Kept by D.J. Taylor

This book models the novels of Dickens and Collins that it reads like; there are a lot of intertwining plots and characters. We also get to see early police in action (towards the end of the book). None of the main characters are entirely sympathetic, but Taylor has a good sense of the Victorian worlds. I loved the literary allusions. It covers a number of themes that play out in the period: criminality, interest in science, insanity, the role of women. It wasn't quite as good as a genuine Victorian novel, but it was a decent imitation of that kind of plot, and very well written.

Skios by Michael Frayn

I loved this book. It's a really funny story about mistaken identities and mysterious events at a philanthropic house party on a private Greek island. When a mischievous young Brit takes the identity of the older professor scheduled to give the keynote lecture, lots of amusing hijinks ensue. While the whole story is improbable in parts, and definitely interested in being funny, it also gives the two main characters a great chance to reevaluate their lives and why they're pursing the paths they're on. I'm so glad I came upon this book through the Booker longlist.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

This book offered a sweet story about fitting in. It tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the Donaldson-Dickersons and the Yazdans that develops after both families adopt daughters from Korea. Although the book was uneven at times (some parts felt like they developed awfully quickly), it was an enjoyable read, full of warmth and humor.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

I found this novel very enjoyable. It contained an enjoyable mixture of family history, genealogical digging, and modern life. I thought Ms. Groff's use of different voices and perspectives convincing in tone, although I wonder whether she might have made more effective transitions between the historical voices and the present-day narrator. I liked the idea of something strange, benevolent, and yet dangerous lurking beneath the surface of both the town's and the narrator's personal histories. The idea that Willie's mother would not tell her the name of her father was a bit forced for me. Finally, the vintage illustrations were great and the family trees were quite helpful in keeping track of everyone.

Black No More by George Schulyer

This humorous novel, in playing out the consequences of an invented process by which black people can permanently turn their skin white, addresses serious questions of race, religion, class, labor, and other cultural formations of the early twentieth century. It demonstrates very clearly the seriousness of racism, not only in itself, but also as a distraction to masses of people. I was particularly interested in the ways that racism remains a distraction when skin color becomes almost entirely uniform, in the ways that racism and religious intolerance often go hand in hand, in the eugenic and genealogical impulses of the white supremacists in the novel, in the connection between race and the conditions of labor and modernity, and in the novel's final twist. Very intriguing.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

I found this gothic novel to be a very quick read. Indeed, as the first gothic novel, it sets up some of the classic tropes including a creepy, haunted castle with subterranean passages, mistaken identities, revelations of noble birth, Italian settings, religious figures, and lots of violence. Particularly interesting to me was Walpole's dropped attempt to frame the manuscript as found.

Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain

I found this book highly enjoyable, if troubling in some aspects. There's an over-indulgence in twinning, and the Italian twins (who started as conjoined twins) seem to retain some vestiges of their conjoined past (for some reason they were circus freaks after their parents died). This book explores carefully both race and identity; while the fingerprints bit is gimmicky, it also affirms individual uniqueness. Although Twain shows how circumstances affect the "white" baby (when he regains his place in society, he's unfit to occupy it), he also makes a point of letting the "black" baby's "natural viciousness" come out. I was also struck by the way that the story explores the limits and bounds of a mother's love. Roxana and Pudd'nhead are the most sympathetic characters in the story. Finally, Pudd'nhead's calendar (the aphorisms from which head each chapter) is fantastic.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Faulkner called this novel his most splendid failure; I am inclined to find it his most perfect book. At times the novel seems almost over-determined, and Faulkner has set up his story to cruelly highlight the losses of each of the three Compson brothers, even as their sister, Caddy, remains elusively absent from the text. Her absence was more painful and pronounced than ever, this time through.

Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson

This book examines the phenomenon of nationalism and attempts to place it in a new perspective, denying the myth of European origins (instead locating them in the Americas). Anderson speculates nationalism has such a pull in part because it fills in cultural gaps left by the decline of religious community and dynastic realms. He investigates the roles of vernacular language, print culture, and pilgrimages (at first bureaucratic and then educational) in creating these imagined communities and traces them from the Americas to Europe and then finally to colonial areas in Southeast Asia and Africa, where the ideas are pirated from the European colonizers. The 1991 additions are particularly interesting about maps and museums; the 2006 appendix about translations of the book struck me as insufferably self-aggrandizing.

Eros and Psyche by Karen Chase

This study contrasts three psychological novels: Jane Eyre, Bleak House, and Middlemarch. While all three write the character of the individual into the fabric of the book, Chase is careful to preserve differences and distances between the authors. The readings seem spot on, and Chase gracefully links her arguments together.