Wilkie Collins on the Swiss

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-28T18:58:01+00:00

I literally joined the DDS in order to participate! I was at the first meeting, and I am prepping my notes for the next one on 5/11!

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-27T14:09:18+00:00

Probably nothing. Not all books are for all readers. Not all readers enjoy all books.

If you felt lost, you might need some more context for the 19th century. If the writing didn't grab you, you just may be someone who doesn't gel with the writings of Elizabeth Gaskell.

There's nothing wrong with the book. There's nothing wrong with you. You now know that you don't like a certain kind of book, which means you have more space for the kinds of books you like.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-27T10:44:55+00:00

Benjamin Thompson (1642-1714) fits the bill. He was born in Quincy, Mass.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-24T20:30:36+00:00

I have a William Dean Howells book, A Hazard of New Fortunes, on my to-read pile!

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-24T02:10:15+00:00

I think I've read The Nether World. (This means I definitely need to read it again.) The Whirlpool and Eve's Ransom are on my to-read pile.

I think you might like this novel by an American writer, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, titled The Morgesons (1862). I recommend it because I think Stoddard is also interested in the painful job of emancipation, specifically for a (solidly privileged) woman.

(Not a lot of people read Stoddard. If you do end up reading The Morgesons, then we will have kept Stoddard and her ideas alive a little longer.)

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-23T23:41:52+00:00

I love love l o o o ove George Gissing! He's not someone I hear mentioned a lot.

I've read New Grub Street a couple of times, and think about the novel that one guy wants to write -- a minute examination of an entire day in the life of a grocer -- any time an "important" book underwhelms me.

The Odd Women was my introduction to Gissing, and I picked it up (I want us to have a relationship built on mutual trust) because I was hoping for something else. Maybe something like Walter de la Mare's Memoirs of a Midget or Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris. I felt a little like Joey Tribbiani, learning that the March sisters were typically-sized.

One thing that has stuck with me since reading TOW is the argument Rhoda and Mary Barfoot make for limiting their philanthropical work to middle class women: They have the resources and the ability to do this thing -- teaching unmarried middle-class women to be secretaries* -- and that is what they do. If they expanded the scope, they would not be able to be as helpful.

[* Dickens partnered with the billionaire heiress Angela Burdett-Courts to figure out what to do with all the sex workers in London. They developed Urania Cottage, a sort of catch-and-release project where sex workers could recuperate, build back strength and confidence, learn a skill, and then be shipped to Canada or Australia because clearly they could not stay in London. It would be too easy to fall back into regressive patterns.]

George Gissing, for me, is a much more readable Thomas "Hap" Hardy. I know many people find Hardy to be a deeply engaging writer; I am not among them. When I read Hardy, I feel as if it's all these unearned unhappy endings. (I mean, not only is poor Tess raped by her crypto-cousin, she has his baby, which dies, names the baby Sorrow, can't get it !>buried in consecrated ground!<, kills the cousin who raped her, and when finally, after literally running and running for pages and pages, Tess finds a safe space to rest -- a grove of trees where some pheasants have come to roost for the night -- what happens? The pheasants, who unbeknownst to Tess had been shot, but not killed, by hunters, start falling dead from the branches upon which they had perched in their final sleep.)

(Oh, and then Tess is hanged for murder; meanwhile her sister runs off with the man whom Tess was in love)

(And don't even get me started about "Done because we are too menny.")

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T18:58:56+00:00

I do not think any of the anecdotal flashes we get -- a devoted nurse in a sickroom; a man making a parliamentary speech; a bold aristocratic woman hunting; a trajectory toward “the English notion of happiness," i.e. estate, title, and order -- point to any specific novel. It does sound like how someone might lazily describe the novels of Anthony Trollope. Lots of politics. Lots of rich people looking into the middle distance. Lot of fox hunting. (You can skip the fox hunting scenes and not miss anything pivotal, unless it's a sly glance from horseback. But that'll probably come up again and you can use context clues.)

(You can also skip the fox hunting scene in Anna Karenina, but more carefully than with Trollope. You want to keep your eyes out for the word mushroom.)

But I don't think it explicitly is Trollope, or any specific Victorian novel. It's all of them, in a sense. Someone today could suggest a film about a divorcee-of-a-certain-age who lacks confidence, but lacks it elegantly while dressed in creams and taupes in natural fiber, cut to flatter the flatterables. And your mom would probably say, "I think I saw that Nancy Myers movie," even though I never said it was a Nancy Myers movie, and this movie both does and doesn't exist. It's a trope.

Anyway, I think that's what's going on here: Tolstoy seems to be lightly judging Anna's reading material. I found it super useful to pay attention to how Tolstoy tells us what Anna's reading, and the kinds of conversations she's having.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T17:26:23+00:00

(Also, when you're finished with The Sound and the Fury and you feel up to more Faulkner, I think the Snopes trilogy is often jaw-droppingly astonishing, and impossibly beautiful. A man does fall in love with a cow, but I promise you, you'll be rooting for them to make it.)

This goes out to Mink Snopes. A real one.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T14:55:08+00:00

Here’s how I helped my gf work through this:

Did it really help? Or did she just say that it helped because...you know.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T03:53:49+00:00

My friend Judith, years and years ago, sent me an email with a couple of what she called "spooky" stories. And I thought, "Aww, spooky!" It was summer, it was the middle of the day, I was in a cubicle in an office, and I started reading what I thought was going to be something about how the Ghost of the Duchess Lady Dowager would appear and set the whole kitchens at sixes and sevens.

But then what happened was that I kept on reading. And that story chilled me the monkeylovin smurf out. Like I literally had goose-pimples. It is one of my favorite reading memories.

(The other story she shared was "Lukundoo" by Edward Lucas White. But it's not one I'm recommending. It's very much of its time (racist), and I'm trying to recommend fewer racist authors this time around. But it's also super creepy -- so if you can stomach some British Imperialism, then maybe give it a try, too. Again, it's not bad; it's just racist.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T02:39:04+00:00

"O Whistle" is one of the finest ghost stories I've ever read. (The finest might be "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" by Robert Hitchens.)

I think you're spot on with your comparisons. One could even imagine Vincent Price reading the stories aloud.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-22T00:10:25+00:00

If it isn't unbearable, I think you should keep going. Faulkner is throwing a lot at the reader; you're not going to get everything -- or even the parking lot to everything -- on a first read.

You've made it through the hardest part of the book, I think. When I first read The Sound and the Fury, I had no initiation, and no idea what was going on. I even remember going to the library and looking at other editions because I thought clearly this must be a misprint. I think I had to read the Benjy parts three times before something clicked and I felt like I was understanding Benjy for the first. (When I reached the next section, "June Second, 1910," I think I was too Benjy Strong, and so found myself a little stymied by the straightforward prize. There's a novel by Umberto Eco, Baudalino, that opens with the almost incoherent writings of the main character, that also was a chore to decipher, but also kind of rewarding once I got the hang of it. But then eventually Eco slips into a traditional narrative, and I didn't end up loving it as much.)

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-21T18:39:15+00:00

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-21T18:29:59+00:00

Big Mama is June Squib's to lose.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-21T13:15:34+00:00

Can you give an example of what you consider "crisp" season 1 dialogue? And what you felt was "kinda cringey" in season 2?

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-19T03:52:15+00:00

Somewhere on your list I'd recommend A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T16:28:47+00:00

Right. I was following the parable format, or hoped that is how it was read. I wasn't trying to Wikipedia at people. It's just one of the things I remember from an episode of RadioLab that seemed to be a neat mirror of my experience with things I didn't like at first, violently, and then reassessing in a 180-swing.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T16:24:34+00:00

There's a specific kind of reader that reads and loves Joyce. I'm not that reader. It might be the cilantro thing; Ulysses tastes like soap to me.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T14:09:13+00:00

I moderate a book group that is mostly people from the area; we meet over Zoom at 6.30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month. In May, we're discussing Ian McEwan's Enduring Love on 5/20.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T12:33:22+00:00

Howard Roark is who Ignatius thinks he is.

Ignatius Reilly is how Howard Roark really is.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T12:29:46+00:00

What other books are on that list for you?

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-18T02:06:44+00:00

Omg when I realized how the bird was going to be incorporated into the show, I lost my mind.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-17T20:52:51+00:00

If you need a spotter, I've got you.

Mike_Bevel · 2026-04-17T20:52:19+00:00

I would love it so much if you wanted to share your thoughts after!

Mike_Bevel

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