The Importance of Feeling English by Leonard Tennenhouse

This book investigates how British literature in America became American literature. Tennenhouse uses a modified diaspora model to posit that Americans were very interested in producing English literature. He investigates trans-Atlantic influences (such as the captivity narrative coming from America to England, and Americans adopting and modifying British models of sentimental fiction and gothic fiction). I found this book very helpful.

Indian Summer of a Forsyte by John Galsworthy

This interlude between two massive volumes of The Forsyte Saga is really beautifully written. It made me love Irene and Old Joleyn even more than before.

The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket

I really liked this tenth book, because it showed a lot of moral sophistication. Sunny begins to grow up out of her babyhood, the Baudelaire orphans meet the third Quagmire triplet, Quigley (on whom Violet might have something like a crush), and the children resolve not to fight fire with fire--and despite abandoning their treacherous plot, still manage to survive and escape to search for the Hotel Denouement. For all of Snicket's narrative hand-wringing about how unfortunate the children are, they are really quite lucky. As a final note, Esmé Squalor gets to wear a truely splendid fire dress.

The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket

The ninth installment continues to build suspense in the series. I found the "freaks" at the carnival incredibly amusing, especially since some of Olaf's henchmen are even more freakish.

The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

The eighth installment of this series takes things in a slightly different tack. Instead of just hiding from Count Olaf, the Baudelaire orphans must also hide from the police. There are a lot of shout-outs to favorite authors (Clarissa Dalloway's, Emma Bovary's, and Haruki Murakami's names are mentioned) and they discover that one of their parents might have survived. Like the Spiderwick books, I think this series will ultimately have to be judged on its merits.

March by Geraldine Brooks

I expected this book to be intriguing, but I was definitely not prepared for just how good it was. In all fairness, the protagonist was annoying at times--self-righteous, self-centered, and woefully naive, even at forty. Moreover, at times the action seemed a bit heavy-handed and over-dramatic. But in the end, it came together for me as a beautifully-conceived, beautifully-written book about redemption, love, and moving beyond disaster. I can't wait to read Ms. Brooks's other two books.

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.