For the most recent issue of The BookBrowse Review, reviewers chose books that were published pre-2000, including works by James Baldwin, Patricia Highsmith, and Toni Morrison. Are there any books in the issue that you haven’t read before that you’re considering reading now? Did you enjoy reading these reviews of older books?
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I found the reviews of these older publication books to be most valuable. I was surprised that I was not familiar with Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and wanted to read it for the book club discussion but just couldn’t get my hands on a copy in time. As we all know, there are far too many books to keep up with in the course of any given period of time so naturally some titles will slip through the cracks. I appreciated the retrospective.
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I’m considering reading some of the lesser-known titles I wasn’t previously familiar with: A Sand County Almanac, du Maurier’s The Breakthrough, and Dostoyevsky’s White Nights. “[E]ven in my dreams I never guessed that I would ever talk with a woman” (quoted in the review) has to be the most quintessentially Dostoevsky thing that a Dostoevsky protagonist has ever said!
I’m also glad there are discussions coinciding with some of the e-zine coverage and am considering reading Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work (which is not in this e-zine but an upcoming discussion).
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@elisabeth The Breakthrough and White Nights are the two that looked the most interesting to me. I’m hoping to have time to take a look at them sometime soon - they’re both super short.
I had read The Bluest Eye some time ago (like, 20 or 30 years back) but didn’t remember it at all. It definitely had an impact on me; it’s one of the few novels I’ve read recently that I actually took something away from.
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@Sunny you still have time! The discussion doesn’t open until next Thursday, and it’ll be open for several weeks after that. It’s another very short work, and it’s amazing how much power Morrison packs into just a few pages.
Definitely want to read The Bluest Eye. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None also got added to my list.
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Thanks Kim. I will be keeping fingers crossed that my digital copy arrives soon from the library. Oh now that I think of it, I don’t believe I actually signed up for that discussion because I wasn’t sure I’d get the copy in time to get it read. Just gonna take it a day at a time I guess.
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@Jill_Mercier have you not read And Then There Were None or seen the movie? I’ve both read the book & seen the flick many times. So good! If you’re not familiar with the mystery, you are in for such a treat! There’s a reason it’s one of the top-selling books of all time. It’s one of the few I can absolutely say I’d like to be able to read again for the first time.
Given your comments (especially about rereading!), I’m definitely going to move this book up to the on my list and will pick this book up at my local library when I return the books I checked out this weekend.
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