Only 3 months left!

As we approach the end of the year it seems like a good idea to look at how far I have gotten with the 2024 goals I set for my reading life.

• I planned to read 10 books from my Classics Club list and I have read 6 so far. I may get through 4 more titles from this list before the year ends.
• I wanted to read at least 6 books from my Readers' Advisory Reading List and have not read a single one. This doesn't look promising, but it also doesn't seem impossible.
• I read 9 of the 35 books on my #nonficnov tbr list and my goal was to read at least 6 of them before November 2024 so this one is done.
• I wanted to complete the 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge at the Victorian level of 5 books and I have read 4 so far, but have only blogged about 2 and writing about the books is part of this challenge so I have work to do here. 
• I committed to the 2024 What's in a Name Challenge which requires 6 books. So far I have read one. 
• The Canadian Reading Challenge ended on July 1, 2024 and I was nowhere near to completing it. I have taken a break from this challenge for the current year. 
• I am not doing very well getting my owned-but-not-read shelf down to fewer than 100 books. It has hovered around the 130 mark most of the year. I need to both read from this shelf and stop adding to it.
• I have read 72 books so far this year so I should make it to my usual GoodReads goal of 100 books.
• Figure out where I left off with my Century of Books project. I have 3 years left in this project: 1901, 1903, and 1909. The goal was to figure out where I was, not to finish so that is a crossed off item.
• Continue posting a Book Report the first week of each month. So far so good on this one. 

I definitely have some reading to do if I am going to complete these challenges. Other than getting my owned-but-not-read shelf to fewer than 100 books--which is not going to happen in 3 months-- I think I can complete these goals. 

The Virginian

The Virginian 

by Owen Wister
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published in 1902 this story is set in Wyoming between1874 and 1890. It was the novel that inspired the westerns of Zane Grey and of Hollywood. It is told in both the first and the third person (so skillfully that you don't even notice the switches as you read) largely by a narrator who is never named. It is a romance, it is a character study, it is a social commentary, it is an adventure, and a bit of a mystery story all rolled into one.

“Has any botanist set down what the seed of love is? Has it anywhere been set down in how many ways this seed may be sown? In what various vessels of gossamer it can float across wide spaces? Or upon what different soils it can fall, and live unknown, and bide its time for blooming?”

This book counts toward the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, the TBR pile challenge, and it fills in a hole in my Century of Books project.

The Hollow

The Hollow 

by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“What made Lady Angkatell dangerous, he thought, was the fact that those intuitive, wild guesses of hers might be often right. With a careless (seemingly careless?) word she built up a picture - and if parts of the picture was right, wouldn't you, in spite of yourself, believe in the other half of the picture?...”

This was a very cleverly constructed Hercule Poirot mystery. There were quite a few characters involved in the plot and they were more completely drawn than is sometimes the case in Christie's novels. This novel was first published in 1946 and is the 26th Poirot story published. I knew exactly who the killer was about 1/3 of the way into the book. I was wrong. 

I am counting this toward the Cruisin' Through the Cozies Challenge as my "freebie"

Update on a Century of Books

At the end of 2020 I posted about a plan to read books that would complete my century of books (at least one title published in each year of the 20th century). In September 2021 I had 9 years left to cover.  Since then I have read: 

1904 - Esau and Jacob by Machado de Assis

1906 - Love Among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse

1912 - Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber

1913 - O Pioneers by Willa Cather 

That leaves me with 5 years for which I need to read books to finish out the century:

 

1901 - Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and The Crisis by Winston Churchill are possibilities, but I am not excited about either of them. Any suggestions?

1902 - The Virginian by Owen Wister is in my TBR pile.

1903 - The Ambassadors by Henry James is an option. I have to be in the right mood to read James though so this one may take a while to get to. It is also 500+ pages which doesn't help.

1909 - 3 Lives by Gertrude Stein is in my TBR pile,

1946 - Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty and Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers are both possibilities. I have a copy of the McCullers book on my shelf. 

I may be able to complete this project before the end of 2022, but am not going to commit to that at this point. 

Buttered Side Down

Buttered Side Down 

by Edna Ferber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories was first published in 1912 and I picked it up because I had never read any Edna Ferber and thought I should and because I needed a book from 1912 for my Century of Books project. The copy I borrowed from the library was published in 1912 which I thought was kind of cool. (It isn't the one pictured, GoodReads didn't have the edition I got). 

I really liked these stories. They are about the part of life that is typified by the expression that "toast always falls buttered side down." The voice of the author is very much present in the stories and I found that entertaining. Most of them start off telling you what kind of a story it will be and often commenting about the likely-hood of publishers accepting or rejecting it. Ferber begins the book by explaining that she knows nothing about New York, but knows that stories are always set there and that she is telling us this to save editors the trouble of continuing to read as the stories are about Chicago. The final story in the collection, "Where the Car Turns at 18th" was sad, but all the others were wry and witty and felt true. 

"I've found out one thing, and it's a great little lesson when you get it learned. Most of us are where we are because we belong there, and if we didn't we wouldn't be." (from "That Home-town Feeling."

I will definitely read more by Edna Ferber. This book counts toward the Back to the Classics Challenge (as a classic book of short stories).

Esau and Jacob

Esau and Jacob 

by Machado de Assis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third novel I have read by Machado de Assis. In college I read The Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas (Epitaph of a Small Winner is the English title) and Quincas Borba (which was called Philosopher or Dog? in English) and really enjoyed both. I liked the style of this novel which is one of his later novels (it was published in 1904). I felt like this story dragged a bit though. My recollection is that the earlier books had a similar style; the author jumps in regularly to comment on the story he is telling. A few quotes illustrate the style:

"They might not have the same opinions, and they might have the same likes ... From that to saying that both loved her was a comma; Pedro placed the period on the sentence." (p. 114)

"They had been to the theater with Aires one evening, killing time. You know this dragon. Everyone has given him the hardest blows they can; he kicks, expires, and revives. So it went, that night. I don't know which theater it was, nor which play, nor which genre. Whatever it was, the purpose was to kill time, and the three left him stretched out on the floor." (p. 192)

Dom Casmuro (published 1899) is the other major novel by this author and is on my TBR list.

Update on a Century of Books

At the end of 2020 I posted about a plan to read books that would complete my century of books (at least one title published in each year of the 20th century). At that point there were 18 years that I was missing. I have filled in some of those years since then. 

Earlier this year I did a massive organizing and weeding of my book collection and added all my owned-fiction (read or not) to Goodreads. This resulted in identifying  books that I had read for some of the missing years:

1910 - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
1915 - Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

1916 - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
1919 - Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

1974 - Black as He's Painted by Ngaio Marsh

During 2021 I have read some books published in years I was missing:

1907 - Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum

1911 - The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton

1917 - Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

1921 - Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

This leaves me with nine years still to be covered (books listed are possibilities for each year; the starred ones I have copies of):

1901 - Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter; The Crisis by Winston Churchill
1902 - The Virginian* by Owen Wister
1903 - The Ambassadors by Henry James

1904 - Esau and Jacob by Machado de Assis; The Golden Bowl by Henry James

1906 - Railway Children by E. Nesbit; Love Among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse
1909 - 3 Lives* by Gertrude Stein

1912 - Buttered Side Down (Short Stories) by Edna Ferber

1913 - O Pioneers* by Willa Cather; Swann's Way* by Marcel Proust 

1946 - Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty; Member of the Wedding* by Carson McCullers

I don't expect to read books for all the remaining years in the next few months, so this project will extend into 2022 and possibly beyond.

Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown 

by G.K. Chesterton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Chesterton wrote (according to Wikipedia) 53 short stories in which Father Brown appears, beginning with "The Blue Cross" in 1910. That story is one of the dozen included in this collection. The character of Father Brown may be familiar from televison as there was a Masterpiece Mystery series and a more recent TV series featuring him.

I liked some of these stories more than others: "The Blue Cross" and "The Queer Feet" were favorites. I liked all of them better than Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday.  Father Brown is a funny character, often behaving in an absurd way, but ultimately showing himself to be quite observant. I read somewhere that he is intuitive, as opposed to the deductive approach of Sherlock Holmes, but I don't agree with that. His solving of the puzzles put to him seem solidly based in the fact that he pays attention to what is around him (footsteps in snow, bullets in floorboards, etc.) instead of assuming (as the police in these stories often do) that he knows things. 

"At a sufficiently delicate sign, the police gathered round the large man to lead hims away; but their unobtrusiveness was somewhat staggered by the remarkable appearance of Father Brown, who was on his hands and knees on the carpet in the doorway, as if engaged in some kind of undignified prayers. Being a person utterly insensible to the social figure he cut, her remained in this posture, but turned a bright round face up at the company, presenting the appearance of a quadruped with a very comic human head." --"The Three Tools of Death"

This collection was first published in 1911 and gives me a book published that year for my Century of Books project. This title is on my Classics Club List.

A Century of Books

I have been tracking my books on GoodReads since 2008 and in that time I have read a book published in each year of the 20th century except for 18 years. I have read numerous books published in each year of the 21st century.  

During 2021 one of my reading goals is to try to fill in some of the years for which I have not read a book.  Listed below are the years I am missing and some possible titles for them. Any recommendations for me?

1901 - The Crisis - Winston Churchill

1902 - The Virginian - Owen Wister

1903 - The Ambassadors - Henry James

1904 - Esau and Jacob - Machado de Assis

1906 - Love Among the Chickens - P. G. Wodehouse

1907 

1909

1910 - The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

1911 - Innocence of Father Brown - G. K. Chesterton

1912 - Buttered Side Down (Short Stories) - Edna Ferber

1913 - Swann's Way - Marcel Proust 

1915 - Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

1916 - Chicago Poems - Carl Sandburg

1917 

1919 - The Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham

1921 - Crome Yellow - Aldous Huxley

1946 - Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty; Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers

1974 - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John le Carre