"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))

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Light That Failed (Rudyard Kipling, 1890)

I was interested in reading this after working through this biography of Kipling.

Per the biography, the knock on Kipling was that his short stories were amusing and clever, but he never really could pull off a full-length novel. This book was one of his first attempts to do so - and it is a dud. I wouldn't have read all the way through except for the interest in Kipling generated by the biography.

It really does track his boyhood experience in a foster home in the early stages. Uses an artist instead of a writer to stand in for Kipling. All the jolly good banter among the boys is represented.

I dog-ear pages when something strikes me as memorable or interesting. No dog-eared pages in this one.

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