The Guardian Newspaper Thinks I Should Read These Books (Part V)

I'm sensing a certain amount of list fatigue, so this will be the last posting on this subject :). Don't all cheer at once!

Bold means I've read it; strikethrough means I hated it; anything else is a mistake :D

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan (1959)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Robert Walser, Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (1926)

None of the above, although I have read some Vonnegut. Is "Sirens of Titan" that significant? I always thought his major works were "Slaughterhouse 5" and "Cat's Cradle".

Sarah Waters, Affinity (1999)

Indeed, and enjoyed it very much, although I'm blanking on why it's here under SFF rather than under, say, Historicals. The ways of the Guardian are passing strange.

HG Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
HG Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)

I like to think I've read a lot of Wells, including his complete short stories, but there's still a lot to read when I get round to it. When I first read "The Time Machine", I was taken aback by the differences between it and the first film version--particularly the narrator's indifference to Weena and her somewhat unfortunate fate. A love story it ain't.

"War of the Worlds" has never been filmed to my satisfaction (which ain't saying much!), although I preferred the latest version, marginally, over its predecessor. I would like to see the much smaller budget WOTW film that was being made at the same time as the Spielberg version, but it seems to have sunk without trace.

TH White, The Sword in the Stone (1938)

More than once. I've also read the rest of the "Once and Future King" trilogy, and the 'lost' Merlin book. TSITS is by far the best of the lot.

Angus Wilson, The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

No. I have a lot of reading to do, evidently!

John Wyndham, Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

No love here, I see, for "The Chrysalids", which is a much better book than Cuckoos, imo. Triffids is of course a stalwart of British SF, and should not be missed!

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1924)

And again, no. Did the Guardian deliberately trawl for Really Old Stuff, or do they just not much like the new stuff?

And that's it. I won't start again with the Torygraph list, honest!