I feel like I'm on the way to fucking it with this challenge, although I've got a number of books that are mostly complete and I can catch up on films easily (I was robbed of a fourth due to the rules about runtime). I've decided I want to review the books I'm reading in more detail, particularly since it looks like I'll be leaning on fine press versions quite heavily. Without further ado then...
The Works of Oscar Wilde: Stories
The Book
This hefty 456-page tome (half filled with The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I read last year) was published by the Folio Society in 1993 as part of a three-volume set collecting the works of Oscar Wilde - his stories, plays, poems, essays and letters. I bought the set from the charity shop I volunteer at for £10, so I got this big chunk of luxury book goodness for only £3.33. Inside the cream clothbound covers, the stories are printed in an appealing typeface, Linotype Walbaun, on thick, almost cardlike, Balmoral Book Wove paper stock. The book features a number of illustrations by Ian Archie Beck. I can't say that I'm overly enamoured with these - they veer towards the cartoony - but they're inoffensive and add visual interest. As a decorative touch, the top edge is dyed brown for shelf display. The paper stock, as with all Folio Society books, is acid-free and looks as good as it did when it was printed over 20 years ago. The only real sign of aging is that the binding has sagged somewhat, but that's pretty inevitable.
The Text
I enjoyed reading Oscar Wilde's short stories, particularly the somewhat comedic mystery stories that I hadn't really heard of before. The fairy stories were nice for a change, having not read anything like that since childhood, and I suspect I'll be reading further fairy story books later in the year. Although Oscar Wilde's been accused of writing purple prose, I quite liked his prose style with the exception of occasions where he veers off into interminable lists for about a page at a time. Although it seems like his plays form the most significant part of his literary legacy, I'm glad to have bothered with these stories.
Something Fresh
The Book
I bought a Folio Society boxset containing a 'best of' selection of PG Wodehouse's Blandings books at the end of last year and having read Summer Lightning at Christmas time, I've found myself turning to Everyman's Wodehouse range for the books that come first chronologically. Although the books are good quality, I think the design of the range is a mixed bag. Although the books are nicely bound with a gold binding strip and acid-free paperstock that will still be nice and white when we're all dead, the covers are made with an unappealing light blue cloth against which the golden text printed on the spine is hard to read. Circumventing this, the books come with dustjackets illustrated by Andrzej Klimowski in what seems to be a deliberately old fashioned aesthetic evocative of the early 20th Century settings associated with Wodehouse, but these are made with a horrible paperstock that marks easily, feels bad in the hand and feels like it will be easy misshapen by sweat from the hand. I've ended up displaying them with the dustcovers and reading them with the dustcovers off. The typeface is Caslon, designed in 1740, which is a bit fusty and unflowing. In some respects I like that they've tried to make the designs evocative of the texts' time of writing but they're comic novels and the overall effect of the design is a bit 'no fun allowed'. Also, the text is supposed to be definitive but I noticed a few typos.
The Text
A pair of young writers, bound together by the scarab-related mishaps of the upper-classes, find themselves assuming false identities at Blandings Castle. This was a nice fun read, particularly in winter when it's nice to dream of spring and summer. Compared to Summer Lightning it feels like things haven't clicked into place yet, both with the Blandings setting, which feels like it's still slightly embryonic here and with Wodehouse's prose, which doesn't seem to have developed to its stylistic peak. Still, it was well written and enjoyable nonetheless.
Rocannon's World
The Book
In 2016, the Library of America inducted Ursula Le Guin into their canon by beginning to release her writing in their high-quality collected editions. Rocannon's World is printed in Hainish Novels & Stories Volume I, which is available in a box-set along with Volume II. I'm not a fan of the Library of America's fairly plain black dustcovers and have decided to shelf my copies naked. Dustcovers removed, handsome green clothbinding is revealed with a simple and attractive spine design. The book features attractive end-papers drawn by the author. It's a really compact volume - 1000 pages in the kind of footprint you might associate with about 300 pages. The paper is high quality - it meets the national ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 standard for the permanence of paper and is a nice creamy white - but is very thin. It doesn't have the opacity of the paper stock from fine presses like the Folio Society but it's not significantly worse than an average paperback, which is impressive given how gossamer-thin it feels. The design is generally good - the typeface is nice and while the text is moderately dense it is not overly so. Overall, it's pleasant to read. I do have one niggle, which is it uses American-style straight binding instead of UK-style curved binding - when the book is held in the hand there is a void between the cloth cover and the bound paper and the spine can easily become misshapen if gravity crushes the cover between the hand and the weight of the paper.
The Text
I enjoyed the novel - even though it's appreciably an early work, the prose is good and the description of the landscapes evoked some really good imagery in my imagination. In some respects it feels like an oversized short story in that there isn't much charactisation or event considering the length of the novel but that doesn't undermine that it's a fairly thoughtful and competently put together work. I'm looking forward to reading Le Guin's more acclaimed work later in the year.
Anyway, that's my January in books.
