One Hundred Best Books — John Cowper Powys

" ...] Would to God the mortal days of geniuses like Dostoievsky could be so extended that for all the years of one's life, one would have such works, still not quite finished, in one's lucky hands I sometimes doubt whether these sticklers for "the art of condensation" are really lovers of books at all. For myself, I would class their cursed short stories with their teasing "economy of material," as they call it, with those "books that are no books," those checker boards and moral treatises which used to annoy Elia so. ...]."