benwaugh, books read, 2009:

Hello; here's the list. I promise I will get to summarizing a few of them soon. If any of them arouse curiosity - let me know and I will get to them first:

1. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper
2. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho
3. Alexander Maria Lernet-Holenia: Count Luna:Two Tales of the Real and the Unreal: Baron Bagge and Count Luna
4. Nicholas Basbanes: A Gentle Madness
5. Donald Evans: Sonnets from the Patagonian
6. Donald Evans: Nine Poems From a Valetudinarium
7. Fyodor Sologub: Drops of Blood (The Created Legend, Part 1)
8. Mitchell S. Buck: Afterglow: Pastels of Greek Egypt, 69 B.C.
9. Maurice Sandoz: The Maze
10. Fadhil al-Azzawi: Cell Block Five
11. Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron
12. Walter De La Mare: Ding Dong Bell
13. Charles Baudelaire: Intimate Journals
14. Ezra Pound: How to Read
15. Vincent O'Sullivan: The Green Window
16. Charles Dickens: Bleak House
17. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
18. Beresford Egan: Pollen
19. Procopius: The Secret History
20. J.-K. Huysmans: The Dish of Spices
21. Roberto Bolano: Distant Star
22. Paul Bowles: Up Above the World
23. Ramon Del Valle-Inclan: Spring and Summer Sonatas
24. Denton Welch: In Youth is Pleasure
25. John Julius Norwich: Paradise of Cities: Venice In the 19th Century
26. Frederick Rolfe: The Venice Letters
27. Henry James: The Aspern Papers
28. Giacomo Leopardi: Pensieri
29. Dante Alghieri: The Divine Comedy
30. John Harwood: The Ghost Writer
31. Henry James: The Altar of the Dead
32. Henry James: The Friends of the Friends (a.k.a.: The Way It Came)
33. Walter De La Mare: Seaton's Aunt
34. S. E. Stenbock: Studies of Death
35. Léon Bloy: Tales
36. Henry James: The Figure in the Carpet
37. H. G. Wells: The Croquet Player
38. Walter De La Mare: All Hallows
39. Walter De La Mare: Out of the Deep
40. Walter De La Mare: The Looking Glass
41. Walter De La Mare: The Green Room
42. F. Marion Crawford: The Upper Berth
43. Gwendolyn Ranger Wormser: The Scarecrow
45. Thomas Burke: The Hollow Man
46. Frederick Rolfe: The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
47. Mary McCarthy: The Stones of Florence
48. Ross King: Brunelleschi's Dome
49. Petronius: The Satyricon
50. Wilkie Collins: The Haunted Hotel
51. Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Incredible list, Ben. Looking forward to reading your thoughts on the Baudelaire and the Donald EVans, and of course, what insight you can shed on Bleak House.

Welcome to the group, BTW!

I am very interested to know what you think of #25 (Paradise of Cities), which I own but have not read yet.

Paradise of Cities attempts, I think, to be a representation of Venice through the eyes of its famous (English and American typically) occupants. It is an entertaining series of narratives relating how various of these comported themselves in Venice (Whistler, loudly; Ruskin, anally; Byron phallically - and how! - etc.). The chapter on Fr. Rolfe would be worth the price of purchase for anyone not familiar with his story (A.J.A. Symons's The Quest for Corvo is still the most entertaining, if not the most thorough, account) - odder characters outside of fiction are not often met with.

The heap of chapters - much like, I suppose, Whistler's sheaf of Venetian etchings - captures a mood of passing idiosyncrasy, little sketches of queer and vanished consciousnesses - but Venice itself seems incidental, a mood lurking in the background (much of the chapter on Austen Henry Layard tracks his history in the middle east and in England, for example). To confess, I picked this up because I was daunted by the shear arid bulk of Norwich's History of Venice... which I hope to get to before the end of the year.

Thank you, Ben, for the description.

As they say in the Venice of the mid-west, Green Bay, you betcha. (If I forget everything else about POC, I will remember this one of Henry James's recorded descriptions of Venice: "The vomitorium of Boston")

Hey Ben, nice to see you here. You always have such interesting reading going on!

Re 2. A connection, it seems, between Norwich and Dickens' Mr Snagsby - both use the expression "not to put too fine a point upon it". Endearing in Snagsby.

HAh! really? Well spotted! Perhaps Norwich is really Mr Snagsby writing under a pseudonym?