October 2018 books read

  • The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim, 1922 – Re-read, always a favorite. Jonathan originally brought me this from a book give-away in around 1990, a copy where the title page simply attributed it to “by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden,” which I’d never heard of either. I didn’t expect much of it but fell in love with it, and when the movie came out just a year later I was chuffed that I wasn’t the only one.
  • At the Mountains of Madness (1936) and “The Color Out of Space” (1927) – HP Lovecraft, re-read after seeing the new original musical Moonlight on the Miskatonic at Smith, which was pretty great!
  • Le Domaine des Dieux – René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, 1971 – #17 in the Astérix books and one of my favorites. Re-read of course!
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson, 2003
  • Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition with Annotations – James Joyce, ed. John Wyse Jackson, 1995.
  • A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor, 1953 – quotes pulled, review tdb
  • The Door Into Summer – Robert Heinlein, 1957 – a favorite Heinlein re-read. Lots of comfort reading this month.

I’ve decided to add the occasional memorable article, especially if there’s a quote I want to remember.

    • The Atlantic, November 2018 –  Alexa, How Will You Change Us? by Judith Shulevitz: “If I have learned anything in my years of therapy, it is that the human psyche defaults to shallowness. We cling to our denials. It’s easier to pretend that deeper feelings don’t exist, because, of course, a lot of them are painful. What better way to avoid all that unpleasantness than to keep company with emotive entities unencumbered by actual emotions? But feelings don’t just go away like that. They have a way of making themselves known.”

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