Notes: fiction
Fran has never read Moby Dick and she's an English professor. No one has to feel guilty about what they haven't read. I understand, however, that it is permitted to crow once in a while because I have read it.
In recent years I've gone through a good deal of Dickens and Trollope along with contemporary fiction. Much of this work goes down now in a way it couldn't have when I was younger; in fact, I took up The Pickwick Papers not too long ago because I was curious whether my first reaction—I loathed it at eight—would hold up. It didn't. My teenaged nephew loathes Dickens now; all I can do is say "Try again later" (same thing I said when he told me he doesn't like German food, having eaten once at a krautery in Oak Ridge, Tennessee).
I've mentioned some good books, possibly some others too, in the list at the top of the page. They keep publishing them, so it's work in progress. Click on a title to view the notes.
- A Gravity's Rainbow Companion Companion
- Basket Case
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- Celestial Matters
- Nicholas Nickleby
- The best P. G. Wodehouse book
- The Lord of the Rings (trilogy of pages, natch)
- Doomsday Book
- Middlesex
- Night Watch
- Great Neck and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- Amtrak's Crescent Timetable
- Not Enough Indians (December, Year 6)
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Fiction