My Year in Books
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Best eBay Bargain: Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, Florence Macarthy--better known as the one with the interesting bookplate (which the seller did not mention in the listing!). Price: about $8.00.
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Far More than the Title Advertised: Lucy Bending's The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-Century English Culture.
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Far Less than the Title Advertised: A. D. Nuttall's Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination.
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Book I Still Can't Find, Despite Searching for Eight Years: An affordable copy of Thomas Laqueur's Religion and Respectability.
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Most Likely to Make My Colleagues Ask, "Um, You Are Jewish, Aren't You?": John Dunlop, Memories of Gospel Triumphs Among the Jews During the Victorian Era.
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Books I Had Not Expected to Find Myself Reading: Scholarship on John de Wycliffe and the Lollards. A bit off the beaten track for a Victorianist...
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Fan Girl: An advance order for a signed UK 1st/1st of Reginald Hill's Good Morning, Midnight (Feb. '04).
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Milestone: I passed the 5,000 volume mark this year!
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Too many: Maybe I should have bought a larger house...
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Lived Up to Its Hype: Lauren Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit.
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Novel I Most Enjoyed Rereading: George Eliot's Middlemarch.
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Popular Fiction Discovery: British mystery novelist Stephen Booth.
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Best Victorian Novel I Hadn't Read Before: Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right.
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Best Finds While Trawling Antiquarian Bookdealers: UK 1st/1st of Reginald Hill's Ruling Passion; a remarkably decent 1824 printing of Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
- Finally!: My own book was accepted for publication and will be out next year.