Patrick > Recent Status Updates

A proto-modern text: The book considering itself, the author considering himself.

Splendid, full, unhurried.

The chapter on the Cocos Islands, now an external territory of Australia, was very interesting indeed.

Thanks to all who have accepted my Friend requests. If I asked you, I think highly of your comments! (Which can’t be said for most of what I see here, but I’ll try to let that pass… 🙂 .)

Glasgow’s only novel set outside Virginia, in NYC. People might think “Edith Wharton”, but in fact Wharton was writing her first full-length New York novel, The House of Mirth, simultaneously with Glasgow’s work on this one. The House of Mirth was published in mid-October 1905, The Wheel of Life in early January 1906.

A joy to read, and certainly a Great American Novel. I undoubtedly believe that the book is more famous than it actually is, because I’ve read John Leggett’s wonderful joint biography of Ross Lockridge and Tom Heggen, and I’m well up on the granular literary history of that period.

The Reign of Law is also a novel of “faith and doubt”, a category that has had plenty of attention in the UK Victorian context, perhaps less in the American.

I first read this “Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields” many decades ago, and am returning to it now as part of my deep dive into American local color literature. It is a Bildungsroman as much about education as it is about hemp (although it is good to be reminded of that crop’s importance in Kentucky history).

Starting this one because I recently watched the Randolph Scott film version.

You had me at “London waterfront”.

While allowing that there is darkness right from the start of the Oz series - those Wicked Witches weren’t messing around - still, this fourth installment is pretty scary, kids. The vegetable people the Mangaboos are an unsettling conception.

Since most of my friends here at Goodreads are heavy consumers of history, I don’t want to wait until I finish to recommend this very clear and well-written biography of a fascinating figure in American military history.

I came to this volume for Michael Drayton’s Idea cycle, which includes the great sonnet Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part. I have now read Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa, also very good, and will start William Smith’s Chloris. All three of the cycles contain about 50-60 sonnets.

Often recommended as a pioneering exercise in psychogeography, this book seemed like a good follow-up to Arthur Ransome’s Bohemia in London, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I just started this book, but I am already a little doubtful because the “I” / “We” voice so prevalent in contemporary non-fiction is dominant, and that can quickly become tiresome. Michael Orthofer wrote about this phenomenon recently at The Literary Saloon.

The theme of the book is irresistible, similar to Hans Otto Meissner’s Unknown Europe, but the treatments of the places are not exactly in-depth. I was reading the chapters about the Isles of Scilly last night.

Since I just finished Dominic Pacyga’s biography of Chicago, I thought I’d look for similar books about other Midwestern cities, and - voilà! This was available in my Scribd subscription.

Can general updates be used as a kind of blog for those of us Goodreads users who aren’t “authors”? Of course, only friends and followers would see the posts.

It was McHenry’s birthday the other day (November 16), so I went scouting for a biography because I LOVE reading about the Founding Fathers. McHenry was an attendee at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, representing Maryland, and signed the final document. He also served as Secretary of War under Washington and Adams.

As when I read the Robin Buss translation of The Count of Monte Cristo, I wanted to make sure that I read Les Misérables in an acclaimed and unabridged modern translation, and this Julie Rose is the ticket.

Although this is Glasgow’s only novel set outside Virginia, already in the opening chapters there is a Virginia connection. The introduction of the key characters in these chapters is very well-done.