BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE - SHEFFIELD

SHEFFIELD CITY CENTRE

A.S. BYATT

BRUCE CHATWIN

A.S. BYATT BOOKS

Series

Frederica
1. The Virgin in the Garden (1978)
2. Still Life (1985)
3. Babel Tower (1996)
4. A Whistling Woman (2002)
The Frederica Quartet (omnibus) (2003)


Novels
The Game (1967)
Possession (1990)
The Shadow of the Sun (1991)
The Biographer's Tale (2000)
The Children's Book (2009)


Collections
The Matisse Stories (1975)
Sugar (1987)
Passions of the Mind (1990)
Angels and Insects (1992)
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (1994)
Elementals (1998)
The Little Black Book of Stories (2003)


Series contributed to
Myths
15. Ragnarok (2011)

BRUCE CHATWIN BOOKS

Novels
The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980)
On the Black Hill (1982)
Utz (1988)


Non fiction
In Patagonia (1977)
The Songlines (1987)
What Am I Doing Here? (1989)
The Attractions of France (1993)
Far Journeys (1993)
The Morality of Things (1993)
Anatomy of Restlessness (1996)
Under the Sun (2012)

WHAT I WILL READ

I will also be reading The Children's Book. If I have time, I'll also read In Patagonia, but the way my reading year is going so far, I'm not counting on it.

I have a lovely Folio Society edition of In Patagonia, and I really hope to get to it this month.

Hmmm...since I'll be in Sheffield in May, I guess I can't get out of this one. I have 3 Byatts on the TBR: The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life and The Little Black Book of Stories. I read Possession many years ago, and enjoyed it, as I recall.

>9 kac522: I did think of you yesterday as I was putting up this one. I will certainly hope that we can meet in May.

I'm planning to reread Bruce Chatwin's essays What am I Doing Here, any Chatwin will be a reread, except the letters; and AS Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden, I acquired, but for some reason never read this quartet.

Nobody seems to have noticed Peacock & Vine, a charming little volume.

>12 dajashby: it is, I read t last year, and beautifully illustrated too.

>12 dajashby: Oooh, I love William Morris...I will need to find a copy of Peacock and Vine.

>10 PaulCranswick: Paul, are there any places of significance related to these authors (and Drabble) that would be worth visiting in Sheffield?

I've finished Byatt's Ragnarok, which was kind of boring. There's a barely there framing story about a "thin child" during WWII reading a book about the Norse gods but the book's little more than thumbnail tellings of some myths.

I haven't been participating this year but I have both The Children's Book and Possession on the TBR shelves. Maybe I can shoehorn one of them in....

>11 Caroline_McElwee: hoping to get to one of these at least this month, but feeling the sand slide through the timer.

I started In Patagonia last night, and I'm charmed.

I've finished In Patagonia. It took longer than I expected because it kept putting me to sleep.

Last night I finished Byatt's Angels and Insects, a collection of two essentially unrelated novellas. The first novella, "Morpho Eugenia," was a well-crafted tale of the similarities between human and insect behavior; "The Conjugal Angel" was a nearly incomprehensible mess about Spiritualists and Tennyson.

I am still working my way through Byatt's The Biographer's Tale, another book without chapters, argh!

I picked up an interesting little book at the library by Byatt: Peacock & Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny, a short history of these designers. Lovely illustrations, and kind of a "compare & contrast" history of the 2 men, one in England, the other in Italy.

Still reading, in spurts, In Patagonia.

I finished Bruce Chatwin's The Viceroy of Ouidah at the end of May. Excellent read though fairly grisly at times.