And... I've just posted this in the wrong CoB thread. Bah. Sorry! I will cut and paste and repost.

Woodnymph, I looked online and the Limberlost Swamp is in southern Adams and Jay counties in Indiana. About 1500 acres are being or already have been restored as a wetland out of the original 13,000 acres. Gene Stratton Porter lived in log home on the outskirts of the Limberlost for a while.

Lemon head, I'm already signed up for The Agony and the Ecstacy; I've had it on my TBR pile for a while and decided to use this as a kick in the behind to pick it up and read it. LOL

rouan, thanks. I'm glad to hear some of it is being restored and preserved.

The Light in the Forest - Conrad Richter (1953)

This seems to be a title commonly on high school reading lists, but I had not read it before so was excited to find it at one of my local thrift shops. (Yeah for people who clean out their bookshelves and share their wealth.)

This title is the story of a young white boy who is captured by a First Nation tribe at an early age and grows up in their culture. A decade or so later, the boy (now 15) is traded back to the white settlers and to his original family, and naturally, there are all sorts of cultural clashes that occur as they all try to make the transition.

WhatâÂÂs notable in this book, I think, is that it was written with a sympathetic viewpoint towards the First Nation people (even though the vocabulary refers to the group as âÂÂsavagesâÂÂ). The overall view is that the FN people are equal to whites which was not a common perspective in 1950âÂÂs white America. The story does veer awfully close to the Noble Savage Beast idea, but generally speaking, the tribe are presented in a positive light.

What I also appreciated was the non-predictable story line. I had expected âÂÂBoy raised in tribe, leaves tribe for original white family, does not assimilate and goes back to happiness with tribe familyâÂÂ, but itâÂÂs much more twisty and turny than that and I did not predict that ending. IâÂÂd be interested in sitting in a typical high school (or perhaps junior high) classroom when this is discussed to hear what the students think.

Richter and his wife were living in Pennsylvania before they moved to New Mexico in 1928 for his wifeâÂÂs health (compare with Mildred Walker who moved west in 1926). Richter had grown up chatting with the descendants of pioneers and so was familiar with their stories and history, and the story seems pretty true to form.

This was a very quick read, so I read it all on one Sunday afternoon and enjoyed it. ItâÂÂs definitely a âÂÂhigh school readâ (in terms of basic literary discussion), so it was ok. Richter wrote other work, one novel winning the National Book Award and another winning the Pulitzer Prize so he must have other more in-depth work out there. IâÂÂve not heard a lot about this name though. Another name for the TBR at a later point, methinks.

I finished Girl of the Limberlost so that can be checked off the list. Aside fom the nature envy I get while reading it ; ( I live in a village surrounded by houses, people, cars Etta, shoe lives out in the countryside with trees, birds, moths, no neighbors right up close) I like Elnora's strength of character. She lives with an embittered mother, her father died when she was born, they are poor etc. but despite some setbacks, she believes in herself and stays true to who she is. She doesn't let any of that keep her from being a strong, caring person. I admire strong female characters and Elnora is right up there among my favorites

My brother and I completed our tandem out-loud reading of The Caine Mutiny. We alternated chapters, and we both enjoyed this method very much. Brother is a much better reader-aloud and better listener than I am, but he would nudge me back on track when I began to drift. It was very reminiscent of our childhood when he used to patiently read to his wiggle-worm little sister.

I can understand very well why Wouk's 1951 novel won the Pulitzer Prize: It was timely -- published only six years after WWII ended. It's a study of moral dilemmas, some badly botched decisions, and the drawing of characters that are as subtle and complex as real-life people. However, I always feel a bit odd when the protagonist of a novel (in this case, Willie Keith) is so darned flawed that I would like to take him by his middy and give him a good shake. I actually felt a good bit of sympathy for Captain Queeg, whose very name has come to mean an incompetent, ineffective authoritarian. But I think it's a great book (and a great writer) who can turn a reader's notions upside down, as mine were.

The scenes of Lieutenant Maryk's court-martial are justifiably famous -- in the book, on the stage, and in the film. This is a helluva good book. My brother always said it was, but it took me fifty-something years to find it out for myself.

I stayed up late to finish Nancy Mitford's Pigeon Pie. It was very funny in parts, had some amusing characters, but on the whole was not terribly memorable. It would likely appeal to readers interested in England in World War II.

Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth as a successful 'whodunnit' must rate pretty low as it took ages for anything to happen and the original missing person was scarcely mentioned.
Ms Wentworth's 'detective' is a female sleuth, Miss Silver, a lady very much like Miss Marple. She visits old school friends all living in large well-staffed houses and always in the area where a crime has been committed. She is called upon by the local police, if not Scotland Yard, to help solve the mystery . . . always while knitting.
Interwoven is a sub-plot about a weedy female and her younger sister who have been 'taken-in' by a domineering relative. A handsome man meets older sister and immediately falls in love with her, despite only seeing her at afternoon tea. He also helps Miss Silver solve the crime.
By the end of this unconvincing story Miss Silver has knitted several baby garments, a pair of cherry-coloured leggings and a woolly hat and never dropped a stitch.
On now to The Enchanted April

Veer - funny review! Thanks for that laugh.

Veer, hehe, thanks for that review.
I find that Wentworth's Miss Silver books vary in quality from quite good to dreadful, but rarely reach the quality of those of Christie, Sayers and Marsh.

I have finished A Passage to India. As in other Forster novels I've read, the plot is really a framework for an investigation of character and human behaviour, a theme similar to that of Howard's End, with different social groups trying to either connect with one another or avoiding it and hanging on to their prejudices for dear life, and not really understanding each other either way. Here of course it's not only social groups, but nationalities, castes and different religious groups that are interacting and it makes for a complex story.

None of the characters are really likeable, except possibly Fielding, but they are nuanced and well-crafted and completely human.

Now I think I'll re-watch the film. It will be interesting to see how well or badly it has aged.

At last, I have finished Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. I had borrowed it from the library over a month ago, then stupidly left the book sitting on my office desk while I took the July 4 week off. When I tried to renew it, someone had placed a hold, so I had to wait for them to return it! Anyway, what a BLEAK view of humanity! Funny of course, but in the end, I found it rather depressing. I'm glad I read it though.

Just finished the 1922 book The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, which lots of you have probably read, and it came as a pleasant surprise after several dull reads.
I had always imagined that Von Arnim was some sort of very upper-class German haus frau but discovered that she was, in fact, Australian and educated in England where she became one of the many mistresses of H G Wells before marrying (unhappily) into the German aristocracy and much later equally miserably into the English Upper Classes (the brother of Bertrand Russell).
I very much enjoyed the book as a breath of fresh air after the stuff written (at much the same time) by the tedious Virginia Woolf. I liked the humour with which she describes the women characters who rent the castle in Italy, all of them for very different reasons feeling 'inadequate' and in need of sunshine and time to themselves. Even the fairy-tale ending seemed reasonable . . .roll on my invitation to a similar venue. I'll be on the platform at Victoria Station with my booked couchette for the Wagon Lit on the 'Golden Arrow'. Next stop the Mediterranean.

London Belongs to Me - Norman Collins (1945)

As part of the ongoing Century of Books project, I have just finished reading one of the all-time biggest (in terms of number of pages read) books that I have ever read.

Overall opinion of this CoB entry: Meh. (Which is a shame really, as I did end up using a lot of reading time to get this one completed.And I know, I know: itâÂÂs not a job but I really wanted to finish this one as it was so BIG and I wanted to see if I could stick with it!)

It was 702 pages of fairly interesting rather soap-opera-y narrative about a small group of unrelated residents who all live at Number 10 Dulcimer Street in London. ItâÂÂs well written - you can tell the author was experienced in working with television plots as he did have a lot of character strings all going at the same time which would have worked well with the episodic nature of a television series.

I think some of the activity that the characters got up was a bit OTT at times, and then how also some of them got very caught up in each otherâÂÂs lives, but perhaps that is how it was back then pre-WWII. Besides, it probably made a better story overall in the end.

I had thought that I was going to be sucked into this chatty world of gritty London characters whereas it seemed as though it was more a few episodes of Coronation Street (or perhaps East Enders?). I thought the book could have been edited substantially, although it did give a good flavor of life for ordinary people just as WWII was on the horizon. The edition that I had was also fairly liberal in typos which got more annoying as the pages progressed.

However, not a bad read. Just not as good a read as I had hoped considering the time invested in it. (Perhaps this is linked with why I did not connect with And Ladies of the Club⦠Maybe IâÂÂm just not a saga person in the end.)

I think itâÂÂs fair to say that that is all the Norman Collinsâ titles that IâÂÂll pick up for the near future.

Well I tried to read Cold Mountain and finally gave up after a few chapters. It just didn't speak to me and I didn't like the characters enough to keep on with it so I am donating it to the library book sale . 1997 is up for grabs...anyone? I need to find something else to try instead.

Remember when self-respecting women's magazines had literary sections? I can't pinpoint when "lit" was phased out (the eighties, maybe), but it was probably to make more room in each issue for additional diet tips, relationship advice and general navel-gazing. Alas!

Anyway, "The Redbook Novel" for August 1973 was an excerpt from Richard Bradford's So Far From Heaven. I tore the section from my magazine -- after reading it and apparently liking it. I have only vague memories, but it was something I often did because I still have two large filing cabinets full of stuff I collected so that I could "get back to it" someday. Specifically I wanted, and intended, to read the full book. It only took me forty years to get around to it. "Poor New Mexico. So far from Heaven; so close to Texas." -- Manuel Armijo, Governor of the Department of New Mexico 1827-29, 1837-46Apparently New Mexico in the 1970s was no closer to Heaven and still too close to Texas. I remember now that Bradford's novel was quite wry. I'm going to enjoy this.

If 1928 is still free, I would like to give D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover a try. I've never been able to finish a Lawrence novel, so wish me luck.

Please put me down for 1957 for The Comforters by Muriel Spark.

Tim, I do wish you luck reading 'Lady C' . . . or any other books by Lawrence. I have found them very heavy going and was always surprised when 'Sons and Lovers' was added to the exam syllabus in English schools after 'Lady C' became so-called fashionable. Of course Lawrence hung around with Virginia Woolf and her set, so maybe their boring writing styles influenced each other. ;-)

Veer, my problem with Lawrence is that he is such an opinionated crank. It is ironic that his name is synonymous with license and debauchery, since (in my opinion) he comes across as such an uptight, bitter person. So many times in Lady's Chatterley's Lover the action of the story stops so that Lawrence can vent his anger at the English, the Irish, other writers, women, men, religion, etc. It may be just me, but his tone is very censorious and disapproving. I guess he was just not a "live and let live" kind of person. Ironic, considering the whole point of the book appears to be personal freedom, etc.

Oops, I almost forgot to post comments about Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher - the year 2000 book. I will say that although it's far from a great book, I enjoyed it simply as a light read. I can't say I recommend it, but even so, I liked it.

I have finished The Comforters, Muriel Spark's first novel, and not only am confused by the book but am not even sure about the title. Here is a totally plagarized review from various Google sources.

Muriel Spark's debut novel The Comforters is an utterly bizarre and whimsically ambitious meta-fiction* that is structured around the literary equivalent of the Chinese box technique: a novel within a novel, within a novel. Paradoxically, Spark is keen to emphasize the fictional aspects of fiction itself; utilizing a variety of literary tropes such as irony, satire, religious parables, parody and metaphorical conceits to playfully break the fourth-wall -- not only between the author and the reader but also with several of the characters of the novel (more specifically, Caroline) and the omniscient narrator. Caroline, a recent convert to Catholicism, hears the sound of a typewriter, and then hushed voices echoing her thoughts and thinks she is being written into a novel.

*Metafiction--a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.

The Comforters contains two broad plot lines: Laurence Mandersâ discovery of his part- gypsy grandmotherâÂÂs involvement in a diamond-smuggling operation, and Caroline RoseâÂÂs persecution by an invisible consciousness, a âÂÂTyping Ghostâ that repeats and remarks upon her thoughts and actions. Much of what happens in The Comforters is connected to the attempts of Laurence and Caroline to solve these mysteries and to prove to each other that their perceptions are grounded in a reality external to themselves.

Carolyn - sounds a bit of a weird read to me!... Thanks for the review.

I have just finished Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller (1998), a debut novel following the story of an adult daughter of a Korean immigrant wife and her white US missionary husband who now live in Hawaii.

The books flips back and forth between the daughter's present time PoV and the mother's (now dead) PoV and the cultural/generational clashes that arise between them. The mother can see spirits and goes into trances - a gift that she believes she was given after having suffered as a "comfort woman" to the Japanese troops when they invaded Korea.

This is not a straight-forward narrative and there is quite a bit of magical realism (naturally, since we see some of it from the mother's PoV and the mother has visions). Normally not a big fan of this, but this book worked for me once I got the hang of the writing style. I think if you liked books by Amy Tan or similar, youâÂÂd like this one. (There must be other intergenerational/cultural family stories out there -- just canâÂÂt think of them right now.)

Not a happy book, but a good one with a strong ending. It was interesting watching the cross-cultural misinterpretations from mother/daughter interactions, and as the daughter learns about the motherâÂÂs history, so do the readers.)

I also liked learning about the various beliefs and customs for some of the villages in Korea - fascinating. The story is set in Hawaii (where I am going in December and have never been before) -- so I was interested in the descriptions of the lush flora etc. (Big contrast to West Texas especially now when weâÂÂre wilting from the long dry summer.) A few rain drops would be appreciated here ��" from the bookâÂÂs descriptions, it sounds like Hawaii gets enough precipitation every day!

(However, despite all this readerly goodness, I am still not a big fan of kimchee , but thatâÂÂs hardly the fault of the author...)

:-)

Tonight I finished Regeneration, the first book in Pat Barker's World War I trilogy. It was very good, though its description of the horrors of war are very gruesome.

I finished Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and since the volume I borrowed from the library has his second book in it as well, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, I read that too! Interesting journey stories that drew on the folktales of the Yoruba people. A curious thing I noted is that Tutuola was surprisingly precise about time, distances and things dealing with numbers. He would often specify the time of day, e.g. "When it was 630 am of the following morning, he woke me up..." and "Then I began to travel on Death's road, and I spent about eight hours to reach there..." and "we traveled along from 2:00 to 7:00 in the evening.." I don't know if that precision is part of the Yoruba culture, or if it was Tutuola's response to the western education he got from the christian missionaries; that he thought westerners needed that sort of precision to understand things. The writing was in a rambling style, written in English, sometimes rather fractured, but overall charming, as if the storyteller was sitting there talking to you. I'm very glad I got around to reading this, although about 30 years too late for my discussion group. :)

I am just about to finish "Portraits of a Marriage" by Sandor Marai. The author is Hungarian and the setting is between the two world wars. The novel was first published in 1941, but only recently translated into English. I am reading this for my class in Eastern European History.

Some might find the style a bit turgid and dry. The narrative is loaded with details of furniture, clothing, housing, and life-styles. There are really only 5 characters, who tell the story of a troubled marriage through their own eyes, in turn. In my view, the novel is a portrait of the class systems which existed in Middle Europe before the Communist take-over and the Iron Curtain fell. One character represents the sterility and boring, predictable existence of the Upper Class. Contrasted with this is a peasant servant girl who grew up in a ditch in the country. We have a man who is a pseudo-intellectual, a so-called "writer" who claims to be an "artist" but who really has nothing to say of importance. There is also a bored, bourgeois wife of the wealthy man described above. Lastly, we have a true "artist", a free spirit, a drummer, who rebels against the Russian take-over of his nation by fleeing to America, where he makes a new life for himself.

I finished Karel Capek's R.U.R., a play first produced in 1921. Although written originally in Czech, it was subtitled in English "Rossum's Universal Robots" and thereby gave the world the word ROBOT. That is what the play is known best for. It turned out to be a rather melodramatic apocalypse with a Frankenstein theme. Capek's robots are not mechanical automatons, but biological constructs assembled from various organs grown in labs and factories. I've wanted to read this ever since I read Kage Baker's Company series, a time-travel series of novels built around immortal cyborgs: she creates a group of mortal scientists who try to create a new human, and they are all given thematic names, of which Rossum was one. (It took me a while to figure it out, since I had to look up Rossum, and some of the names I still haven't figured out. But I recognized Rappacini first from the Hawthorne story, then "Freestone" aka Frankenstein.... I still haven't figured out the "Bugleg" allusion. Maybe there just isn't one!) Anyway, very happy to finally read the play. A milestone in SF.

I don't think I need bother introducing Ernest Hemingway to anyone here at RP, or try to give any kind of critical analysis of his work. My own personal experience and impression of A Moveable Feast, a collection of stories of his early days as a writer in Paris between the Wars is mostly astonishment that it has taken me so long to read them, and happiness that I am able to appreciate them through the lens of my own experience.

Having just come off a year of writing poetry and having just attended a poetry workshop, Hemingway's prose leapt off the pages as line poetry. I found myself reading each sentence over and over, enjoying it as I might hold a small sculpture in my hand. The craftsmanship, however, is just part of the pleasure as he has captured a time and place that are gone forever, his own unique experience providing a framework for the larger world that existed in Europe at that juncture in time.

I enjoyed the early stories of his own life much more than the last few about his relationship with Scott Fitzgerald. Although just as well written, I'm just not that interested in Fitzgerald.

If you haven't read A Moveable Feast, you might want to read at least a story or two.

If I were to get downright serious about rating my favorite young female characters in novels -- those who influenced me most as a reader -- I would have to give Scout Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird the #1 slot and then probably Jo March of Little Women. Francie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would be my third.

Reading of Francie's coming of age was for girls of my generation something of a rite of passage in itself. I don't know (but I doubt) that it still is -- every generation undoubtedly has its own particular marker -- but I will venture that a A Tree Grows in Brooklyn will still hold a special place for any girl of bookish type who reads it.

Although Tree is often read by adolescent females, I want to emphasize that it is not a book written for children or adolescents. It is an adult's book; with themes, situations, characters, and cultural observations best understood by a reader with 'experience under her belt'. A perceptive young reader will discern that something more than what is on the surface is going on in the story -- I did when I was twelve but I couldn't have articulated it then. I read it many times later and I was always surprised when I noticed something that I had glided right over before.

Now, fifty years after I first read Tree, I'm surprised again -- particularly by how much I've forgotten. Not the 'big things', such as the tree-throwing event, Francie's humiliation on being vaccinated, the incident with the molester and what Katie did about it, Johnny's death, the roses on Francie's desk at her eighth-grade graduation, Annie Laurie's birth, the stoning of Joanna, or Aunt Sissy's miraculous baby. I remember all of those, indeed the first half of the book extremely well; but if you had asked me before this latest rereading, I wouldn't have been able to tell you how it ended. Of course I'm not going to reveal the ending, but I will say that it was at as good a point as any.

I've never really pondered this before: the fictional Francie was born in 1901 (the story begins in 1912). A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published in 1943; thus Betty Smith was writing of events that happened thirty to forty years previous. She admitted that it was largely an autobiographical story. To me it seems such a quaint time, not pretty to be sure, but nostalgically hopeful in a way that I cannot imagine if I had written a novel when I was forty-two. That would have been in 1992. The latter decades of the twentieth century bred more cynicism than the first decades did, ironically I think.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is 70 years old this year. I think it's a classic already and I'm sure that it will be certified as such as soon it crosses the magic milestone year of classicdom, whenever that is.

For those who know of HG Wells only as the author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, Kipps: the Story of a Simple Soul will be a surprise: a social novel about Artie Kipps, an orphaned apprentice draper who inherits a fortune but doesn't know what to do with it, or the change in social station that comes with it. It's not strident at all, but portrays Kipps and his sweetheart Ann as good hearted but naive. I read it about 40 years ago, but much of the social commentary went over my head back then.

I finished Octavia Butler's Kindred from 1979 today - what a painful story to read, but impossible to put down. Has anyone else here read it? It's classified as fantasy, because of the time-travel aspect I suppose, or because Butler is known as a science-fiction writer, but it feels much more like a historical novel instead. Superb book - i can tell it's going to be one of those books I'll never forget. I've read several of Butler's novels, including the Parable and Xenogenesis books, but this is by far the best.

And here's the thread for RP CoB comments if you're up for it...

Oh dear, I just posted my comments for 1972 on the other thread. Mea culpa!

Not a prob Wood. I think life will go on ok despite that. :-)

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

"...chosen as 'Book of the Year' nineteen times in the press and more often than any other in 1995..."

It was nowhere near as appalling as I anticipated based on the scanty preview I read which said it was about a brilliant German philosopher's passionate love for a plain, and not very bright 12 year old girl But did it deserve the over-the-top critical acclaim? Not unless it was a very poor year for books. The author died five years after it was published at the age of 83 and was a very wellknown British writer (not that I have ever heard of her, but that means nothing). I am wondering if this is one of those situations where awards, critical acclaim are awarded to someone who is dying and probably deserved something better from the critics earlier in their career. I don't know.

In fairness I have never heard of Fritz or Novalis as he was later called in history, either, and he is the subject of the novel.

It is a strange book. It reads as if it was written in the 19th century, the actual events take place in Germany at the time of the French Revolution. There were true nuggets in the everyday description of the lives of the nobility, poor nobility, at that. Laundry washing in the great houses occurred three times a year if it were wealthy, less than that if things were tight. Yes, I mean underwear. The fairs, the food, the agricultural info and Christmas and religious customs were all highlights for me.

As for Fritz and his romance, well at times it seemed like something out of Monty Python. Even the characters. I was laughing at points when I am not sure I was supposed to be laughing. He was so earnest but so pretentious, spouting "profound" thoughts.

The novel did get a bit confusing with the German names as one character often had several.

Still not sure what to make of it all but it didn't inspire me to pick up another book by the author or read anything by Novalis.

I read Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays for 1970 for the Century of Books project. Can I have it added to the list?

OK, folks. News about the RP COB excel program. My doc (and all the docs related to it) have gone corrupt so I will be recreating it over the next week or two (depending on work).

In the meantime, please note that the following years have been taken but not yet added to the blog:

* 1970 - Play it as It Lies - Joan Didion (Timallan)
* 1972 - Farewell Waltz - Milan Kundera (Wood)
* 1974 - The Countryman's Cottage Book - Fred Archer (lemon)
* 1997 - The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald (Janalyn)

These will be added to the list once it's been recreated. (And yes, I saved it in multiple places but it still went corrupt.) :-(

Here is a link that might be useful: RP COB blog as it was

All good on the RP CoB blog. See other thread for updates. Thanks.

Here is a link that might be useful: RB CoB blog (updated 01/17/2014)

Liz - THe Blue Flower is actually 1995. We have to read books that we havent read before, right? Otherwise I could fill in some gaps from my Reread shelf :).

Oops. Thanks, Janalyn. I'll get it changed when I have a mo.

I reread Gone With the Wind. Was I wrong?

Carolyn -

I wouldn't worry about whether your titles are a read or a re-read... This is a very relaxed project, so whatever you choose is ok...

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Night - Robert Frost (illus. Susan Jeffers) (1978)

Based on a snippet of American poetâÂÂs Robert Frost, âÂÂStopping by Woodsâ¦â is a charming and rather old-fashioned book perfect for quiet and peaceful reading. I would think that quite a few people have heard of this poemâÂÂs first line and itâÂÂs a familiar landmark on school reading lists, but donâÂÂt let that stop you from picking up this book. ItâÂÂs the illustrations that bring new life to this poem, and are all completed in pen/pencil and ink with just a splash of color here and there which helps to emphasize the solitude and hush of a snowfall in the country.

ItâÂÂs the pictures that make this poem new and magical again, and itâÂÂs a perfect read for a reflective winter night. It seems to capture the peaceful feel of snow perfectly!

(And then - it hasnâÂÂt snowed for ages, and we had a snowy weekend. Nice change in the weather, and even better that it went away after a while! Update: Snow has returned.)

Stoner - John Williams (1965)

âÂÂAnd that was one of the legends that began to attach to his name, legends that grew more detailed and elaborate year by year, progressing like myth from personal fact to ritual truthâ¦âÂÂ

This seems to have been hitting the right buttons and is the Golden Child of the interwebs right now, so I thought IâÂÂd see what all the fuss was. It was written in 1965, and republished by NYRB in 2003, but only came to wide public knowledge when it was awarded the Waterstones Book of the Year at the end of 2013. (I have no idea how it bubbled to the surface after having been published ten years previously. I have read that it was promoted by a famous author (male) in UK and thatâÂÂs why it suddenly got more well known, but I donâÂÂt know the details just yet.)

Despite the big marketing noise that this novel has received across the blogosphere (âÂÂit is a perfect novelâ trumpets NYBR but then they published it) the narrative itself is remarkably quiet. ItâÂÂs a book where âÂÂnothing happensâ but, of course, things do but in a quiet manner.

The protagonist is William Stoner (always referred to as Stoner) who grows up in a poverty-ridden farming family. He is the only child and is expected to go to university, learn about agriculture and farming, and then come home to take on the family business. However, things donâÂÂt work out that way: Stoner is attracted to (and is good at) academics and stays on for graduate school studying the not-pragmatic subject of Mediaeval and Latin writings.

Departmental politics have a big effect on his career, his marriage is rather cold and empty, he falls in love with a young instructor, and his emotions are in turmoil quite often, but itâÂÂs all under the surface. Stoner is like a volcano that never blows its top -- so much is going on underneath the surface, but most people are unaware of this passion. (Only his partner in the affair is aware of this bubbling of emotions.)

Williams himself worked in a university teaching for a couple of decades and itâÂÂs clear that he is familiar with the dynamics of politics in an academic setting. Stoner is strong in his own way: heâÂÂs not a typical hero, but he keeps on plodding (which makes him a hero of a different sort). Perhaps his name reflects how the protagonist is: like a stone, slow-changing over the yearsâ¦

One of the reviewers at The New Yorker describes the book as almost âÂÂanti-Gatsbyâ and I think this is a very accurate description. Gatsby is all noise, parties, social life, gatherings, and popularity. Stoner is the complete opposite of that: quiet and academic. Stoner is stoic and silent just as much as Gatsby is not. (It could also be argued that Katherine, the mistress, and perhaps Edith, his wife, are the Daisy figuresâ¦)

This volume wasnâÂÂt the easiest book to keep reading -- once I...

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier (1969)

I first read The House on the Strand the year it was published, 1969, not knowing or caring what genre or subgenre it was considered to be. I have since learned it is classified as science fiction/fantasy, neither of which I usually like a whole lot. It's a good thing that I was then ignorant of such classification because I might have passed over The House on the Strand, a story that has given me immense pleasure in reading and rereading over the years, as well as contemplating it at times between readings.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to write a full-blown review of THotS for this thread, so I looked through some of my earlier notes and writings about it and found a summary that I wrote in May 2005, something that I probably posted here at Reader's Paradise. I can't believe that was almost nine years ago! Reading through that piece again, I think it remains pretty much what I still think after yet another rereading. So below is what I wrote then:
The House on the Strand has been classified as science fiction and fantasy, neither of which I ordinarily like a whole lot. Okay, I will concede that the story has elements of science fiction and fantasy -- after all, the main vehicle of the story is time travel. However, I will venture that the main theme is capturing the essence of a time and place in the past, in a way that we as moderns can never quite grasp even when we really and truly want to.

Daphne du Maurier used her own house in Cornwall as the focal point for imagining not only its history but the history of the region and its inhabitants during the first half of the fourteenth century (just prior to the Black Plague) -- a brilliant stroke, in my opinion, and one that makes me trust her storytelling more. Not that I expect this story to be a "true" history, but I find that the details of the landscape, time, and characters have the right feel. So much so that I, as a reader, am right there with Dick Young, the twentieth-century protagonist, as we accompany Roger Kylmerth, our guide and the original 14th-century owner of du Maurier's "Kilmarth," on his rounds of the surrounding countryside. Roger, a steward to the widowed Lady Joanna Champernowne, the primary landowner of the region, has the advantage of being able to insinuate himself into all camps. Roger is not always a sympathetic character but he is all the more real for it.

Likewise, our contemporary Dick is not always sympathetic: he's married to an American woman who has two pre-teen sons from her previous marriage. We get the feeling that although Dick might love his wife and he has a certain fondness for his stepsons, he would probably do just as well -- or be as happy -- if they just disappeared from his life. He's between jobs and is ambivalent about his wife's plans for him "on her side of the Atlantic." Thus, he accepts his old school chum's offer to take a breather at his family...

Frieda - You might want to try Kindred by Octavia Butler. It uses time travel but it seems almost incidental to the story which really is about the history of slavery and how we regard it in contemporary times. It is a very unusual story and one you won't forget.

And I too, enjoyed The House on the Strand but my favourite Du Maurier is still The King's General.

Frieda, not even Green Darkness?

Janalyn, thanks for the recommendation of Kindred. I've seen mention of it many times, but for some reason never got around to reading it. Must remedy that!

The King's General is another of my favorites, too. I've been in love with Sir Richard Grenvile since I was fourteen, one of those 'bad boys' who fascinates, and apparently he was as much a scalawag in real life as he was in DduM's characterization. And, oh my, his sister Gartred! I thought sure that Honor Harris was a real person, too, but when I tried to find her among the Harrises of Lanrest, she wasn't there. Mary Harris Rashleigh, Robert (Robin) and Percy Harris were listed, in fact everyone but Honor. I still can't quite believe it; du Maurier made her so real.

Carolyn, I love Green Darkness but I put it into the category of historical romance. The House on the Strand isn't romantic in the 'abiding love' sense. Although Dick Young, the 20th century protagonist of THotS, does see 14th-century Isolda Carminowe as a 'lass unparalleled', he knows he will never be able to touch her, and she will never know that he is watching her from the distance of six hundred years. Ach! I find that voyeurism genuinely creepy, although, like Dick, I wouldn't be able to resist the compulsion to watch.

I meant to mention that the 'House' in the title is not 'Kilmarth', du Maurier's last house in Cornwall, that she lent to her book's characters, Professor Lane and Dick Young. The House on the Strand is a vanished manor house somewhere in Tywardreath parish. Finding its former location is one of the mysteries of the story.

I have just finished my 1930 read of Corduroy by Adrian Bell (will you add it to your list please LIz). I have put the 'write-up' on the March reading thread so wont repeat it here.
I should probably add that the title refers to the material used to make the breeches worn by all 'country men' before the introduction of man-made fibres. Bell also talks about the boots he had specially bought in London for farm-work and, once in the real country being told that they were only suitable for gentlemen and to visit the village shop and buy a pair of proper tough boots with hob-nails on the soles.

Just finished Ursula Le Guin's City of Illusions which is the book I said I would read for 1967. I hard a time trying to find a copy and finally bought it as part of a newly released trilogy from Amazon: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions. These books were the first three that Le Guin wrote and you can see her progression as a writer as you read them. They got increasingly better fortunately :) because the first one particularly, seemed rather amateurish. I had to remind myself that it was written in the early 60s, and at the time, must have been very fresh and original. I enjoy Le Guin a lot, so it was interesting reading the books at the start of her impressive career. All of the books were related and actually, one of her most famous novels, Left Hand of Darkness, is set within the same universe. I think I will look for that one as a reread since I can't remember the plot, it has been so long.

I had forgotten about this project for awhile, but recently checked back in with it.

Not to be picky, but the title of one of the books I read is listed incorrectly.

For the year 1970, the correct title of Joan Didion's novel is Play It As It Lays.