My Google Calendar just reminded me that today marks the 8th anniversary of Virtual Memories! For you long-time readers, many thanks for sticking around all these years!
Now congratulate me for perseverance in the face of irrelevance and/or obsolescence! Or buy me something!
(Oh, and check out my new book-oriented Tumblr blog, Montaigne’s Library, somedarntime!)
Since I didn’t see a way to comment on your Montaigne’s library blog, I’ll comment on it here.
“The Age of Innocence” is one of my favorite novels. It is a great story of sacrifice. A friend and I were recently amusing ourselves by assembling a list of the great books about New York, arranged by the decade in which the book was set (I say “book” rather than “novel” or “story” because we weren’t limiting this list to works of fiction, or even narrative works [e.g., one of my selections for the 1930s was “The WPA Guide to New York City”]). I selected “The Age of Innocence” as the best New York book of the 1870s. I also selected a Wharton novel for one of the best New York books set in the 1890s: “The House of Mirth”.
I think you have to be logged in to Tumblr to be able to comment. Or “heart” or whatever it is that people on Tumblr do. I really enjoyed Age of Innocence. Before that, the only Wharton I’d read was Ethan Frome, and that was back in grad school. I’ll check out House of Mirth sometime this year, between Powells.
Where did The Power Broker fit into your Books of NYC survey?
What’s happening man? This video needs to be on your blog:
I voted for The Power Broker as THE book about the 20th century in New York. It can’t be limited to one decade. Reading that book made me realize that the city where I grew-up had been shaped by forces I hadn’t imagined. I have spent more of life than I would care to calculate in landscapes created by Robert Moses, from the Cross Bronx Expressway to Jones Beach to Inwood Hill Park. I think New York natives, transplants, and tourists should be required to read The Power Broker and then pass a test on it.