I suggest you revise thread title to Reading is a task or Reading is a matter of fulfilling obligations or Reading is ideally a matter of adhering to my slightly strange notions.

The Day of St Anthony’s Fire, John G. Fuller.

You couldn’t decide. You remembered hearing about a passage about indecision. You then wanted the book with that passage. Nothing remotely unusual in that. (And neither is it remotely like the time I was in a bookshop and a large book in the ‘art’ section showed that it chose me by materialisng in my shopping bag. Now that was unusual.)

I don’t know would this be of interest to you but I heard an interesting interview with a German singer this week and much of it is her account of the conversations she had with Dietrich: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22323263/

Signature Strengths edited by Boy Vereecken has pastiches of novels from 4 genres by 4 authors; all are well over the top, a couple of them hilariously so. (I think the bored readers of genre books though were the authors–one a magazine editor who too often dipped into the slush pile–who were, to all appearances even more frustrated than bored.)

Why, indeed: Despite the sub-head on linked piece Nalini Singh is pitching her books, not making a case for NZ noir.

I read little crime fiction but I’m very keen the books I’ve read by Chad Taylor, another New Zealand crime writer. I don’t know if they have all of whatever traits are considered indicative of noir–Departure Lounge mightn’t have any of them–but they all have criminal protagonists and are atmospheric and bleak and good.

I think your first impulse was the right one and I think you know it was, given that you still want to give it away. And it’s refreshing that you want to share the fun you got from reading it by passing it on to others. Don’t let your mother guilt you out of doing what you intended; you might stifle any further objection with something like, ‘But mom, I loved it so much it seemed unfair to keep it for myself’. If she still objects, wait until your back is turned to her before rolling your eyes unless she’s carping outright.

TIL that the Iliad and Macbeth have been highly-regarded because they were products of a particular economic system or social structure or exploitation or because the high-regarders of them are or something like that?

Yes, as a child slightly younger than that I read books over & over just as, when a still younger child, I demanded to be told the same stories over & over. I’ve assumed this was because I found the familiar reassuring; possibly most chidren do.

I’m surprised that some posters agree that he wouldn’t be read today because of changed tastes. Not to mention the lack of monster trucks.

Off the top of my head I’d say that many readers aren’t willing to indulge in the leisurely way of reading (or listening: not that long ago that people would sit & listen to people reading from books in RL) nor devote the prolonged attention that earlier readers/listeners did. I doubt that tastes have changed, though, and would guess that the sort of people who read genre stuff would once have been reading lurid crime stories in newspapers rather than C&P and romantic tales of brave idealistic warriors instead of Don Quixote.

Your funniest take on books yet; thanks for continuing to post.

Actually, given what you say I intend to look into Garrett (was that a pseudonym? ‘Garrett’ doesn’t sound remotely Portuguese) and his play.

How idiotic. For centuries it was thought Shakespeare couldn’t have written such good plays because he was only a pleb. Now it’s thought by people who never saw him that he couldn’t have looked that way because he wrote such good plays.

Articles like this one have absolutely nothing worthy of attention beyond the clickbait titles.

Fair play to you though OP for not linking to a paywall.

I’m a lover of his writing for both what it says and the way it’s said. To me, Thoreau is the best writer. Or prose stylist, if you must.

Relevant to some of the other replies–yes, the writing in his journals is often wonderful but much of it is solely descriptive observations of local plant life. If you’re interested in them but not up to that try The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals ed. Odell Shepard for a start, as it’s a very good selection of passages from it.

As well, if you’re already familiar with him then you might want to keep an eye out for The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, ed. Walter Harding. Not only does it dispel the notion that Thoreau was asocial but it has some unexecellable writing: the magnificent passage beginning ‘Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round . . . .’ is as I discovered many years after first coming across it from one of his letters.

Screw that, I wrote a review once and did I get an email from Sappho thanking me for writing it? in a pig’s eye I did. If it was feedback she was yearning for she had a funny way of showing it,

I first read title of OP as ‘Name a fictional couple in which you believe’. And I’ll reply to that instead: Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. The Bridges don’t fit into any of those categories but then nor do most RL couples, and Connell’s focus isn’t on that sort of thing but still. Good books usually both in one volume.

Ceci n’est pas un livre.

‘Meaningfully’ long ago?–If a few decades is long ago then the first book that came to mind was Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter