Why should I clean up when I could blog about my mess instead? Here's a short-title list of the books at my bedside. (And I certainly can't promise any reviews or summaries will be as pithy as some.)
Edmund Wilson. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Civil War (1962). The current book, in blue cloth on the top of the stack. Whenever Frederick Goddard Tuckerman and Albion W. Tourgee jostle for space in a text, you know I will be a happy man.
Michael Bond. Paddington Abroad (1961). In the yellow dust jacket. What is literature but a series of variations on a couple of simple formulae? In this case, the small, naive hero with a bent for literalism turns a mirror to the absurdities of social norms. Yeah, another childhood favorite eviscerated by sloppy analysis. Let's rewind: I love Paddington and hope to instill in my daughter a love for same.
Giles MacDonogh. A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de La Reyniere and the Almanach des Gourmands (1987). In pictorial dust-jacket on the top of the stack on the floor. "Five hours at table are a reasonable latitude when the company is numerous and the cheer exquisite."
Graves, Robert. Claudius the God (1935, MLE 1982). Below the MacDonogh. Awaiting the completion of
Graves, Robert. I, Claudius (1934, but a later MLE). In one of the piles. Wait, who just got killed? Distracted from this by Edmund Wilson (see above).
Mellen, Grenville. A Book of the United States . . . (1836). The sturdy buckram-bound volume below the MacDonogh and Graves. A pleasant almanac to dip into before bed. Indian mounds! Slavery! The sorry fate of New Madrid! I'm sorry, Jeff Tweedy, but Grenville Mellen and his host of unattributed contemporary sources got there first.
[to be continued for my own reference if for nothing else]
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