Dr. Fell's Bedside Reading

Seed catalog
Cavafy’s poems
Practical First Aid
Mr. Benson
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The Autobiography of Red
The Foxfire Book
The Changing Light at Sandover
Harley Service Manual
Marlowe’s Edward II
And, as always, Shakespeare’s sonnets

His two favorites:
 

Sonnet 57

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Sonnet 58

That god forbid that made me first your slave
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure. 
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheek
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list; your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
 Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.