General Fiction – Berendt, Bloom, Bonfiglioli, Bradshaw, Burgess & Byatt

Taking up from where I left off last time, some more general fiction or non fiction in some cases.

Case in point, John Berendt’s classic take on Savannah Georgia, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It has been a long time since I last read this book, but I do recall being quite taken with it at the time. This edition was published by Vintage circa 1994.

Harold Bloom, eminent American man of letters wrote only one novel, which purportedly he has disowned, according to the Wikipedia entry on The Flight to Lucifer, the novel in question. It is a sequel to the David Lindsay novel Voyage To Arcturus.

An oddity – the Mortdecai trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli.

I’ve mentioned Gillian Bradshaw previously in relation with her well regarded Arthurian trilogy that featured Sir Gawain. She has written many other novels - historical fiction primarily and The Bear Keeper’s Daughter is one. It is set in Byzantine Constantinople and features the Empress Theodora, wife of Justinian 1.

Anthony Burgess’ novel Earthly Powers opens with surely one of the most provocative opening sentences of any book.

”It was the afternoon of my eighty- first birthday, and I was in bed bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”

Burgess most famous novel is of course Clockwork Orange of which I do believe I have a copy of somewhere, also a collection of his Enderby novels.

This edition of Earthy Powers was published by Penguin in 1980.

To end this post, some of my collection of A S Byatt in paperback editions. It was in fact The Virgin in the Garden, the first of her Frederica novels, that introduced me to her writing.

The first three Frederica novels in Penguin editions…

Collections of Short Stories in Vintage editions…

Coming up: Peter Carey, Edward Carey, Angela Carter among others.

Fantasy Trilogies & Other Related Books

I must admit that this blog has certainly brought to light books I have not looked at for decades. They have mostly all been hidden behind other books more recently purchased. No wonder I hardly buy anything new these days, I've got enough to keep me going until the day I die.

This post will concentrate on fantasy trilogies, the foremost of which is the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, a superior fantasy trilogy by Patricia McKillop. It has worn well through the years and I do enjoy rereading it every so often. As usual my sets are a mix of US and UK paperbacks.

I still reread Meredith Ann Pierce's Dark Angel trilogy, as I have always loved it. The paperback covers are quite lovely. I could never find the final volume Pearl of the Soul of the World anywhere in paperback, so eventually bought the hard cover in order to know the end of the story.

I discovered the following Marian Zimmer Bradley books in the Science Fiction part of the bookcase. They are more fantasy than Science Fiction, so I'm including them here - more DAW paperback originals. They are part of the Darkover series, which I failed to read in any order and didn't collect in any way.

Marion Zimmer Bradley did write a best seller, that being The Mists of Avalon, a fictionalised biography of Morgan Le Fay.

Another Arthurian type trilogy is Gillian Bradshaw's Gawaine trilogy. Very well written, I remember being very impressed with this series way back in the 1970s

This post basically concludes the adult fantasy section of my bookcase - or the selected bits I've revealed here.

The next few posts will cover a selection of children's fantasy paperbacks - Tove Jansson, Joan Aiken etc.