I just read Jude. I like it. Hardy, as always, embraces tragedy and his characters failure to break from societal norms and find happiness

Agreed. I thought it would be deeply relevant to the story but was not.

I am embarking in those presently. Thanks.

Yes. All that was in the background of the story. I had just gotten back from a two week driving and hiking tour of the area so I was familiar with many things she described. Especially Canyon de Chelle.

I am just about to start that

I organize by fiction, history, science etc. Then for fiction by genre and time period. Then by author name.

Afterwards, when I go away for a couple days, my wife then completely reorders by size and color for decorative purposes.

A lot of famous people get novels published not because the novels are good, but because they are famous. They also have well compensated professional editors or even ghost writers to help them turn their pile of crap fiction into something at least publishable with a straight face.

Many lawyers become writers - a few quite famous.

Chomsky came into his own during the protest movements of the Vietnam War - he developed anti-capitalist, anti-imperialists ideology (which was big back then) and has made the facts fit his ideology ever since.

I think she is naive at the beginning with no concept of how the world works. Next to being hot, that is probably the largest mitigating factor to her general behavior.

Wesley from Star Trek Next Generation.

Such collections were meant to be not only something to read but to show off on your shelves - that’s why they are so nicely bound. I doubt they ever made a paperback version of the collection since it was a made to be shown.

Putin has probably put out a few papers on this too.

Yes Abebooks.

As they say, write what you know.

It has been a while, but I read it. It was very atmospheric and melancholy. Enjoyed it.

Here is a controversial one - James Joyce.

I have heard college lecturers suggest that Ulysses (and some other Joyce and modernist texts) may not be in the “canon” in a generation because it was written to be obscure for a specific intellectual audience and never had a popular readership. It was canonized almost immediately by the literary professionals of the day (which were the only ones who could attempt to understand it and who, let’s face it, Joyce was attempting to impress/confound).

A generation from now there will have even less popular readership and the points and historical references he was trying to make will have become so obscure that only those who purposely study his book like some biblical text will understand it.

Not sure whether this view is correct, but I certainly get it. If no-one reads a text (and those who do generally don’t understand it), how does it remain relevant?

The books prior to modernism (WWI) that are part of the cannon (I know what is or is not “canon” is controversial but I am not sure how else to describe classics that are still relevant) all had wide popularity in their day - and most are still wonderful to read. Starting around 1900 English literature became a university study - so the professors and literary elite of the day formed the “cannon.” Around this time literary modernism came into vogue and some (certainly not all) of the texts written at that time were simply dropped into the canon without ever having been popular with the public. So it’s an interesting argument - all texts prior to modernism (from Iliad to Middlemarch) had been blessed by the public - while afterwards some texts were simply anointed by the elite and dropped into the classroom - some of James Joyce works being part of them. Will that stand for long?

It’s an interesting and controversial argument for Joyce and some others basically being overrated.

Now let’s hear the blowback from the modernist fans.

Anything by George Eliot.

Sanctuary is easy prose to read, but a strange story that largely left me wondering what the point was. It seems to be a modern, southern gothic version of the Greek myth of Persephone with a bit of Freud thrown in.

Which did you like the best?