John Crowley, Beasts (1976)

Crowley, of course, is the author of the sublime Little, Big and the flawed but fascinating Ægypt cycle. Little, Big is, in fact, the author's fourth novel; sedulous readers may recall that some time ago I attempted his first, The Deep, and that that did not go so well, which put me off from reading more for the time being.

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Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile (1937)

I read this novel because there's a student I get on really well with, a French guy. He wasn't the first student I've had to tell me they liked Agatha Christie, but he WAS the first to actually offer to loan me a book. Not my usual type of thing (to the extent that I can be said to have a “type of thing,”) but I thought it would be good for horizon-broadening purposes (Christie is one of the most popular authors ever, after all), and also to discuss with him later. And that is how it came to be that I read Death on the Nile.

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Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

So I knew Russell Hoban (okay, I didn't know I knew him, but you know) as a prolific author of children's books, notably the Frances series, about an anthropomorphic badger. However, he also wrote novels, it turns out, of which this is the best-known and regarded.

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Bolesław Prus, Emancipated Women (1894)

So I've really never written about me'n'Bolesław on this blog? Well, I guess the main Prus times were before I had this blog. AS GOOD A TIME AS ANY.  LONG BLOG ENTRY ALERT.

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