy, Staudenmaier devotes his well-researched and comprehensive monograph to examining the relationship between fascism and Rudolf Steiner’s occult doctrine of Anthroposophy.

Like Goodrick-Clarke, Staudenmaier finds important points of ideological and sociological convergence between proponents of Anthroposophy and Nazism, including Waldorf Schools and biodynamic farming, but also highlights many instances of intellectual tension, political hostility, and persecution.

Just as importantly, Between Occultism and Nazism looks at the role of Anthroposophy in fascist Italy, providing an explicit comparative framework that is missing from most studies of Nazism and the occult. A must read for anyone interested in the “occult roots of Nazism” or the history of Western esotericism.

When it comes to female heroism and the ultimate sacrifice to save not only lives but those cultural icons that herold times past, I have to say Laura Morelli’s The Night Portrait is top of my list.

Morelli successfully blends two timelines 500 years apart. A 16-year-old girl is mistress to the Duke of Millan and poses for Leonardo da Vinci, in hopes of securing her future.

Five hundred years later, as World War 2 breaks out, another young woman is charged with securing her future by agreeing to see da Vinci’s painting, now in the hands of a Nazi war criminal, is successfully transferred to an American soldier working with the Monuments Men. Security. War. Death. Destruction. Morelli has written it all.

Whether it was 500 years ago or today, Morelli has penned a novel of man’s basic need for peace and security in order to thrive, and of… show more.

Germans have been in love with Italy since always, a love that found its culmination with Goethe’s famous Italienische Reise in 1816. It’s a love that lasts forever, for it’s a love that never finds fulfillment. Germans are like the stuffed up straight guy who’s in love with a lively beauty above their level, that is Italy; they’re forever stuck in the moment of enchantment, they can never grasp or really fathom their love, let alone turn it into a real affair or just begin to understand this incredible woman. Promising young German writer Strauss takes up residence in the famous Via Corso in Rome (close to Casa di Goethe), and tries to make his moment come alive under the heavy burden of history. Maybe not as urgent or dramatic as the other four books, but still here we have a one man-boy against all of Rome, all of our… show more.

This book provided an insight into WWII in Italy. It is captivating and informative.

It tells the story of Pino, a brave 17-year-old who not only spied on the Germans who occupied his homeland but also crossed the Alps many times to save Jewish people. Full of mystery and intrigue, it was hard to put down until the end.