Mailox Monday: a New Biogragraphy of Evelyn Waugh

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

One new book came into my house last week that looks great:



Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited by Philip Eade. 50 years after Waugh's death, this new biography draws on previously unseen primary sources for a fresh look at one of the 20th Century's most fascinating authors.

Book Beginning: Sensing Light by Mark A. Jacobson

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




MY BOOK BEGINNING

Kevin Bartholomew was writing medication orders in the residents' room, a den of tattered couches and rickety folding chairs cluttered with the detritus of take-out food delivered from local ethnic restaurants. 

Sensing Light by Mark A. Jacobson. This is the story of three doctors working in San Francisco at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The author drew on his own experience as an intern in 1981 at San Francisco General Hospital, shortly after the CDC first reported a mysterious disease killing gay men.

List: Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women

In response to the publication of the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation in which she discussed the relatively few number of books written by women that made it to the Modern Library’s list.

She also included a list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women, compiled from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” who Jong solicited directly and participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The results, while not scientific, would provide for some good reading. The list is in order of the number of votes received.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. As always, if anyone has undertaken to read all the books on this list, I am happy to post a link to your progress reports. Just leave a comment with the link address.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Fanny by Erica Jong

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Her First American by Lore Segal

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

Anya by Susan Fromberg Shaeffer

Trust by Cynthia Ozick

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here)

The Group by Mary McCarthy

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here)

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner)

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here)

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here)

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
 
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here)

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (tried, gave up)

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer


NOTE

Updated on June 27, 2019.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with your links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

Teaser Tuesday: Grandma Says: Wake Up, World!

I have this masculine consciousness in my body, the men have the women's consciousness, and it needs to balance. The creator said He made us just like Him, so the Creator is man/woman, Grandfather/Grandmother.

-- Grandma Says: Wake Up, World! by Taowhywee, Agnes Baker Pilgrim, published by Blackstone Publishing.

Agnes Baker Pilgrim is a Native American spiritual elder who is the oldest living member of the Takelma Tribe of Oregon. This is a collection of "Grandma Aggie's "wisdom, wit, advice, and stories" told in her own voice.

The audiobook is part of Blackstone Audio's The Legacy Of The First Nation, Voices of a Generation Series. The book is also available in paperback and a Kindle edition.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Britannia Edition

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I've been on a Brexit inspired book buying spree and have a mountain of used books to show for it. With the exception of the P.D. James mystery from this century, all the books were published in the middle of the last, mostly in the 1950s and '60s.

Starting with the most recently published and working backwards:



The Lighthouse by P.D. James, her 13th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (2005)



Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch (1976)



The Moon's a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses, two volumes of his autobiography reprinted together (1972; 1975)



The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens, which won the Booker Prize (1969)



The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch (1968)



The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch (1964)



The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch (1963)



The Old Men at the Zoo by Andgus Wilson, which is on Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels (1961)



The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay (1956)



Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson (1956)



Such Darling Dodos, short stories by Angus Wilson (1950)



England, Their England by A.G. Macdonell (1933)



Lady into Fox by David Garnett, which won the James Tait Black Prize (1922)