June 2019 – A Celebration of Reading

images Looking back over last month’s collection of suggested reading I am struck by the high number of titles I want to see on in personal reading pool without too much delay. This brings up a perpetual problem in my reading plans.

There are, perhaps, four major themes in my reading which are currently demanding to receive the greatest part of my attention. Right now I am happily reading one detective story after another, always with a sense of fun and entertainment, but never without a sense of sacrificing the last months and years left to me to less than enlightening literature. So maybe I need to concentrate on classical novels for a while: all those Victorians that once were societies entertainments but now are fodder for university study. Continue reading “Forty Mike Shaynes Equals Two George Eliots” →

I confessed recently that I have an uncontrollable urge to read a mess of detective fiction. I recognize several strong influences, any one of which might boost Mickey Spillane ahead of Henry James on my short-term reading lists. But there are two facts that I need to recognize before I go full-out Peter Whimsey: first, I never have abandoned the fun of mystery stories like I have the tedium of science fiction (look at my reading lists: there’s a mystery or two almost every month), and second, there is so many examples of mystery or detective fiction available and being written every day — so many that no one, let alone I, would ever hope to read them all.

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