October Wrapup

October was the week of the 1949 Club and the Nobel Prize announcement. (Anne Carson!) Those two things significantly colored my reading.

Mysteries

Dorothy Lee Sayers/Clouds of Witness

Dorothy Lee Sayers/Lord Peter Views the Body

 

I continue to enjoy my read-through of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories. Clouds of Witness is a novel, and Lord Peter Views the Body are stories. I liked the novel better, but that may just be me. 

 

Ed McBain/Killer's Choice

Ed McBain/The Mugger 

 

Both fairly early 87th Precinct mysteries. Pretty fun. And when you need a book that fits in a pocket...

 

Ellery Queen/The Tragedy of Y

 

More here.

 

Fiction

 

Alvaro Enrigue/You Dreamed of Empires 

 

Enrigue is a contemporary Mexican novelist (b. 1969); this is (I believe) still his most recent novel (2022, 2024 in English). It's Cortes and Moctezuma in Mexico City in 1519. I'm not really certain what I think--it takes a rather surreal turn at the end--but I'll try another novel by him at some point.

 

Alejo Carpentier/The Kingdom of This World

 

A 1949 Club book discussed here. I thought this was pretty great. 

 

Abbe Prévost/Manon Lescaut

 

A fairly famous French novel of 1731, made into an opera three times at least. He's roughly contemporary with Defoe, and he's nowhere near as good? At least that's what I thought. I read this now because it was a clue in Clouds of Witness. 😉

 

Poetry

 

Douglas Dunn/Elegies

 

Dunn died last month and I posted a poem from his book of elegies for the death of his first wife. 

 

Christopher Fry/The Lady's Not For Burning

T. S. Eliot/The Cocktail Party

 

English verse drama in 1949. I was going to do something with for the Club, but didn't. I was kind of disappointed in both. The Cocktail Party starts out so well, a drawing room comedy, before we discover that the lives of our characters are controlled by well-meaning cabal of all-powerful psychologist-like figures. Weird. The Lady's Not For Burning is a comedy, set in witch-burning times. Maybe it would be funnier on stage?

 

Ogden Nash/Versus

 

A reread, also from 1949.  It's full of fun stuff.

 

Anne Carson

 

Carson/Autobiography of Red

Carson/H of H Playbook

Carson/Wrong Norma

Carson/Eros the Bittersweet

I was already a fan, but that she won the Nobel prize sent me off to read/reread several of her books. I've read one other this month and I've got a couple of others I want to reread. Autobiography of Red is a verse novel; H of H Playbook, verse drama; Wrong Norma, prose poems (I suppose); and Eros the Bittersweet, literary criticism. Though genre may not be that helpful a concept with Anne Carson.

 

Non-Fiction

 

W. E. B. Du Bois/The Autobiography

 

My spin book, which I finished early in the month. Interesting, not his best, but well worth reading. I'm still working on a post.

 

Quinn Slobodian/Hayek's Bastards

 

The intellectual afterlife of Friedrich Hayek. Slobodian is not a fan. Right-wing economics, Milton Friedman being the best-known figure. The Mount Pelerin Society.

 

Ashley Kahn/Days of Miracle and Wonder

 

About Paul Simon's Graceland album, how it was put together, and the controversy it caused. There was a cultural boycott of South Africa on at the time: did working with black South African musicians, even if they didn't perform in South Africa, violate the boycott? I think the album's great, and so does Kahn, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. A 2026 release.

 

The books still around the house:

 

 

Have you read, are you considering Anne Carson? Does the Nobel Prize in Literature announcement affect your reading in general?