During this long, strange year, I made three rules to avoid a nervous breakdown.  First, avoid the news; second, read classics; and third, scan book reviews carefully.

I may have avoided a nervous breakdown:  it depends on your definition. I recently considered putting a SUPPORT THE LIBERAL ARTS sign on the  lawn.  I decided not to, though. It’s too wordy. It’s a bit mad!

And now for the list of some books that characterized my year of reading. I have selected one book for each month.

My Year in Books, Part I

January 2025

Elizabeth Bowen’s To the North is an exquisite novel, one of her best. Two sisters-in-law share a house to save money:  Cecilia, a vivacious widow, travels frequently, and Emmeline, who owns a travel agency, seldom travels. When worldly Cecilia introduces Emmeline to charming Markie, she does not anticipate that Emmeline will fall in love with him.  Cecilia does what she can to help starry-eyed Emmeline, but there are limits. I was especially fascinated by Bowen’s detailed description of Emmeline’s work at the travel agency. 

February 2025

Howard Sturgis’ Belchamber, published in 1904, is “the portrait of a sissy…,” writes Edmund White in the introduction to the NYRB edition. Sainty, an idealistic, sickly hero, prefers knitting and embroidery to sports. (His mother fires the governess who taught him to do needlework.) Bookish Sainty surprises everyone by becoming a superb businessman when he inherits Belchamber.  But before he takes control of the estate, he insists on finishing his classics degree.

In many ways, this reads like a Victorian novel gone rogue.  One can see the influences of George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere. Sainty dreams of reforming society: he wants to build  a school for the working men in London. That doesn’t work out.  Still, he and his mother work to improve the houses of the poor. (Very Dorothea Brooke-ish. )

Charming, absorbing, funny, sad – I loved this book!

March 2025

In the introduction to the Faber Finds edition of C. H. B Kitchin’s  Mr. Balcony, Francis King says it is “both the strangest of Kitchin’s novels and one of the strangest of the twenties.” 

And it is pretty strange. The protagonist, Mr. Balcony, is a confirmed bachelor, i.e., gay, and a homespun philosopher who rejects not only the humdrum routine of “quiet lives of desperation” but deconstructs the English language.  He’s not quite a 1920s hippie, but he invites a group of people at at a party to accompany him on a trip in his yacht to Africa.

Mr. Balcony has divested himself of all his stocks and money to hire the yacht. He even persuades Aubrey, Lady Hoobrake’s witty slacker son, to quit his deadening job and refuse to waste his days doing repetitive tasks.  Hurrah!

Witty, surreal, charming – far from Kitchin’s best, but I enjoyed it.

April 2025   

Ross MacDonald’s The Underground Man.   Lew Archer,  a private detective, is the protagonist of MacDonald’s well-known classic mystery series. Lew is aloof, observant, and intuitive, a quiet man who tracks suspects with minimal fuss.  In The Underground Man (1971), set in the hills and canyons of West Los Angeles during a wildfire, he solves a string of related murders and disappearances. One body leads to another, and with the fire in the background, the drama is intense that. The style is spare and taut, the characters range from housewives to crooks, and the dialogue is quick and short.

May 2025

Ann Stafford,  who co-authored a comic novel about working in a department store, Business As Usual, is also the author of an autobiographical novel, Army without Banners. This charming book is billed as a novel, but reads more like a collection of sketches. Set in London from October 1940 to December 1941, it is based on Stafford’s experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver during the Blitz in London.   It is not what I’d call a literary book, but it is an interesting history of women volunteers in World War II. The last few chapters make it worthwhile.                    

June 2025

Rebecca Romney’s entertaining book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, provides a fascinating list of 18th-century women’s literature.  In this charming book, Romney talks about Jane Austen’s favorite novels and their status in the antiquarian book market. For instance, the copy of Emma Jane Austen sent to her favorite writer, Maria Edgeworth, was sold at auction for £79,250. 

By the way, Maria Edgeworth hated Emma.  Well,  I have never been  a fan of Maria Edgeworth.  But I adore Fanny Burney’s novels – and she was one of Jane’s influences, too.

A good, readable, enthusiastic book. But I have to settle for the paperbacks rather than the rare books.