Ralph Ellison, "Flying Home and other stories"

These stories are very good, and I cannot put my finger on precisely why. Partly the realism, I think, and the vivid description, and the courage to put things as they are. (Having read the first story, 'A Party in the Square', I now know what was missing from 'The Help'.) Ellison combines a very specific time-place-and-people with universal human experience - a small boy is a small boy, and Ellison's Buster and Riley have an awful lot in common with, for example, William Brown. I wish I'd read this when I was studying the Civil Rights movement, because it would have made an awful lot of things a lot clearer.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9950609

Willa Cather, "Death Comes For The Archbishop"

A book with a beautiful sense of place. Not a novel, Cather said, a narrative, and certainly it seems to meander along at its own pace, with no plot to speak of, but not troubled by that. It's more a fictionalisation of history. The meticulous research is evident, and manifests itself not so much as a history lesson as a work of art. My mental picture of New Mexico as it was is now considerably more detailed.

I did find myself getting twitchy at the missionary-heroes, because this is a part of post-colonial guilt that gets to me more than most, but as missionaries go Bishop Latour and Fr Vaillant are inoffensive, Latour particularly so. (His thoughts on the two great evils vanquished in his lifetime, for example...) Cather succeeds in making good people interesting, and that's not an easy task.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9968361

M. R. James, "Complete Ghost Stories"

A little too complete, I fear. Taken one at a time, these are very creepy, but collected all together they are too similar in structure and atmosphere to impress continuously. For this reason, I think, the first few stories feel like the best. I think that's because one comes to them fresh. Once one gets the hang of how they work, they're less impressive.

Apparently James used to read them to his friends on winter evenings by the light of a single candle, and I can see that working very well. Individually excellent; collectively, a bit same-y.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9950603