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Unfortunately Mackenzie cannot resist doing the "Hollywood, you say? Never going to amount to anything!" type historical fiction irony. Definitely going to read Sinister Street again after I'm done with these though

Incredibly clear, straightforward writing—Thackeray's contemporary fans always give him that praise but it is much more true here than in the mature novels. Reads like it was written 100 years later than it was, clear and funny and confiding.

Elbowing me in the side a little too often to start telling me a story

Found a PDF of this online doing some deep-into-Thackeray Googling that I now can't remember, so I guess I'll read it.

Have owned this for probably 20 years and never read it. "The Pitch That Killed" is a classic.

It is wonderful to read someone who cares about 18th century novels enough to hate so many of them.

Was just reading the author's introductions to Thackeray and he earned my permanent allegiance by stridently defending Pendennis and saying he'd read it dozens of times, which will be me someday if I live to grow a beard like the one on this guy's Wikipedia page.

Very happy to have the Pendennises back as narrators, but what was really surprising in the way of continuity (I never read anybody mentioning it, perhaps because Philip is so little read) is that this is the de facto continuation of Thackeray's unfinished "A Shabby Genteel Story"

There's so little there there about Trollope's personal life so far as we know that you pretty much just have to pick a way of reading the material and then assume that way will also be accurate throughout the rest of his life. This is a fun read and seems to be doing a good job of taking me through what material did exist as of 1971.

The names in this one ("Aurora Floyd" and "Captain Talbot Bulstrode" in particular) really key you into this being the Victorian version of a beach read.

First part of the book is basically an extended version of the "I took two dates to the same restaurant" sitcom routine, where you're about to see the other date but then you look down at the menu or someone spills ice cream all over you. Lady Audley seems to undergo a personality transplant after chapter 1, too, becoming much more the kind of person you would expect to be in this jam.

Never heard of Le Fanu but if it's good enough for Harriet Vane it's good enough for me

Picked this up because a) it was at Dollar Tree and I love buying Dollar Tree novels from people who also got MFAs and B) I divined from the jacket copy and the title that it was Moviegoer-inspired before I opened it all the way to the Moviegoer quote at the front. So far... very influenced by the Moviegoer! But pretty good. Already got my $1 worth.

Trying to come down easy off my Sayers high

Ebook was on sale and I am trying to convince myself that my stories are no worse than anyone else's so that I will write them again. So far so good on that front

I was nervous about starting this one after The Sacred Fount, but in spite of its being the canonical Late James starting point, this one feels much more... capable of supporting the weight of its language. Of course, so did The Sacred Fount at first! But this one is in third person, instead of being transmitted by TSF's manic narrator, so I'm optimistic.

Need to take a break from late-period James and read a book where people do things. Constance Garnett, of course.

There's something weird about the tone that is throwing me; not sure what

He has the audacity to write, here, "I remember feeling seriously warned, while dinner lasted, not to yield further to my idle habit of reading into mere human things an interest so much deeper than mere human things were in general prepared to supply."

I am the one seriously warning James about this, the core problem of the book. But I'm also still reading it, so he wins

Very fun, almost mysterious introduction but I have been sent skidding by one of the most clanging title drops I can remember—naming your book "The Sacred Fount" is a high-risk maneuver because you need to make sure it doesn't end up being something kind of stupid.

Unbelievably confusing start, with two families who work together and have the same name almost and live next door each inviting young women to visit. Feels like it is designed to throw me off—along with the terrible OCR ebook, because this isn't on Gutenberg—but I will fight through

The introduction of Gabriel Nash in chapter two is a wonderful piece of dialogue, observation through a character, etc. James usually only catches me through his direct characterization but this is great writing in every possible way

The second novel in my chronological James read that I had absolutely never heard of before I started, after Confidence

The fairly recent death of TV networks and specifically TV commercials has made a bunch of self-consciously modern stories from the sixties very dated all at once, like the emergence of cars and planes

As everyone who writes about Trollope says, an extremely strange effort from the clockwork novelist—seems to be an entire book written in the mildly funny register that he sometimes adopts for a page in the course of describing the physical traits of his hero + heroine. The hero here is convincingly besotted by advertising in a way that suggests low-engagement, hashtagged Bitcoin tweets would be his lot in life today

I try not to associate the art too strongly with the artist but it's impossible to read Charles Williams's novels without eventually thinking "OK, I've got to know exactly how weird he was."

I love this unnerving weirdo's books. (Rereading this one because I discovered it on Gutenberg.au)

So many thriller and mystery novels from this era take place in one house where every night they have to adjust their plan based on whatever happened before etc. It's a weird trope

Read "Raise High" last night as part of my Salinger reread. It's funny how much better these stories work when you are, apparently unlike Salinger, not totally certain of Seymour's divinity. Wonderfully written, very funny.

Have had this book for probably 15 years, am finally using it for something beyond trying to grasp how good guys like Dickey Pearce were before they figured box scores out.