I have sorted out the theoretical framework of my paper as much as it's likely to ever be sorted out, and I've started my analysis of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, so now I really ought to go to bed. In spite of the tantalising world of book blogs I've been browsing through all afternoon, with their challenges and... well, mostly the challenges; I love making lists and I love making plans and I already have my own set of reading scheduled for this summer -- I'm going to do author studies of speculative fiction authors I used to be fond of & see how they hold up with my new critical appartuses (apparati?) and hopefully fall in love with the genre again. And I'm going to do some structured non-fiction reading about subjects that I'm interested, and I'm going to schedule both of these things so that during any two-week period I know what I'm reading, because otherwise I will be overwhelmed by all the possibilities and spend the summer unfocused and dismayed. So that is my plan, and I should probably avoid taking on any of the challenges I've come across and just enjoy the fact that there are other people out there in the world who, like me, feel the desire to structure & organise their reading, preferably as part of a community.
Also, I am excited to find that there are other human beings out there who overlap with my taste in books! I mean, I knew there had to be, or otherwise Virago & Persephone wouldn't exist, but it's still amazing to come across a post like this one by Danielle at A Work in Progress in which she lists not only one of my all-time favourite novels (The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson, which I did my first reread of during my trip to London last autumn), but also some of the critical work I've spent the last few years obsessing over. And that obsession was to good result, as I managed my best paper for my Women in 20th Century Literature class last semester by drawing on Humble to analyse a particular scene in Orlando.
But I digress... which is the point, actually; I'm excited and enthused and wanting to write about my own reading, which is as it should be. I long to tell you, gentle reader, about my love for E. M. Delafield and Stella Gibbons, my enormous pile of unread Rosamund Lehmann, my problematic relationship to Noel Streatfeild, and my surprised adoration for Jane Duncan. Plus there is much to be said about the Victorians; I'm sure that once I'm done with this paper I'll start thinking nice things about Braddon again.
But now, to bed.
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Hello--thanks so much for leaving comments on my blog. It is so nice to hear from other readers who share your (my!) interests! I'm fairly new to this particular period (interwar), though I've always 'enjoyed' reading books about WWI and WWII. I think it was my discovery of Persephone that really got me going on the authors who wrote during this period. Lately everything seems to connect (one book after another)--I read one and someone suggests another or the editor of the intro compares the book to something else. What a rich period when it comes to books. And I'm so happy to have come across those books of criticism! By the way I love the Victorians (and Edwardians) and The Woman in White is one of my very favorite books (have you read Armadale?). I'm reading ME Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret at the moment (and enjoying it greatly, though she totally reminds me of Wilkie Collins). I'm trying to finish E. von Arnim's The Enchanted April and then will finish the Ferguson book--it all of a sudden clicked, so I'm looking forward to getting back to it. And the books/authors you mention at the end I want to read as well! (I'm just a reader by the way, not a student--my degree is in Art History), so I'm just trying to work my way through it all on my own. Good luck with your paper and your summer reading projects!
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