I like your list. Read the post on the Obituary one - what a strange, sad, poignant book! Not surprised there was some haunting going on there. But after reading your post, I'm starting to listen to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell on Audible. It's beautifully read but I keep thinking I'm losing something vital by not reading it on the page myself.
Not sure if you delve into police procedural crime fiction, but the crime novels I enjoyed the most in 2023 were Leif G. W. Persson’s four Detective Backstrom novels (3 + 1 offshoot).
You don't know whether to love the "fat, short, and primitive (read: sexist)" Backstrom or loathe him, but the books certainly deserve their acclaim.
I plan to read his three historico-crime novels in 2024 and hope they are as stimulating.
Do enjoy your blog and appreciate these recommendations. "The Glutton" and Bovary are en queue 2024. Am currently reading David Copperfield, so will add Bleak House, although I understand they differ entirely. Where has Dickens been my life entire? Bloody shame it took me a half-century to find him.
Re: Anna Karenina. No review can convey its remark; easily the best ever.
Two stinkers I did not enjoy in 2023, even though both enjoy universal acclaim: Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. To each his own, but neither satisfied, even if brilliant in part.
What series should a Diana Wynne Jones neophyte start with? I'm also requesting Lives of the Engineers and The dragon in the West through my library.
Susanna Clarke's prose is a revelation. After finishing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I gifted the book to four or five of my friends and made it a goal to track down and read everything she writes, no matter how minor - a list which remains tragically short and achievable because Clarke has had some health problems and chronic fatigue syndrome which slow her productivity. If you haven't read it, you must track down Piranesi now! I read it in a single sitting.
I started Virginia Postrel's Fabric of Civilization and The Power of Glamour. I really enjoyed them, but I had too much going on in the rest of my life and ended up returning them to the library unfinished. Perhaps due for a revisit!
If you find any Ursula K. Le Guin poems that you love, do share!
It was 1955-56. I was at Davidson College taking 3rd year French Lit, having made a D in freshman French grammar at U of Fla. that would not transfer and better able to read the French that try the grammar over. I read Madam Bovary in French and then read an English translation (don't remember translator) that made me want to rewrite the translation. So little understanding of what the original was about.
Thank you so much for weighing in on writers of historical fiction who actually change the historic 'facts' in ways that are counter to the sense of the possible. Making a story flow is fine, but ignorance does not fill that role. love, Doc www.dykers.com
So enjoyed reading "American Prometheus". Add another reason it was OK to drop the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the horror of the weapon allowed the kamakazi Japanese save face with unconditional surrender and made MacArthur's post war civil administration easy and successful in rebuilding a democratic republic.
I was similarly struck by the Lydia Davis "claim to fame" entries. Back in November I would chuckle whenever I picked up that book because those pieces seemed to be in come kind of bizarre communication with Darwin. The one about Ezra Pound is built just like a passage from Origin. I love the one about Gypsy Rose Lee's sister too.
I like your list. Read the post on the Obituary one - what a strange, sad, poignant book! Not surprised there was some haunting going on there. But after reading your post, I'm starting to listen to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell on Audible. It's beautifully read but I keep thinking I'm losing something vital by not reading it on the page myself.
Your link to the AK Blakemore’s Glutton is wrong. Otherwise I 100% agree that Glutton and Yellowface are absolute gems.
Not sure if you delve into police procedural crime fiction, but the crime novels I enjoyed the most in 2023 were Leif G. W. Persson’s four Detective Backstrom novels (3 + 1 offshoot).
You don't know whether to love the "fat, short, and primitive (read: sexist)" Backstrom or loathe him, but the books certainly deserve their acclaim.
I plan to read his three historico-crime novels in 2024 and hope they are as stimulating.
Do enjoy your blog and appreciate these recommendations. "The Glutton" and Bovary are en queue 2024. Am currently reading David Copperfield, so will add Bleak House, although I understand they differ entirely. Where has Dickens been my life entire? Bloody shame it took me a half-century to find him.
Re: Anna Karenina. No review can convey its remark; easily the best ever.
Two stinkers I did not enjoy in 2023, even though both enjoy universal acclaim: Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. To each his own, but neither satisfied, even if brilliant in part.
Excellent list!
What series should a Diana Wynne Jones neophyte start with? I'm also requesting Lives of the Engineers and The dragon in the West through my library.
Susanna Clarke's prose is a revelation. After finishing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I gifted the book to four or five of my friends and made it a goal to track down and read everything she writes, no matter how minor - a list which remains tragically short and achievable because Clarke has had some health problems and chronic fatigue syndrome which slow her productivity. If you haven't read it, you must track down Piranesi now! I read it in a single sitting.
I started Virginia Postrel's Fabric of Civilization and The Power of Glamour. I really enjoyed them, but I had too much going on in the rest of my life and ended up returning them to the library unfinished. Perhaps due for a revisit!
If you find any Ursula K. Le Guin poems that you love, do share!
For some reason I’m drawn to Building Saint Paul’s and then The Glutton. I’ll keep you posted!
Thanks for the generous list… I’m grabbing a few titles to read over the holidays! All the best to you. If you were me, where would you start?
It was 1955-56. I was at Davidson College taking 3rd year French Lit, having made a D in freshman French grammar at U of Fla. that would not transfer and better able to read the French that try the grammar over. I read Madam Bovary in French and then read an English translation (don't remember translator) that made me want to rewrite the translation. So little understanding of what the original was about.
Thank you so much for weighing in on writers of historical fiction who actually change the historic 'facts' in ways that are counter to the sense of the possible. Making a story flow is fine, but ignorance does not fill that role. love, Doc www.dykers.com
So enjoyed reading "American Prometheus". Add another reason it was OK to drop the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the horror of the weapon allowed the kamakazi Japanese save face with unconditional surrender and made MacArthur's post war civil administration easy and successful in rebuilding a democratic republic.
I was similarly struck by the Lydia Davis "claim to fame" entries. Back in November I would chuckle whenever I picked up that book because those pieces seemed to be in come kind of bizarre communication with Darwin. The one about Ezra Pound is built just like a passage from Origin. I love the one about Gypsy Rose Lee's sister too.
My reading list is getting longer and longer....