From Way, Way Back in Your Book Backlog

[Extollager]

Unbeknownst to yourself and most other folk here I've been out of action the past few months due to various offline issues. The good news is that I'm getting back on track and have more time on my hands now leading up to the New Year. Therefore I will now be able to revisit various posts including this one as I begin to play catch-up on these forums. Finally...

Some of the books I'm still to read inlcude:

Mississippi Writings - Mark Twain *Library of America publication. *more specifically Puddn'head Wilson and Life on the Mississippi.
The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts - Mark Twain
The Warden - Anthony Trollope
Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche *dipped into only.
Light Years - James Salter
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
The Complete Works of Francois Rabelais *read sections of Gargantua and Pantraguel. A more recent acquisition I know but I'm not sure if I ever will get around to reading the whole dang thing! A very big volume.
One Thousand and One Ghosts & The Black Tulip - Alexander Dumas
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
The Female Quixote - Charlotte Lennox
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien *dipped into but would like to read properly.
Memoirs of a Midget - Walter de La Marre *partially read, skimmed over.
The Maggot - John Fowles.
The Phoenix and the Carpet & The Story of the Amulet - E. Nesbitt

Quite a few more that have been gathering dust over the years but that's a start at least.

I hope I don't overlook your other imminent postings of interest. That Tolkien letters volume is great. Memoirs of a Midget is one on my way-back backlog, too: have had this copy since 15 Dec. 1981 -- maybe I mentioned it before.

Just now when I checked the date on it I also noted my copy of an old Everyman's Library edition of The English Mail-Coach and Other Essays by Thomas de Quincey (22 Aug. 1989). I wonder what "The Household Wreck" therein is about.

I admire George MacDonald's best fantasy very much, but have read a number of his stories in the Victorian novel mode with enjoyment -- Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood is a good one to start with, & in fact I've read it twice. But I see I have had a copy of his Donal [sic] Grant since 20 Apr. 1978 and haven't read it yet.

These aren't photos of my copies, but they look like them.

 

[Extollager]

Turning to this today --

Bought it in July 1977.

 

[Extollager]

I've advocated for Sir Walter Scott from time to time. I think he gets a bum deal from publishers who prepare anthologies for British Literature courses, etc. I've read and enjoyed a number of his novels, some of them -- The Bride of Lammermoor, The Heart of Midlothian -- more than once.

But I decided to drop Montrose, which I've owned since the mid-Eighties. Too bad, because it may be that if I persevered I'd find the story does at last get going. Scott tends to be a slow starter -- my rule of thumb: begin reading at Chapter 2 -- but this one was just not getting very far off the ground.

 

[Extollager]

Current reading includes Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of a 1933-4 walk from the Hook of Holland inland and and then in Germany, Austria, and Hungary along the Danube, A Time of Gifts, which I bought 28 years ago, and Novalis's Henry [thus in title] von Ofterdingen, given to me nine years ago but not read till now. The latter has become really interesting to me at the end of Chapter 2. There's a story that reminded me a bit of Shakespeare's Tempest there, which I expect to reread in a few days. I think Gollum means to start a discussion of works of German Romanticism, so perhaps I can write some comments on this book for posting there in due course. In the meantime this comment can sit here as a placeholder.

 

[Ogma]

I divide my book purchases into numbered lots of ten. Every year I force myself to finish at least the next two lots on the list, so no book is left unread eventually. It has meant that I have read books that I would have otherwise have left on the shelf. I have about eight lots at the moment.

The books left on my list for this year were purchased back in 2008.

The Mark of the Beast
Conan Chronicles Vol. 1 & 2
Voyage To Arcturus
Time & The Gods
The Deathworld Omnibus
Century Rain

 

[Extollager]

I divide my book purchases into numbered lots of ten. Every year I force myself to finish at least the next two lots on the list, so no book is left unread eventually. It has meant that I have read books that I would have otherwise have left on the shelf. I have about eight lots at the moment.
...The Mark of the Beast...

That's a book of Kipling stories, right? He's very good.

 

[Ogma]

Yes. It was part of the Fantasy Masterworks series and is a collection of his fantastical short stories. I hope it is good because it is 785 pages long and I never give up on a book once I start it.

 

[Extollager]

Ogma, I hope any proofreading issues with your Kipling book

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_mark_of_the-comments.shtml

won't dispose you against the stories themselves.

I wasn't able to find a list of the contents just now, but I assume the book includes such stories as

The House Surgeon
The Wish-House
In the House of Suddhoo
The Return of Imray
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
Wireless
"They"
The Mark of the Beast

and probably the fascinating, exasperating "Mrs. Bathurst."

Those are just some whose titles come to mind without my looking them up.

Should you wish detailed notes on any of them, go here:

http://www.kipling.org.uk/bookmart_fra.htm

You'll be able to find an alphabetical list of the stories and can then click on the notes you want -- evidently real labors of love.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I am currently reading Desiree by Annemarie Selinko. I haven't had it as long as most others are posting in this thread, but I have had it for about 7-8 years sitting on my shelf. It was recommended to me by my Mom, and I just have never picked it up. I only did now because I am trying to get through the unread books I have sitting on the shelf.

 

[Ogma]

Extollager,

Thanks very much for the useful links. I like to read about the background of books/stories after I read them so I will definitely make use of the Kipling website as I read through the book. All the stories that you mention with the exception of Mrs. Bathurst are in the book.

It is a pity about the poor proofreading, but hopefully I will not find it too bothersome. I probably have read books with greater editing issues than those outlined in the Strange Horizons article (un)fortunately.

 

[Extollager]

Now reading this book, which I bought 18 Aug. 1986 at Books Primarily in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania --

Just finished this book

which I bought 26 April 1985 from a bookstore in Urbana or Champaign, Illinois. Despite having owned them for so long, I'd never read them yet.

 

[GOLLUM]

Ogma, I hope any proofreading issues with your Kipling book

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_mark_of_the-comments.shtml

won't dispose you against the stories themselves.

I wasn't able to find a list of the contents just now, but I assume the book includes such stories as

The House Surgeon
The Wish-House
In the House of Suddhoo
The Return of Imray
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
Wireless
"They"
The Mark of the Beast

and probably the fascinating, exasperating "Mrs. Bathurst."

That's a bit disturbing to read. Normally the Masterwork books are of a good standard. I have a copy of this edition, it was the last one they published in paperback in the Fantasy series line...sadly.

It has all of those listed stories except for Return of Imray and Mrs. Bathurst.

 

[Extollager]

That's a bit disturbing to read. Normally the Masterwork books are of a good standard. I have a copy of this edition, it was the last one they published in paperback in the Fantasy series line...sadly.

It has all of those listed stories except for Return of Imray and Mrs. Bathurst.

"Mrs. Bathurst" is a pretty weird story, but it's not supernatural. But missing "Imray"? Maybe it is included under a different title.

 

[Ogma]

It is under the catchy title of 'The Recrudescence of Imray' page 251.

 

[Ogma]

Apparently the Recrudescence... was the original title. I wonder why they changed it.

 

[GOLLUM]

Apparently the Recrudescence... was the original title. I wonder why they changed it.

No idea but thanks for clarifying. I checked on my Masterwork edition again and it's pg 259. Simply missed it when going over the contents the other night.

So only Mrs. Bathurst is not there. As Extollager indicates it isn't a supernatural story per se, so probably why they did not include it. This anthology is meant to cover his fantastical stories. It appears to be pretty comprehensive.

Cheers.

 

[Extollager]

So only Mrs. Bathurst is not there. As Extollager indicates it isn't a supernatural story per se, so probably why they did not include it.

I'd say that "Mrs. Bathurst" is like Aickman's "Hospice" in being fit company for strange stories that do have a supernatural element, while not having that element themselves. (However, "Mrs. Bathurst" and "The Hospice" are otherwise not much alike.)

One of my "maybe someday" projects is to write a Sherlock Holmes story in which the great detective solves the mystery of "Mrs. Bathurst" (first published 1904).

Kipling Society comments include the following -- having read which, perhaps interested Chronsfolk should go on to read the story

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9790

before reading further what the KS says about it.

[SIZE=+1]Editor's note

Over the years "Mrs Bathurst" has baffled and intrigued Kipling's biographers and critics. [/SIZE][SIZE=+1] Philip Mason (p. 164), in his extensive and perceptive consideration of the story, writes in 1975 of 'the difficulty of knowing anything of the lives of other people except what is revealed in a passing flash'.

Harry Ricketts (1999) writes

It was, in effect, the first modernist text in English. Deliberate obliqueness, formal fragmentation, absence of a privileged authorial point of view, intense literary self-consciousness, lack of closure – all the defining qualities of modernism were present and correct.​

However, the literary critics have largely disregarded the naval background to the story, which in the view of this Editor helps make it a great deal more intelligible than is commonly supposed.

http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_bathurst1.htm


[/SIZE]

 

[Extollager]

Here's a question -- what's the oldest book in your backlog?

A friend recently sent me Vol. 1 of the Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esquire, with a Collection of His Genuine Bon-Mots, Anecdotes, Opinions, &c. Mostly Original. And Three of His Dramatic Pieces, Not Published in his Works. In Two Volumes. By William Cooke, Esq. Philadelphia: S. F. Bradford, No. 4, South Third-Street. 1807

Frankly, I'm not all that interested in reading it, but it's fun to have a book this old. The paper is in quite good condition, I suppose because it used rags rather than wood pulp -- ?

 

[wam]

I thought the Kipling "Fantasy Masterworks" collection was an oddity. The editor obviously wanted a Horror rather than Fantasy collection and drifted into naturalist material (i.e. no supernatural element) like "The Man who would be king" and a highly descriptive travelogue of hot night in India that I can't remember the title of rather that touch on the the more childish fantasy of "Just So Stories" or "Puck of Pook's hill".

 

[Extollager]

I've begun to read, at last, the middle book of Patrick Leigh Fermor's long walk trilogy.

My copy of Between the Woods and the Water entered my life on 26 Feb. 1987!