I am personally interested in where I've gone with this blog. It began as a place for me to review a particular set of books -- bestsellers (mostly forgotten) from the early part of the 20th Century. And that remains its major focus. But I've also included a lot of reviews of a long time interest of mine: Ace Doubles. And I've also snuck in some reviews of books that really weren't bestsellers, and are often more recent (including some very recent novels, many SF), and some reviews of out and out classics (that may or may not have been bestsellers). Finally, I've covered some SF newsy subjects: convention reports, for one, and analyses of the Hugo (and Nebula) award ballots.
So, mainly for my satisfaction, I've organized the posts to date in a variety of categories, that I will summarize in a few posts.
The first category is what I'm calling Classics. I stretch this category quite a bit, to include works by major writers that might not quite be "classics", and ambitious literary works that haven't really become "classics". I ended up being surprised, and rather pleased, at how many of my posts fit this category (39 total) -- and it should be said that I have used this blog as opportunity to goad me into reading some books I have meant to read for some time. (Coming soon (soon as in perhaps a couple of months): a post on Middlemarch.)
(Each of the titles is a link to the original post.)
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, by Evelyn Waugh;
Middlemarch, by George Eliot;
Snow Country and Thousand Cranes, by Yasunari Kawabata;
Henry Esmond, by William Makepeace Thackeray;
Tremor of Intent, by Anthony Burgess;
Casuals of the Sea, by William McFee;
The Collected Tales of E. M. Forster;
Washington Square, by Henry James;
Guard Your Daughters, by Diana Tutton;
The Living End, by Stanley Elkin;
Lord Malquist and Mister Moon, by Tom Stoppard;
The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin;
Party Going, by Henry Green;
The Man Who Got Away, by Sumner Locke Elliott;
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton;
Major stories by Edith Wharton: "Roman Fever", "Xingu", "The Eyes", "Autre Temps ..." and "The Long Run", "The Lady's Maid's Bell"
The Damnation of Theron Ware, by Harold Frederic;
Norwood, by Charles Portis;
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Bend Sinister, by Vladimir Nabokov;
The Floating Opera, by John Barth;
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa;
Tempest-Tost, by Robertson Davies;
The New Arabian Nights, by Robert Louis Stevenson;
A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather;
Engine Summer, by John Crowley;
A God and His Gifts, by Ivy Compton-Burnett;
A Diversity of Creatures, by Rudyard Kipling;
The Blood of the Lamb, by Peter de Vries;
Finnley Wren, by Philip Wylie;
Collected Short Fiction, by Kingsley Amis;
Palladian, by Elizabeth Taylor;
Venusberg, by Anthony Powell;
Heyday, by W. M. Spackman;
Time and the Gods, by Lord Dunsany;
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson;
The Queen Pedauque, by Anatole France;
The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley;
Laughing Boy, by Oliver La Farge;
Portrait of Jennie and One More Spring, by Robert Nathan;
A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter.
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ReplyDeleteBlogs will tell you their purpose.
ReplyDeleteAnd spell-check copes with bad, fast typing as well as it can..
I really like the diversity in the books you review. Some have been books I'd forgotten about for years. There are probably more books on this list that I have read and loved than most lists would have.
ReplyDeleteAs I noted on Facebook, one area I want to do more of is foreign language books.
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