Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1902

…colonialist pedophilia, to boot.

Nice, nice. Yeah, I might not bother with this one.

The Gide I tried was The Fruits Of The Earth and oof, getting lectured on the greatness of nature in a pseudo-classical way v much not my thing.

I can recommend "After The Divorce" by Grazia Deledda: love, death, injustice, misery, all the good stuff.

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I voted for one of the few I've read: The Grand Babylon Hotel, Arnold Bennett. It had no pretensions beyond telling a silly, entertaining yarn, but it was that. Beyond which, it colorfully captures a particular milieu which has all but disappeared, the extravagantly grand hotel that serves as a stand-in mansion & servants for the traveling wealthy or even as a residence. It was a fun book.

Curious about The Mississippi Bubble based on the title ... voted Heart of Darkness because I liked the movie and the history of European (esp. Belgian) colonialism of Africa is really compelling in its awfulness

For those unfamiliar with the history of the Mississippi Bubble, it refers to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company

Also featured in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds

Voted Five Children and It partly because I haven't read very many of these books, but also because it was such a milestone in children's literature. Children's lit was barely there before E. Nesbit came along, and she wrote books that treated kids as kids - not little angels or cautionary tales, but real kids who had their own lives and interests. Before her, children's fantasy was mostly psychedelic dreamscapes. She invented the kind of children's book where something magical intersects with the real world, so that the characters have to fit time travel or wish-granting sand-fairies into their regular lives, with all the practical problems that would entail. That's a huge leap forward for children's lit and for fantasy in general.

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Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1903