I made a post, quite some time ago now, giving a rough scorecard of our knowledge of the books before we’d encountered them for this project, on the philosophy that, if we’re going to have the temerity to critique these fine authors, you ought to be acquainted with our level of expertise going into the thing. Well, a mere year and half later we’re done with this first decade, and so it seemed like an appropriate time for an update, as we launch ourselves into the ’30s. To recap:
Standards :
Heard of: Books: Have we heard of this book before?
Authors: Could we answer the question, “Who is X?”
Read: If we’ve heard of them, have we in fact read any of the books in question?
Love: Of the one’s we’ve read, did we love any?
Loathe: Did we loathe any?
Movie: And lastly, although this in no way counts toward the Books Read tally, did we see the movie version?
| Books and Authors | DV: Book | DV: Author | DP: Book | DP: Author |
| 1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge | No | No | No |
No |
| 1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes | No | No | No | No |
| 1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1933 The Store by T. S. Stribling | No | No | No | No |
| 1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller | No | No | No | No |
| 1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson | No | No | No | No |
| 1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis | No | No | No | No |
| 1937 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1938 The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand | No | No | No | No |
| 1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Diablevert :
Heard of: : 3 Books, 3 Authors
Read: 0
Movie: Once while folding laundry I stumbled onto a showing of Gone with the Wind right after the bit where Scarlett’s like, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers…” whilst standing silhouetted against the ruins of Tara. I thought to myself, ah, this must be near the end, I’ll just stick around and catch the last half hour. Two and a half hours later….
Comment: I am ashamed to discover that I am actually worse on this decade than the last. I am also lightly touched with trepidation as of the three books I have heard of, two are ones that I specifically remember wiggling out of reading as a kid. Every kid in the fourth grade class ahead of mine hated The Good Earth so much they had us read something different, and I recall The Yearling as a long book about the deer. I never did go through that horse phase all little girls are supposed to endure about age 9; I think too many well-meaning suggestions about Black Beauty may have put me off the whole boy-and-his-dog genre. I guess we’ll see if my distaste has lingered for a lifetime. Maybe I’m a bigger softy now.
Dreadful Penny :
Heard of: 3 Books, 3 Authors
Read: 2
Love/Loathe: I was assigned The Good Earth in high school, and being a good little girl, completed said reading. I do not have fond memories. Don’t even get me started on having to read Gone with the Wind again… this, much like my second go on The Magnificent Ambersons, may well prove to be my Pulitzer Waterloo. I wouldn’t say I loathe either book, but, as they say in Spaceballs, I thought we’d met again for the first time for the last time.
Movie: Seen Gone with the Wind twice, once in 5th grade (I remember it taking nearly a month to watch, but that can’t be right) and again when I first got Netflix and thought I should fill my queue with classic movies before I gave in and loaded that shit up with Battlestar Galactica episodes and Robert Downey Jr. movies.
Comment: *sigh* I really don’t want to enter the ’30s with trepidation, and yet… it just doesn’t look like this will be the shining decade of Pulitzer choices. But I can say that I’m actually looking forward to The Yearling, as it seems like a classic of kiddie lit that I’d never read otherwise (and, while I also hated horse books as a kid, and am still slightly creeped out by horses to this day, I had a special fondness at the time for “dead dog” books. So I’m ready for the one where *spoiler alert* the deer bites it.)
