Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1920

It's a terrible title, but The Metal Monster is excellent weird SF, mixing Haggard/Burroughs adventure with an eerie vision of alien distributed intelligence ... some of the visionary set pieces are startlingly out of scale with the human characters.

Apparently a favourite of Lovecraft too.

AKA A Merritt, a master of effects, knowing how to ride the flow of his visions and interests---also an editor, and all in all I think of him as like a healthier, incl. longer-lived, though maybe less compelling Poe---if you like him, also check, on this list, maybe even more fan-renowned outcat classick A Voyage To Arcturus by the elusive David Lindsay, who reads like more of a visionary-as-campy-crackpot, of a kind Lovecraft may have felt drawn to as well.

Wharton or Kristin Lavransdatter here

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I think I’ve only read this side of paradise but I love it. it introduced me to the word “autochthonous” which I have since encountered basically only in the medical literature (specifically infectious diseases)

Gene Wolfe uses it a bit.

Harold Bloom was famously a big fan of Voyage to Arcturus: “I have read it literally hundreds of times, indeed obsessively I have read several copies of it to shreds.” The much-shredded book has, he says, “affected me personally with more intensity and obsessiveness than all the works of greater stature and resonance of our time.”

challop of all challops! conventional wisdom that FSF finds himself with Gatsby is correct

― Guayaquil (eephus!), vrijdag 27 november 2020 19:15 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Guilty as charged :) I know it's not a popular opinion, and 'This Side of Paradise' certainly has its flaws, but it's my fave of him, and I find it eternally re-readable. Gatsby 'perfect' and fully formed, with this one he's still finding his way, which appeals to me.

Read Cheri earlier this year and it's ✔️✔️✔️

I was a bit hesitant to vote Voyage to Arcturus - it's singularly and impressively strange but I haven't read it in years and its advocates oversell it a bit (tho' this could be my allergy to allegory - even a cosmic-gnostic Bunyan can't quite get me over the taste coming through). Did vote for it in the end because the few other books that I've read here seem a bit staid in comparison - I know how to read them.

I saw The Ancient Allan and assumed it must be Quartermain, now seeing its the 10th book about him. Hadn't realised how much of a pulp repeat character he was.

I read Cheri and The last of Cheri about ten years ago and I remember absolutely nothing, plot summary rings no bells and I was even surprised when I learned the title character is male :(

I apparently read Age Of Innocence a few years ago and same.

I saw the film a couple of decades ago. I know I picked up th ebook but haven't looked at it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1921

Midway through The Age of Innocence, it's hard going! Full of awful people who have used their wealth to incarcerate themselves inside a dreadful prison. There is a measure of irony in Wharton's prose which suggests some amusement in her gaze, mine is just one of horror.

Well it's a masterpiece obviously, May Welland gets a raw deal though. Would be interested to know others' thoughts on Newland and the ending - maybe I'm being harsh but I think it's another example of his selfishness and cowardice.