What's with today, today?

Slowly slowly working on my reading challenge this year- reading more books written before the 20th century. It looks like we're slowly going further back in time, from the 19th Century (The Moonstone) to the 18th, with The Castle of Otranto  by Horace Walpole, and sticking with genre fiction so far, from the detective story to the Gothic. As The Moonstone  is known as one of the earliest examples of detective fiction, so The Castle of Otranto is an early Gothic novel. And how! A brief summary: the prince of Otranto (Manfred) is obsessed with carrying on the male line, and when his son dies unexpectedly just before his wedding to Isabella, best friend of Manfred's daughter Matilda, this obsession grows, as he tries to avoid the family curse. He is clearly concealing a family secret, and is horrified at the giant coat of armour which appears to haunt the library. I thought what would stand out about this book is its part in the history of the Gothic, but what really stood out...

At the beginning of the year I said that my challenge this year was to read pre-20th century books. So far, this reading challenge has not really gotten off the ground, but recently I did manage to read something published before 1900, so I thought I would count it and blog about it here. The book that kick-started my challenge was  The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, a book I have heard of often but never read. A short summary: during the wars in India, a British soldier steals a fabulous diamond from a Hindu temple. This British soldier being something of a disreputable type (see stealing Indian diamonds and murdering their guards) he is cut off from the rest of his family, but leaves the diamond to his niece, Rachel Verinder, in his will as a birthday present. Whether this is an act of reconciliation or revenge is unclear to the family, seeing that the diamond is said to come with 3 Indian assassins set on reclaiming it. When the diamond goes missing from Rachel's room th...

I do realise that it's a bit late to be wishing people a happy new year, but I've been away out of reach of internet for the past couple of weeks, enjoying views like this one: Looking out over the lake while eating fish and chips And this one: South Coast beaches are beautiful, this is near Tilba And generally enjoying the beach. I hope everyone had some good holidays as well! Now it's time to face the fact that a new year has started, head back to work and talk about plans for the year. Specifically, reading plans. On my holiday I did manage to read my 1990s book, so I will soon be able to post about that and finish off my 2012 reading challenge (belatedly). For this year, I want to do something a little bit inspired by the Century of Books challenge and read books published before the 20th Century. Mainly because I have quite a few sitting on my shelves that I can't bring myself to start, and I need a little motivation, and also because I sometimes ...