The result of the Classics Club Spin was announced today, and the number was 17, so I will be reading My Ántonia by Willa Cather sometime in August.
This is the summary from my edition:
Ántonia Shimerda is the daughter of Bohemian immigrants struggling with the oceanic loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. Through the eyes of Jim Burden, her tutor and disappointed admirer, we follow Ántonia from farm to town as she survives hardships both natural and human, from hardscrabble poverty to a failed romance–and not only survives, but triumphs.
I am looking forward to reading this book. It will be the first one I have read by Willa Cather, and I have heard many good things about her writing.
23 comments:
Hope you enjoy it, Tracy. I haven't read any of her books either.
A great book, Tracy. I love her books.
I like Willa Cather. And this is a good one imo. Happy reading! :D
Oh, I really hope you'll enjoy this, Tracy. Cather's work is good!
It was my first and only Cather book (also for a spin!) and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's not plot driven as much as character driven, IMO. She does a great job with descriptiveness, too.
Hi Tracy. I did read My Antonia and I hope you enjoy it. I agree with Kelly, Willa Cather is a very descriptive writer and writes powerfully about nature. The land is very important to Antonia in the book and to Willa Cather as well.
I hope I like it too, Cath. I haven't read a lot about Nebraska and the prairie states, and certainly not during the time they were being settled.
Patti, I have read so much praise for her books. I am glad I am finally getting around to reading this one.
Lark, I feel like I am the last person in the world to read this. I appreciate that the Classics Club pushed me in that direction.
Margot, there are two things in this book that I think I will especially like... That Antonia and her family are immigrants, and the first person narration by Jim.
Kelly, For a long time I had only heard of My Antonia by Cather, but in recent years I have read reviews of a few of her other books and thought I might be interested in those also eventually.
Kathy, I read that Cather felt it was important to write about Nebraska and frontier life. I look forward to seeing how she wrote about that area and time.
I really liked My Antoniá (and think Willa Cather is pretty great in general.) Enjoy!
Reese, hearing this much praise for My Antonia, I am getting excited about reading it. It will probably be a month before I start it though.
Tracy--re: STORY magazine:
Thanks for asking, as I've just learned I've not been keeping up--yes, there is Apparently an active version that "will" (sic) publish its new, 19th issue in June. https://www.storymagazine.org/store/2024-summer-issue-19/
Phil Stephensen-Payne's FICTIONMAGS INDEX notes there have been two short-run (so far!) attempts to revive STORY since the decade-long WRITERS' DIGEST version folded, a respectable run from 1989-2000. Detailed (with links to indices) here: http://www.philsp.com/data/data531.html#STORY1931
Apparently, Stout was also involved with the founding of (the initially raffish) Vanguard Press, as well. https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2014/08/ffb-not-at-night-edited-by-herbert.html
Hi, Todd, thanks for the information about STORY magazine. I checked out all the links. It amazes me that a magazine like that could keep going for so long, even with breaks.
I also looked a bit into Rex Stout and Vanguard Press. I may have read about that in his biography but I don't remember.
As with WEIRD TALES and a few others (BLACK MASK in Crime fiction), it's a title that carries such a freight of sentiment that it won't be Allowed to Completely Fold. ALL-STORY, gone for nearly a century before Francis Ford Coppola decided to revive the title as ZOETROPE ALL-STORY, is a more boutique example of the same sort of thing...
And, Tracy, as you probably know, "Richard Stark" was one of Donald Westlake's pseudonyms. Another was "Curt Clark" (as in "rude scribe", which he was at times...).
Todd, yes, I did know that Richard Stark was a pseudonym for Donald Westlake. I was not aware of the Curt Clark pseudonym. The only other one I am familiar with is Tucker Coe and I have not read any of the books written under that one.
I haven't read nearly enough of Donald Westlake's books, under any name.
He's an old favorite of mine. I bought his collection of fiction magazines from his widow, assisted in this by Lawrence Block (another old favorite).
One of his "Curt Clark" stories is the humorous Xmas horror story "Nackles"...another is the rather dumb short sf novel ANARCHAOS. I think he'd stick this pseud on his early '60s fantastica because in 1962 he'd made a big show of Quitting fantastic fiction in favor of only writing crime fiction...but he never really stopped...his "The Winner" was an early '70s sf story under his real name, and one of his last novels was the afterlife fantasy HUMANS, also bylined DW.
Todd, that is so cool and I am envious. That must have been a huge amount of magazines to add to your collection.
I do have a copy of Humans and I haven't read it yet, so I will have to do that soon. It sounds like the type of story I would enjoy.
Ah yes. I recently reacquainted myself with My Antonia in 2023 and reviewed it on my blog. I have only read two of her books ... but I'm curious about a couple others. My Antonia is my favorite so far.
Susan, I haven't read much fiction from that time period and about that geographical area in the US. So it should be interesting in many ways. It is encouraging to hear that so many people enjoyed it.
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