1914
10 books
- You get a gloriously pulpy descent into Pellucidar, where David Innes faces sagoths, Mahar, and a world with no true horizon. The writing is dated and the romance is blunt, but the strange geography and relentless adventure make it easy to read with a grin.
- Nothing much happens in these stories, and that's the point: small humiliations, missed chances, whole lives caught in a glance. If you can sit with quiet sadness, the last one, with Gabriel at the party and snow falling over Ireland, will stay with you for years.
- Frost at his least postcard-pretty: long blank-verse conversations between farm neighbors, husbands and wives who can't quite say what they mean. Home Burial will wreck you a little, and Mending Wall is slyer than the line everyone quotes.
- Practical Mysticism non-fictionUnderhill wrote this for regular busy people, not monks, and it shows: she basically teaches you to pay attention, starting with something as small as really looking at a plant or a pencil. Slow, patient reading, but her prose is brisk and kind, never foggy.
- Recollections of Full Years non-fictionHonestly, the best stretch is the Philippines: Nellie Taft in Manila, running Malacañang, soaking up the evening band concerts on the Luneta she'd later echo in Washington. If you like brisk, observant Edwardian travel memoir more than White House gossip, this rewards you; if you want political dirt, skip it.
- Pure pulp, and it knows it: Tarzan gets marooned by his enemy Rokoff and builds a war party out of Akut the ape, a panther, and the warrior Mugambi. If you want a revenge chase with zero downtime, this delivers; if you want depth, look elsewhere.
- Early Wodehouse, so it's half comedy, half actual kidnapping caper: rival crooks descending on a boys' school to snatch Ogden Ford, a millionaire's son so awful he chain-smokes at twelve. Less sparkle than Jeeves, more plot, and Smooth Sam Fisher is very good company.
- A guardian angel loses his faith by reading too much theology in his ward's library, then knocks around Paris plotting heaven's overthrow with other fallen angels. It's dry, mischievous French satire, more chuckle than thunder, and the ending lands a genuinely wise punch about power.
- You’d appreciate its eerie prescience: Wells imagines “atomic bombs” in 1914, then follows their aftermath into a world trying to build peace. It reads less like a novel than a brisk future history, full of political argument and big ideas, so character-driven readers may find it dry.
- You get Tik-Tok’s wonderfully literal voice, Betsy Bobbin’s practical courage, and a journey that moves from cheerful Oz nonsense into the eerie underground kingdom of the Nome King. It’s more episodic than some Oz books, but the oddness keeps accumulating in a lovely way.