Something Thoughtful

   Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

TAKING AN ACCOUNT OF “REID’S READER”.

Reid’s Reader began in 2011 and it has continued to 2026. I intend to keep it going. At first I posted my reviews and comments every week with the same headings Something New [meaning new books]; Something Old [classic and / or recent books]; and Something Thoughtful  [which means anything I want to write about – movies, politics, history, annoying things etc. etc.]. However after some years I realised that this was too difficult a schedule to keep up with. So now I post my reviews and comments every fortnight and even then I have to absent myself when I go overseas for a holiday; and I always give myself a break between Christmas and the beginning of January. What this means is that I have reviewed and commented on [literally] hundreds of books.      

Over these years I have got to know what the most interested readers of Reid’s Reader are. They are of course mainly New Zealanders. New Zealand’s poets read my reviews of their work, with about 100 readers – and sometimes more than that - each time their poetry is reviewed. But when it comes to novels, biographies and history, far more readers read than a mere 100 readers.  In fact usually they reach over 1,000, and this includes novels written in the Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century. I am well aware that many students read my reviews as “cribs” for novels which they are supposed to be studying. The works of Balzac, F.Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, William Golding, five works of Charles Dickens, much of H. G. Wells and many others have been reviewed on this blog. These novels and others always attract more than 1,000. I quote Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour [1,375] ; Henry David Thoreau’s Walden [1,400 ] ; Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit [1,192 ] ; William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes [1,233 ] ; Balzac’s “Le Pere Goriot” [1,574] ; Raymond Radiguet’s “Le Diable au Corps” [1,941]; Jose Eustasio Rivera’s “The Vortex” [1,771] ; Graham Green’s “Journey Without Maps”; John Keats’s “Isabella or the Pot of Basil” [1,148] and many, many, others. Most important novels break the 1,000 ribbon… but there are also those who go further … and the winners are Angela Wanhalla’s “Matters of the Heart” [3,249]; and Victor Hugo’s “The Laughing Man” [3,776]; and above all there is the story of Kaspar Houser [21,908]. You can read all of these in Reid’s Reader.   You will find all these by looking up the names of poets , novelists and historians. The books I have mentioned are small part of what there is in Reid’s Reader. And for the record I must note that many of my readers come from America, Australia and Britain as well as New Zealanders.