From Way, Way Back in Your Book Backlog

[SiobhanT]

My backlog is pretty small, it's more books I've read from the library, bought to read again then haven't, though I have tried three times to read The Mill On the Floss, it's been sitting on my bookcase since I was a teenager but I just can't get into it, same with Villette.
Other than that I think the oldest undread book is a year old, English courses where you can be reading three books a week some weeks make you very good at efficient reading.

 

[j d worthington]

I really don't want to take it off track, but in response to the direct questions: No, it wasn't an annotated edition; and yes, it is written in English... with a little Latin, etc., if I recall correctly (it has been about ten years since I read it). It also has passages in English of different periods, such as a delightful one written very much in the manner of Sir Thomas Mallory (when Bloom is in one of his most grandiose reveries). It is also structured as a modern Odyssey (among others), something Wikipedia discusses quite a bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)

 

[Extollager]

.....I just can't get into it, same with Villette.

This Charlotte Brontë novel took me more than one try, but it was well worth the effort. It was a selection of the campus-community reading group in our town, so the commitment there (I'm the host!) helped me to persevere.

Two more way-back backlog items: Thoreau's Maine Woods (31 July 1975) and Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (18 Feb. 1976). I have to start that Maine Woods ...tonight.

By the way -- JD, this one isn't from very far back in my backlog, compared to others I have been mentioning, but: I'll bet you have read Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn -- what'd you think of it? (I've only had my copy since 16 July 1996.)

 

[steve12553]

I've moved The Silmarillion twice so I've had it for a while. I started it and got distracted. I've carried James A. Michener's Space for quite a few years. John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener and Tinker , Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There are several more that have been with me for two wives, 5 moves and 800 miles. My plan is to live to 206 and get them all read. Might work.

 

[Randy M.]

Like you, I have these:
Fletcher Pratt's The Blue Star
Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist
E. R. Eddison's Mistress of Mistresses
Patrician McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld

I've had them for at least 25 years, though possibly not the original edition I bought since I have a habit of buying hardcovers or trade pbs when I see them, even if I already have the mass market pb, and then discarding the mmpb.

Just off the top of my head, others that I've had about as long or longer:

Mervyn Peake: Gormanghast
John Crowley: Little, Big, Beasts, Engine Summer; Aegypt
Ursula K. Le Guin: Compass Rose
Peter Straub: Shadowland
Stephen King: Firestarter; The Dead Zone
Robert Aickman: Cold Hand in Mine; Painted Devils
Algis Budrys: Who?; Rogue Moon
Russell Kirk: The Princess of All Lands
Basil Copper: Necropolis
Walter de la Mare: The Best of ...


Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken
Thomas Mann: Magic Mountain
Isak Dinesen: Seven Gothic Tales (read three, have yet to finish, though); Winter's Tales
William Faulkner: Sanctuary
Cornell Woolrich: Waltz Into Darkness; Rendezvous in Black; The Black Angel


And I know darn well I could triple or quadruple the size of this list if I were home.


Randy M.

 

[Extollager]

I've had them for at least 25 years....
Just off the top of my head, others that I've had about as long or longer:

Mervyn Peake: Gormanghast
John Crowley: Little, Big, Beasts, Engine Summer; Aegypt
Ursula K. Le Guin: Compass Rose
Peter Straub: Shadowland
Stephen King: Firestarter; The Dead Zone
Robert Aickman: Cold Hand in Mine; Painted Devils
Algis Budrys: Who?; Rogue Moon
Russell Kirk: The Princess of All Lands
Basil Copper: Necropolis
Walter de la Mare: The Best of ...

....And I know darn well I could triple or quadruple the size of this list if I were home.

I hope you will add to it, because several of the things you list above are ones I find intriguing, notably the two Budrys books -- unquestionably among my favorite sf.

I interviewed Kirk about his ghost stories in the mid-1980s. The interview was conducted in a restaurant in Rantoul, Illinois. He was a perfect subject for an interview -- forthcoming but hardly full of himself; comfortable with the situation; ready to tell a good story. He invited me, my wife and our infant son to visit him at Piety Hill in Michigan, although we didn't follow through on that. I don't care for his Manfred Arcane stories, but most of his ghost stories seem to me at least good entertainment. A good one to start with might be "Behind the Stumps." He's a different writer from Lovecraft, but they both know a lot about creepy rural settings!

I don't see de la Mare mentioned very often. Have you read "Crewe" yet?

Aickman is, for me, an uneven writer. Don't care for "The Swords," "Mark Ingestre," etc. but admire "The Houses of the Russians," "Into the Wood," etc. Has anyone at Chrons read his short novel The Model? I didn't finish it, though at one time I had read a great deal of his work.

I couldn't tell you how many times I have tried to reread Gormenghast and failed to stick with it. I think the next time, I will just have to skip some of the Prunesquallor stuff, which Peake apparently found a lot funnier than I do.

I hope lots more people will step forward with their backlog yarns. Any notable accounts of books that had been backlog for a long time, and were read at last? One such story from me would be about Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead, bought 27 Feb. 1975 and read at last (22 Apr. 2008-5 Apr. 2010!).

 

[j d worthington]

By the way -- JD, this one isn't from very far back in my backlog, compared to others I have been mentioning, but: I'll bet you have read Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn -- what'd you think of it? (I've only had my copy since 16 July 1996.)

Yes, I did, though it was a little over a decade ago. My general impression is that, as with Wieland, it has some very powerful stuff there, but -- unlike Wieland -- it went on a bit too long at times, which tended to water down the tension of the tale. Nonetheless, well worth reading; just don't expect a page-turner....

 

[Extollager]

I read Wieland in 1975, when I took a course on American Lit from Brian Bond, my favorite teacher when I was an undergrad. Can you imagine how great it was to have a guy like this as teacher for numerous classes? He'd written on C. S. Lewis's space trilogy for Mythlore back when it was more a great fanzine than a good academic journal; introduced me to the F&SF Book Co. (what a great source that was for books in the pre-Internet age -- does anyone else here remember that outfit?); let me take home materials (from his personal library) related to major fantasy authors, from Maeve Gilmore's memoir of her husband Mervyn Peake, A World Away, to the tribute 'zine HPL, or that then-rare fantasy, Kenneth Morris's Book of the Three Dragons; -- and much more. His courses were well-designed according to good academic standards, but selections also reflected his interest in fantasy -- so in the same course in which we read Wieland, we read Poe's Pym -- I doubt that I had even known that Poe had written a novel, let alone a landmark of the weird in that length....

We didn't read that edition immediately above, but I thought y'all might like to see it!

 

[GOLLUM]

Gollum, with your fondness for the "black Penguins," you'll be interested in this I expect: my first one was King Harald's Saga, bought in Sept. 1970 and still unread, although I have read many sagas.

Indeed. Harald's saga along with several other sagas as you would know, generally tend to fall into a category of stories outside the main sagas of the Icelandic families. I have an excellent penguin edition focusing on the 'Sagas of the Icelanders' which in turn is sourced form a larger multi-volume collection of Icelandic Sagas. This particular book contains many of the most prominent Icelandic sagas and tales but does not have the Saga of the Volsungs, Njal's Saga or The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, all available from Penguin as single editions.

Of the Eddas, which as I understand it, basically focus on the Norse mythologies, I have the Eldar or Poetic Edda and am purchasing the Prose Edda, an excellent translation by all account, again from Penguin.

I therefore plan to stick with the Saga of the Icelanders volume I have along with the Eldar and Prose Eddas at this stage. By all accounts that edn. of King Harald is supposed to be excellent! ..so you really should propel it towards the top of your TBR pile....

Of those recent books you've listed Hughes' High Wind in Jamaica is a classic and something you will want to sink your teeth into. Eliot's Adam Bede I've never read. Middlemarch still stands for me as Eliot's greatest work. I plan to reread it before the end of this year. The Good Soldier is a very fine novel and not a very long one, so perhaps another you should consider moving up the pile?

I am still to read Wieland. J.D. put me on to Brown when discussing Carwin the Biloquist. I have a single edn. containing both of these stories by Brown and get the impression I should be placing near the top of my lengthy TBR pile.

I noticed you mention Walter De La Mare. Another I've not read although I did source a copy of Memoirs of a Midget, which I was told was arguably his single finest work. Do you have anythnig else by de la Mare you care to recommend?

P.S. I will post next week regarding some books I have had a long time in my library that I do intend to read.

 

[Extollager]

P.S. I will post next week regarding some books I have had a long time in my library that I do intend to read.

I am eager to see this!

 

[Extollager]

By all accounts that edn. of King Harald is supposed to be excellent! ..so you really should propel it towards the top of your TBR pile....

I have a thick illustrated hardcover of the Heimskringla

and that is what I want to focus on now, but thank you for encouraging me to get to King Harald! Certainly it is one I should read eventually. After I do, I should read a little-known novel, The Golden Warrior by Hope Muntz, which is a recent unread acquisition.

 

[Extollager]

Gollum asked, "I noticed you mention Walter De La Mare. Another I've not read although I did source a copy of Memoirs of a Midget, which I was told was arguably his single finest work. Do you have anythnig else by de la Mare you care to recommend?"

That's funny -- I mentioned de la Mare in response to someone else's inclusion of de la Mare in a backlog posting. But as it happens I have several de la Mare books in my own backlog, and the one you mention, Memoirs of a Midget, goes back about 30 years! I have also The Three Mulla-Mulgars

and an anthology that he edited called Behold, This Dreamer!

 

[GOLLUM]

Thanks for those updates Extollager, including further suggestions regarding de la Mare....some fabulous looking covers and illustration you've been posting recently as well.

That illustrated hardcover of the Heimskringla would do very nicely in my bookshelf as a matter of fact... That copy of Muntz's 'The Golden Warrior' looks nice too..and is sure to add further to your knowledge of Harald. I've only heard of it, have never read it.

It's very late here, so I must bid you a good day....

 

[Extollager]

That illustrated hardcover of the Heimskringla would do very nicely in my bookshelf as a matter of fact... That copy of Muntz's 'The Golden Warrior' looks nice too..and is sure to add further to your knowledge of Harald. I've only heard of it, have never read it.

The Muntz book pictured isn't, alas, my copy, which is a dull-design paperback. The Heimskringla was a library discard! At that point I'm not sure the library was charging anything for discards. Yes, it was a nice find.

 

[Grimward]

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's familiar with the Tolkien sub-forum here, but I'm another guilty party who's read The Silmarillion cover to cover (and enjoyed it, although I'd be lying if I didn't admit to liking some parts much better than others).

For books that I will never re-read, CJ Cherryh's Exile's Gate comes to mind. Not that it was bad, but there are so many more I'd pick up first that I doubt I will ever get back to it, unprompted. For books in my "TBR" pile that I will NEVER get to, you can pick any of my wife's vampire romance books (in the pile for the obvious political reason only ).

As a brief aside, how many folks here have libraries that look like the one in Extollager's initial picture? And yes, while the point of the image's inclusion is that some of the books support the hanging fan, I still think it's hysterical.

Edit: Apologies, shouldn't have included the wife's books; they're not what you asked about!

 

[Connavar]

Some more items from the long-term backlog:

Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (to judge by the handwriting in the margins, this book once belonged to my favorite professor from my undergrad years; the book was bought second hand in the town where he had been a teacher; 7 Jan. 1978)
Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica (27 May 1978)
Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (18 March 1978)
Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (10 April 1981)
W. B. Yeats's Autobiographies (4 Aug. 1981)
George Eliot's Adam Bede (4 Aug. 1981 -- bought at same library sale as the Yeats)

I began to write the dates of acquisition in my books in the very early 1970s. Thus I know the date in 1970 when I bought Lord Dunsany's At the Edge of the World, a landmark in my reading life. Lately I have dropped the practice.

I hope more people will post about their backlogs.

When i read your comment in June's readings threads about how you have had The Curse of the Wise Woman by Lord Dunsany for many years and not read it i fantasied about taking the book from your hands

I cant imagine letting Lord Dunsany wait so many years in your backlog. Heh that was a precurser for this thread. The books in my backlog are books i regret having got by trashy bestseller authors like Dean Koontz. The most glaring way back in my book backlog that i regret not having read yet is a certain classic first book in a series by Eddison.

 

[Fried Egg]

Wow, I'm quite flabbergasted by Extollager's and Randy M.'s backlogs. How could you have had such well regarded classics on your shelves for so long without reading them?

Personally, after a few years have past and I still haven't had the inclination to read book, I tend to assume it's not going to happen and get rid of it. I've had Orson Scott Card's "Xenocide" for about ten years and I'm still not sure I whether I will read it. Relatively recently I decided I should obtain and read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" first, which I did (and enjoyed), but I'm still unsure whether I want to go on (with a series that by many reports tales off in quality considerably).

Other than that, there's Clive Barker's "Books of Blood", volumes 4 & 6 (don't have volume 5). I'm just not sure whether I want to read any more Barker as I've since discovered the sort of horror I enjoy and Barker isn't really it (generally).

 

[Extollager]

Wow, I'm quite flabbergasted by Extollager's and Randy M.'s backlogs. How could you have had such well regarded classics on your shelves for so long without reading them?

I'm a re-reader. Connavar wonders how I could have owned a Dunsany book, The Curse of the Wise Woman, for so many years without reading it.* Well, I have a bunch of other Dunsany books with stories that I liked very much at one time, so it is easy to revisit an old favorite rather than reading a new story that perhaps doesn't have such a great reputation.

The same thing applies with other authors.

But I'm making an effort to change -- to a degree, at least.

*I do intend to read it, at last, before long!

 

[Connavar]

I'm a re-reader. Connavar wonders how I could have owned a Dunsany book, The Curse of the Wise Woman, for so many years without reading it.* Well, I have a bunch of other Dunsany books with stories that I liked very much at one time, so it is easy to revisit an old favorite rather than reading a new story that perhaps doesn't have such a great reputation.

The same thing applies with other authors.

But I'm making an effort to change -- to a degree, at least.

*I do intend to read it, at last, before long!

Its a matter of method of reading, i dont re-read until it has been years and im forgetting a alltime fav book. I havent re-read even books by Lord Dunsany,Vance,other big favs. Why re-read the brilliant books when you can read new reads by great authors.

Thats why i buy books by favs and instantly read them. I dont let a Lord Dunsany wait more than a 1-2 months in my shelf. Similar with Bradbury,other favs.

Im afraid of becoming a collector with huge backlog of books and not a reader of quality books as soon as i get them. Why i dont have any classic,big important fantasy,SF,mainstream books in way back in my back log.

Reputation is overrated, im a completist of fav authors. I enjoy reading important authors. Don Rodriguez was not brillaint fantasy like The King of Elfland's Daugther but it was still wonderful to read a new read by Lord Dunsany. I will read Eddison,Peake instanstly when i get their books.

 

[Fried Egg]

I used to re-read books far more in the old days, when my to-read shelf wasn't so bulging with books I eagerly want to read. Nowadays I hardly ever but I would like to find time to do so a little more.