My Year in Books

(Dedicated to the end of the semester.)

• Favorite literary fiction: Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time; Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing; Frederick Busch's The Mutual Friend; Rodney Hall's The Yandilli Trilogy.
• Favorite genre fiction: China Mieville's The Scar and Iron Council; Ian Rankin's Fleshmarket Close.
• Most disappointing genre fiction: Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers; Stephen Booth's One Last Breath; Erica Jong's Fanny.
• Favorite academic books: David Katz's God's Last Words; Lynn Voskuil's Acting Naturally; Philip Gould's Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism; H. J. Jackson's Marginalia.
• Best reprint publisher: Broadview.
• Book that proved surprisingly popular with my undergraduates: Charles Dickens' Bleak House (which my graduate students loathed last year). 
• Best Victorian novel re-read this year: Charlotte Bronte's Villette.
• Most loathsome Victorian novels: A tie between nativist Julia McNair Wright's Priest and Nun and Almost a Priest.  The slimiest sort of anti-Catholic propaganda.  Yeccch.  (As a friend of mine once said, "Why do you do these things to yourself?")
• Course of reading that led me to doubt the existence of human charity and goodness, even as it prompted me to contemplate the relative merits of either throwing myself out the window or electrocuting myself with my laptop's circuitry: Eighteen years of the Scottish anti-Catholic periodical The Bulwark in two days.  Arrgh, arrgh, arrgh.  See friend's comment, above.
• Depressing discovery immediately related to same: A bookdealer, with whom I've done occasional business, gave the thumbs-up to a volume of The Bulwark as a guide to Catholic belief.  Er.  No.  (Filed with the dealer who used the phrase "Jewish lifestyle.")
• Worrisome statistic: Why do I have 36 novels by Emily Sarah Holt?
• Book that I didn't expect to like, but did: Martha Stoddard's Fictions of Affliction.
• Least enthusiastic comment in a book review for Choice: "Possibly of interest to theologians; of little use to others."
• Historical fiction that made me wonder, "What on earth were you thinking?!": George MacBeth's Dizzy's Woman (attempts to mimic Disraeli's voice, with unfortunate results); Alasdair Campsie's The Clarinda Conspiracy (I've never had the impression that Henry Dundas was a nice guy, but this is just ridiculous).
• Weirdest Victorian novel acquired this year: Elizabeth Mitchell's time-travel-cum-antidisestablishmentarianism historical novel, The Church in the Valley. 
• Best eBay deal, antiquarian division: J. L. Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History.
• Best eBay deal, new book division: Alison Smith's Exposed: The Victorian Nude.
• Best remaindered book deal: John Barrell's Imagining the King's Death. 
• Book purchased because owning it would make me happy: Richard Godfrey and Mark Hallett's James Gillray: The Art of Caricature. 
• Further evidence that fetishizing dust jackets can be remarkably silly, especially if you're an academic: Disraeli's Letters: 1857-59, purchased at a spectacularly deep discount because of a tiny flaw to the back cover. 
• Proof that I'm occasionally capable of self-control:

SPIRIT OF THE BOOKSHELF: Look--a lovely complete set of Peter Pindar's satires! And it's going for a preposterously low bid!

SPIRIT OF THE WALLET: We need a complete set of Peter Pindar because...why, exactly?

SPIRIT OF THE BOOKSHELF: Because...because...because Georgian political satire is cool?

SPIRIT OF THE WALLET: Um.

SPIRIT OF THE BOOKSHELF: But the price is so low!

SPIRIT OF THE WALLET: *makes noise as of coin purse snapping shut*

SPIRIT OF THE BOOKSHELF: *sulks*

• Didn't I just solve this problem?: That's funny--what happened to all that space on my bookshelves?
• Book you should buy if you happen to have $74.95 lying around: Ahem.