Death at the Bar is a novel by Ngaio Marsh, I both loved and hated.
First you grow fond of the narrator of the tale, until he is murdered.:mad: Then you grow fond of the consequent narrator, until you discover he is the murderer.:mad::mad::mad:
Since reading an interview with Stephens Mitchell about the inter-generationall psychological trains of the women in “Gone With the Wind,” I love to find books with the same pattern.
Ellen falls in undying love with her cousin Phillippe, a neverdo well who dies in a barfight. She threatens to become a nun, marries Gerald O’Hara to escape her family, never really mothers her children, and dies with her cousin’s name on her lips.
Her daughter Scarlett falls in undying love with Ashley Wilkes, marries Charles for spite and Frank for money, never really mothers her children, has a good man in Rhett but continues to moon after Ashley.
Her daughter Careen falls in undying love with Brent Tarleton and becomes a nun after his death, ignoring the good man Will Benteen who is in love with her.
Those Robbilard women are messed up.
The Zhivago men are constantly deserting their families. After Yevgraf finds his niece, the child of brother Yuri & Lara, he tells her he’ll find her again and take care of her. Even the child doesn’t believe it, but says “It’s a joke, just to tease me.”
I’ve just embarked on my fourth reading of the Aubrey-Maturin series. Patrick O’Brian has a skill (unequaled by any other author of my experience) of evoking a bygone era with such staggering authenticity that it is difficult to credit the notion that his books were actually written in the 20th century. Every word, every phrase is perfectly in keeping with the tone, idioms, mores, attitudes, etc., of the place and time in which they are set. What makes this talent all the more remarkable is that his books are not merely counterfeit museum pieces, but exceptional works of literature that provoke thought, nostalgia, anxiety, wonder, laughter and tears.
But Yuri Zhivago didn’t want to abandon any of his children.
One of the little quirks that I like was that in Rebecca, you never know the first name of the second Mrs. deWinter.
I used to drive some of my students crazy when they were presenting book reports on this book. I would ask what Max’s second wife’s name was. They would look stunned. Her name is omitted so skillfully that many never notice.
I love to read a good meal. There are books I keep around mostly for the food, like The Little House on the Prairie books, especially for the Christmas in “Little House in the Big Woods” and about every 5th page in “Farmer Boy.”
I also love novels with footnotes, whether in a Terry Pratchett sense or of the type normally seen in novels.
Appendices about language or world-building make me gleeful; I’ve read the appendices of Lord of the Rings and 1984 many more times than I’ve read the books.
I love books (or stories in general) that hide little details in earlier parts that suddenly become important later. J.K. Rowling is quite good at this. For instance, in the fifth Harry Potter book…
While cleaning 12 Grimmauld Place, the trio finds “a locket that none of them could open.”
And then in the sixth book…
This same locket turns out to be one of the tools Draco Malfoy uses to attempt to kill Dumbledore.
I also love older books that describe someone’s wardrobe in detail. It might mean that I end up having to google a lot of the terms, but it’s kind of fun to read books like this and think “wow…this is what people actually WORE back in the [era].” This is mostly true of Victorian period literature.
It’s even more fun when the book itself is actually FROM that period…as in, a battered, leatherbound volume from 1910 or something that smells all musty and bookish and aged, like a fine wine. I love it.
I, too, love the footnotes in Pratchett’s work, so droll and serious-sounding. I also love all the daily details in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books – the struggle for the twentieth-century woman to adjust to eighteenth-century food preparation, and all the medical details. That fascinates me.
I have a soft spot for excessive profanity.
Yeah, it’s weird.
I love ANY book that goes into detail about wardrobe – especially if it’s historical fashion. ANY description of what someone is wearing. I absolutely adore it.
If you like footnotes, I direct you to the novel called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which is mostly footnotes. (There’s supposed to be a movie version in the works but I doubt they could fit in all those footnotes.)
But in Jonathan Strange, etc., the footnotes are more dry and scholarly than Pratchett’s tongue-in-cheek additions.
I think the footnotes were the best thing about that book. There are funny footnotes in the Bartimaeus Trilogy too (by Jonathan Stroud).
That is on my long list of “books to get to eventually,” but I hadn’t heard about the footnotes. Now it’s closer to the top of the list.