A reading list

If you are as Anglophile as I am, what should you read?

"you think you could make a must read list for us dummies??"

If you are 21, one thing that would be useful is to discover how much better old Brits were at prose. It can be challenge to get used to various classic British rhetorical styles, but it's worth doing. Here are some high Return on Investment selections that are rewarding without being too hard or too long.

Waugh's Scoop is high on the short list of books that are both sensational in classic prose style and a quick read. The opening is a little scattershot, but keep reading at least until the second time "cleft stick" comes up.

Read the autobiography Churchill wrote for boys in 1930. It's called A Roving Commission in Britain and something generic like My Life over here. It's a great boys' adventure story, in part because Churchill makes no attempt to impart mature wisdom to his tale. When he's describing what his life was like when he was four, he exhibits only the values of a four-year-old boy.

Read a few chapters of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Read at least until you laugh at his jokes.

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