I read Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windemere's Fan. I limit myself to one selection per month, but when I do finish something early (and a play is very quick reading), I chip away at a longer book. So I'm also reading The Pickwick Papers (I am perpetually amazed at the wit of Charles Dickens!).

                                                                                                                                       Rose

I have been in a distractable state of mind lately so I haven't been doing any challenge reading at all.  Instead, I have been having a wonderful time reading E.F. Benson's Lucia series.  I'm on book three, Miss Mapp and I am loving it!  I was a big fan of BBC's Keeping Up Appearances and I wonder if Benson inspired the creators of the TV show.  Very fun - even if they aren't exactly mind-enriching!

E.F. Benson is my very favorite author! I have been reading the Lucia books for decades. I own over 100 Benson books (thank you, ebay). I'll have to get Keeping Up Appearances from Netflix.

                                                                                                       Rose

I made it about 1/3 of the way through Gogol's Dead Souls but dropped it because I just wasn't enjoying it. Now I'm trying Calvino.

I've been having the worst luck. I haven't enjoyed a single classic that was on my original 2011 list.  I put down Howard's End. I couldn't care less about the story. Anne of Green Gables? Sticky sweet.  The Alaskan? Just about the dumbest...

I forgot what's on my April list

I am scared to pick up Wuthering Heights. Maybe it's time for the Makioka Sisters

I have been reading mysteries and histories. The only stuff I have been really enjoying is all the original sources I can dig up about what the Founding Fathers really said and wrote. I find it almost exciting. I am about to read Petals of Blood by Ngugi. His denunciation of white men, particularly British ones, is scathing, as his denunciation of  Christian missionaries and colonialists of all stripes.

And now thatI think of it, I just read a book published in 1885 titled A Texas Cowboy by one Chas A Siringo, who was one. I don't know about enduring excellence, but I just may use it for frontier books.

John,

Would you recommend A Texas Cowboy? If so, you may have just solved my dilemma for the frontier category  (the dilemma being that I couldn't find anything I wanted to read).

Petals of Blood looks good too. Please let us know what you think after you've read it.

That may be 2 suggestions I've picked up from you. Awesome!

I am hoping that Petals of Blood is in my mailbox right now.

Otherwise reading The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanazaki

Oooh, I'm reading something classic now!  Well, re-reading that is.  I am revisiting Of Mice and Men and it is great.  I was so inspired, I even ordered a couple of other Steinbecks, Cannery Row and Travels with Charlie!  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Steinbeck's writing.  Descriptive, clear-eyed, compassionate without being blind to human faults.  Good stuff.

 I enjoyed Steinbeck's writing.  Descriptive, clear-eyed, compassionate without being blind to human faults.  Good stuff.

RE A Texas Cowboy : Recommend on the basis of literary quality, no, though it isn't badly written at all. It was very enjoyable to read and very instructive as far as what this life was really like. They had a system of credit that reached a thousand miles and was very efficient, very simple.

If you want to read it and can't find a copy, I can loan it to you if you promise to send it back.

I have been such a bum this month. I am two weeks away until school is completed. After that I am taking some time to just sit back and read. Fathers and Sons is sitting on my night stand. Hopefully by this time next week I will be able to get into it.

Coupla hundred more pages and I'll arrive at the "Finis" of The Count of Monte Cristo !    It's a whale of a tale---1,462 pages.   I'm thinking of getting a bottle of Pouilly-Fusee to celebrate my accomplishment . . . .

Of course, I will then face the same old problem-------WHICH book to pick up next.   Decisions, decisions . . . . .

As it turned out, I didn't get the French wine to celebrate TCOMC, I got a laser treatment to relieve the  pressure in one of my eyes!   My hubby, whose sense of humor is sometimes rather odd, says it was a good thing I finished the book just before finding I needed eye surgery......hmmmm.

I believe I'll start my 'sea saga' now, and it will be Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us.  When I went rummaging to find the copy I knew I had tucked away, I found Silent Spring first and, leafing through it, I was reminded  of how much I have enjoyed the occasional book that was ILLUSTRATED, as this edition of Silent Spring was, with artist's drawings.  Another such book is my copy of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. 

Sometimes the illustrations are so much a part of the book as to be inseparable.  I can't imagine Mr. Pickwick, or Peter Rabbit, or Mr. Toad, or the characters in Treasure Island and other books that N. C. Wyeth illustrated, in any other than the ways their famous illustrators drew or painted them for us.

Bonnie,

I find the problem of what book to read next the best one you can possible have. I know you weren't looking for suggestions but I have found these three books to be conversation books and I want to share them as often as I can.

• "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell
• "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith
• "Time and Again" by Jack Finney (not a classic...yet) 

I just read Stephen King's new short story titled "Herman Wouk is Still Alive" in Atlantic magazine, which mentions the (true) fact that Wouk is coming out with a new novel this year at age 96...that got me curious, so I picked up his 1951 novel, The Caine Mutiny, and I am really enjoying it.  His first book was actually published seventy years ago.  Incredible.