Bill's Friend Comments

Thank you for the friend request! I look forward to discussing books with you

Thanks for your friend invitation, Bill. I see we both have a taste for classic ghost stories and weird fiction.

Thank you, Bill, for your request. I look forward tor reading your book posts, comments and reviews.

Thank you for the friendship invitation, Bill. I look forward to reading your reviews and getting to know you through books.

Thanks Bill for the friend invite - I look forward to discussing books and reading your reviews.

Thank you for the friend request, I always love to meet people that are still involved in reviewing the classics! Plus, we Wodehousians must stick together, too few of us.

I appreciate you accepting my friend request Mr. Kerwin. I am looking forward to reading your thoughts on "Widdershins".

Thank you so much for accepting my friend request Bill , looking forward to catch great books and reviews from you ..

Thanks for the friend invite. Just had to start following someone that listed "Pale Fire" as one of their favorite books and also reads detective novels. Being Goodreads friends is even better.

Thanks for the friend request. Always good to find someone who enjoyed Gormenghast and appreciates the brilliance of M.R. James.

Thanks for accepting!

Thanks for the friend request!

I'm reading the Jack Zipes adaptation of Burton (Signet Classics). I miss Burton's language a little, but Zipes gets to the point and makes each tale so much shorter (and his adaptation is itself two volumes, about a thousand pages in all.)

I'm about two thirds done with the first volume, and my quick take is that the tales themselves are a little bit disappointing (the best ones I've read already are the ones everybody knows . . . Ali Baba, Aladdin and his Lamp), but the frame story works in more interesting ways than I realized, and gives the tales a good deal of context and resonance.

Thanks so much for the friend request, Bill! I was just on the verge of sending one to you as well. I love your taste in books and the range of genres you are reading. BTW, I have high hopes to read Arabian Nights soon -- how are you enjoying it, and what translation are you reading?

Thanks for accepting my friend request, Bill.

Thanks. Glad you liked it. The weird--particularly the classic British ghost story--is one of my great loves.

I was happy to see you apparently share my progressive politics.

Nice to meet you. I enjoyed viewing your "weird" fiction shelf.

"Your tastes are 75% similar for the books you both rated." I'm not sure if that's a good statistic--but you certainly have an impressive range. Most of mine are all in paper . . . on the shelves . . . or back in my memory banks . . .Anyway, I love pouring over interesting/eclectic book shelves.

Pleased to meet you: I see you're a real reader.

Hello & thanks for the invite. Very eclectic reading you've done! :)

thanks for the friend invite--sorry so late accepting--been off the web for awhile1 :)

OK, Bill. I'm persuaded. Apart from it being wise and a rewarding read for you, it is quite a notch in your belt. Congrats. So yeah, this makes me even more intrigued with Gibbon. The urge to engage it may strike me strongly some day.

Evan wrote: "OK, fess up. You didn't read the entire Gibbon "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Or did you? I've owned the unabridged 7-volume edition for 25 years but never had the courage to actually get ..."

I stalled on Proust after "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower," but I actually did read all of Gibbon. I'm a fan of 18th Century prose, particularly Samuel Johnson's, so that helped.
Besides, I read a little at a time--about one hundred pages a month over two and a half years. There were boring parts, to be sure, but some sections--particularly those critical of religious belief and those revelatory of personal character and moral failings--were both wise and stylistically beautiful. I think that my writing has benefited from reading all of Gibbon. Before I read him, I never realized how dramatically a well-chosen adjective can illuminate an abstract noun.

OK, fess up. You didn't read the entire Gibbon "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Or did you? I've owned the unabridged 7-volume edition for 25 years but never had the courage to actually get going on it. Just as with Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." I was going to opt for an abridgment of Gibbon at some point possibly.