The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903–04) ****
Unlike most weary franchise revivals, Holmes' reluctant resurrection is as good as the originals, meaning another mixed batch that starts out strong until the author exhausts the good ideas he's had in the interrim and starts to telegram it in before deciding to call it a day again, for real this time, definitely.
Reminisces of Sherlock Holmes (1908–13) ****
The series enters its prestige specials era. With just one story every year or so, there's more pressure to be worth the wait and most fare admirably, dabbling in macabre horror and dark comedy to keep things impressively varied after so long.
The Iliad, Books I–II (~800 BC) *
I've never really been interested in getting the bloody preamble to the classic sea shanty, and even a quaint rhyming translation didn't make it much more palatable. It didn't help my motivation that my suspiciously cheap edition turned out to be a misprint with 48 missing pages in the middle, but I probably wouldn't ever have made it that far anyway.
Grim New World survivalist folk tale.
Charles Brockden Brown, Somnambulism (1805) ***
A classic of unreliable narration, though you might need that pointing out if you started to nod off there.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (1819) ****
A fun and endlessly-antholigible satirical time-travel fairy tale, but it's only here in place of the more obvious candidate to make some flimsy point.
John Neal, Idiosyncrasies (1843) **
Maybe this is how it feels to be drafted to the jury for the absolute worst.
George Lippard, From The Quaker City: or, The Monks of Monk Hall (1844) ***
Delightfully morbid reminiscence of a good, clean hanging.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Skeleton in Armor (1841) ****
If we'd done this morbid speculative archaeological poem at school, I might not have been put off the medium for decades.
James Fenimore Cooper, From The Prairie (1827) **
The sort of thing pop culture reviewers would compare gritty neowestern TV to if they were better read, or just cheating with a curated anthology.
Henry Clay Lewis, A Struggle for Life (1843) ****
Two sorry sods share an eventful night in the swamp.
Edgar Allan Poe, Five Poems: The Raven / The City in the Sea / Ulalume / Annabel Lee / Dream-Land (1844–49) *****
Insecurity saw me skip Poe's poems previously when going through the tall tales. I'll have to remedy that if this fine selection is representative of the whole and not just the haunting hits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alice Doane's Appeal / Young Goodman Brown (1835) ****
Witch holocaust guilt and a presumably unintended celebration of the blasphemous melting pot.
Herman Melville, The Bell Tower (1855) ****
A clockwork Frankenstein in miniature, elevated by European pomp.
Alice Cary, The Wildermings (1852) ***
Gentle churchyard ambient.
Louisa May Alcott, Behind a Mask: or, A Woman's Power (1866) ***
The devious revelations just about justify reprinting the short novel in full, but I still would've rather spent those pages on assorted weird tales.
Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Amber Gods (1863) *
Self-absorbed horticultural gothic.
Emily Dickinson, Eight Poems (1858–77?) **
Popping our head into her attic room occasionally to find she's still going on and on. Your tea's getting cold.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) *****
Too clever for me sometimes, but containing some of the best short stories in existence and I'm fully on board with the laid-back approach to summarising the best bits of books you can't be bothered to write.
Faves: 'The Library of Babel,' 'The Garden of Forking Paths.'
Artifices (1944) ****
More digestible inversions, efficient labyrinths and thought-provoking proofs of the power of literature, even when he's just making it up.
Faves: 'Death and the Compass,' 'The Secret Miracle.'
Songs of Innocence (1789) ***
I already read enough archaic nursery rhymes in the day job, but I thought these naive illustrated ditties might help me to get into the spirit of my first rural springtime since childhood. They're lacking without their grimmer counterparts, but those can wait until the harsh winter.
