Things I Read: October 2005

"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Collected Stories 1911-1937 (Edith Wharton)

800 pages of short stories. Mixture of WWI era, NY “society,” ghosts, European. I actually enjoyed these quite a bit. Author was from NY money and seems to be writing about the many and varied things she’d seen.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Where Angels Fear to Tread (E.M. Forster, 1905)

Lilia travels to Italy and marries penniless Gino; dies in childbirth within a year. Her brother (Philip) and sister (annoying Henrietta) and Ms. Caroline Abbott go to retrieve the child so it can have a proper English upbringing. Seems to lead to a Philip-Caroline romance but she goes for Gino, without plans to follow through. Henrietta persists in child retrieval. I liked the book well enough.