Actually, when I went to Japan I only brought one smallish box of books. It contained a few texts from the essential text list below as well as all of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu(though I still[!] haven’t finished it), Kafka’s diaries and parables, Carl Sandburg’s Rutabaga Stories, and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which is really the only book I need. It’s not from this century, though, so it’s not on the list below.