Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Desperate Plea for Help

I am running dangerously low on reading material. I've tried Sir Walter Scott, since there is so much of him, but found that there is very little to love in all that bulk. The library has a pitifully small collection of Stevenson and Caroline Gordon, as well as most other classics. I tried branching out into more contemporary fiction with P.D. James, but the following sums up both why she had to be jettisoned and why I am leery of further contemporary fiction--yet that seems to be all the library stocks.

Studies of a Contemporary Author

She’s like an old bitch who, having lost the scent shortly after being let off the leash, blunders on unaware that her earnest snufflings among the leaves tell her nothing.

All the pretension, none of the substance.

Out of her depth in the shallow end.

I don't think I'm quite up for another Mark Helprin yet, and my current library list (Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Dickens, Willa Cather and G.K. Chesterton) will probably yield about six books, after the library's selection has gone head to head with the list of their books that I've already read.

So please help me. I just want something light to read when I'm tired, and don't want to come across things about fathers and adopted daughters having an interesting experience in bed and then returning to discovering their roles as father and daughter.