Due to my disease, I may not have much of a road ahead, so I’ve been wondering what I’d like to leave behind – I mean pass on. It might surprise that this vein of thought is a deep delight.

I’ve been pondering, for example, which little flashes of culture from the last thirty or so years of adult life might land with others, as they’ve landed with me, as gifts worth carrying. 

The following clutches of ‘shorts’, after a little shifting and jostling, are those that have settled. They’re listed in the order I met them. Do dive in, the water’s lovely.

Short fiction

• Gail E Haley, The Green Man
• J L Carr, A month in the country
• Chinua Achebe, Things fall apart
• James Baldwin, Go tell it on the mountain
• Anton Chekhov, The betrothed

Short memoir

• Anne Frank, Diary
• Tove Jansson, The summer book
• Derek Jarman, Derek Jarman’s garden
• Nan Shepherd, The living mountain
• Sandra Cisneros, The house on Mango Street

Short non-fiction

• Gillian Rose, Love’s work
• Wendell Berry, A poem of difficult hope
• Aldo Leopold, Manitoba: Clandeboye
• Václav Havel, Disturbing the peace
• Cornell West, Hope on a tightrope

Short music

• Jon and Vangelis, I’ll find my way home
• John Coltrane, A love supreme
• J S Bach, Aria, Goldberg variations (Beatrice Rana, 2017)
• Joni Mitchell, Hejira
• Emily and the Simons, medley: The Meadow/Afterglow

Short spoken word

• Martin Luther King Jr., Mountaintop speech
• Seamus Heaney, Nobel prize acceptance address
• Toni Morrison, Nobel prize acceptance address
• Danielle McLaughlin, A partial list of the saved (Audible: Times Short Story Competition 2019)
• Steve Walsh, Song of the Reed (BBC Sounds: A four-part play, so a slightly longer listen)

Short scripture

• The Lord’s prayer
• Rigveda
• The gospel of Mark
• The book of Ruth
• Bahá’í prayers: The long healing prayer