I've been reading pre-1950s school stories for years (predominantly British or Commonwealth) and find them soothing, in similar ways to detective stories and other strongly formulaic genres; some transcend the form, some exemplify it, some have occasional good bits and some fail completely (there's also the entertainingly bad form). I do find them ( Read more... )

I think this leaves me with about 27 books to write up, two of which are definitely on my list for best I've read all year and so are taking me longer to write about than they did to read (possibly a slight exaggeration, but I'm certainly spending more time procrastinating about writing them up than I did reading...).

( Marjorie Williams, The woman at the Washington zoo. )