My Year in Books:with a Postscript on GoogleBooks

• Favorite literary fiction: Briege Duffaud, A Wreath Upon the Dead; Richard Hughes, The Fox in the Attic; Akira Yoshimura, Shipwrecks; Jim Crace, Being Dead; Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen; Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries.
• Favorite mysteries: Ian Rankin, Exit Music; James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia.
• "Well, that was...different": Douglas Martin, Branwell.
• Favorite exercise in intellectual and physical weight-lifting: Philip Waller, Writers, Readers, & Reputations.
• Favorite scholarly work having nothing to do with the Victorian period: Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe.
• Work of literary criticism that didn't quite do what its promotional materials said it did: Maureen Moran, Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature.  (I'm not complaining, I hasten to add--it's quite a good book.)
• Favorite Victorian novel, read for the first time: Anthony Trollope, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, by One of the Firm.
• Favorite reread Victorian novel: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
• Victorian novel that did not improve upon rereading: Bram Stoker, Dracula.
• Book that my freshmen somehow managed to survive: J. M. Coetzee, Foe.
• Book that made my freshmen say "Huh?!": a couple of chapters of Varney the Vampire.  (Different group of freshmen.)
• Victorian religious novelist who was easiest to tolerate: A. D. Crake.
• Biggest let-down: Kate Grenville, The Secret River.
• Book I could not force myself to finish: Jane Bowles, My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles. 
• Book that had me contemplating the editorial use-value of a hatchet: Dan Simmons, The Terror.
• Most welcome Choice review copy (because there was no way on this green earth that I could afford the book otherwise): Murray Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe (retails at just $250!).
• Favorite free books:  a lifetime's supply of Victorian Christian periodicals.
• Favorite bargains: John N. King, Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' and Early Modern Print Culture (just under $12, as opposed to $117); J. M. Klaver, The Apostle of the Flesh: A Critical Life of Charles Kingsley (c. $30, as opposed to $209).
• Favorite super-rare Victorian novel acquired for almost nothing: Emily Sarah Holt, Margery's  Son; or, "Until He Find It."  A Fifteenth-Century Tale of the Court of Scotland.
• Books I was happiest to stumble across at the MLA: Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan; Ian Duncan, Scott's Shadow.

And a special postscript on GoogleBooks:

• Favorite finds: Celia and Marion Moss, The Romance of Jewish History; E. C. Agnew, Geraldine.  (In case you're wondering, Geraldine was one of the best-known Catholic novels of the nineteenth century.  It's now completely forgotten.)
• Most useful finds: several Victorian Catholic novels, which are extremely difficult to hunt down in the wild; lots of random and very rare Victorian periodicals.
• Most helpful function: being able to "search inside the book" across thousands of volumes. 
• Most infuriating trend(I):  novels with missing pages.  Yes, I like having most of the novel.  No, I don't like having to send money to various libraries to photocopy random pages of text.  And yes, this does pose credibility problems for GoogleBooks: how useful will this project actually be for scholars if you cannot trust the text in front of you?
• Most infuriating trend (II): missing bibliographical data from twentieth-century periodicals.  Er, hello? How the [insert multiple expletives of your choice here] are you supposed to ILL the article if you are missing the year, the month, the volume, and the issue?!
• Most infuriating trend (III): snippet view.  Snippets of the margin (no text!).  Snippets of text above your search terms.  Snippets of text below your search terms.  Snippets of text entirely unrelated to the matter at hand.  Surely Google can do better than this?
• Most puzzling trend: out-of-copyright texts available only via snippet view--or, sometimes, not accessible at all. 

Comments

[genevieve]

Ooh, Miriam, you mean, you read The Secret River and you didn't have to? Thanks for the screening (although it's something in the way of something else I want to write about, so I do have to clear it.)
What a terrific list, I look forward to linking to it when my blog hols are over (or before :-))

[Ellen Moody]

Dear Miriam,

I was not able to manage to ask a question at the MLA session where you spoke. I enjoyed your talk and the whole session, and thought Prof Fitzpatrick attempted to make useful suggestions.

I did raise my hand in an attempt to respond to your presentation. I do want to say it: the problem as I see it is what you (or I or other bloggers) define as benefits others do not. I too value the responses I get on and off-blog, some of which have led to published reviews, conference papers, and possibly a contract for a new book; but just as much the comments from readers of all sorts which set me thinking -- and even presents. I got a DVD of the 1999 _Vanity Fair_, a xerox of a good article on Jane Austen. As much for the thought as the present. As they say.

But others do not regard these as sufficient benefits to offset risks. Benefits are things that are notches leading to tenure and
directly and unambiguously to tenure. I have suffered from my posting on Victoria and blog where I teach: I offended someone important simply by my very posting as someone from the college where I teach.

[Ellen--sorry, but I redacted your comment here, because I don't know what the current situation is.]

The value of a blog is here: I could never have said all this in a session.

E.M.

[Miriam]

Thanks for your comments, Ellen.

[Dr. Anon]

I too spotted that _Complete Bunyan_ at MLA, out of the corner of my eye. I must admit that before I turned my head to inspect the cover, I momentarily hoped I'd find a book devoted to *Paul* Bunyan and his big blue ox. No such luck, I'm afraid.