On This Day...

Have you ever come across those On This Day... books, which list all the significant events to take place on a single date throughout time? Today, for example, being 28th September, witnessed Toronto becoming the capital of Ontario, Canada; cannabis was outlawed in the UK; the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation aired. Brigitte Bardot, Gwyneth Paltrow and Confucius were born (how can they know when Confucius was born?!) Herman Melville, Louis Pasteur and Harpo Marx died.

But Stuck-in-a-Book is going to look at something both more trivial and more literary than these - trivial and literary, that's a fairly accurate description of this blog... I've kept a list of books read for a few years, and thought it might be quite interesting to see what I was reading on September 28th every year. One of those utterly arbitrary, but nonetheless intriguing, things which can occupy the blogger with time on his hands (and, incidentally, a cold. Bah.)

In 2007... right at the moment I am reading L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between and utterly loving it. I anticipate reporting back in the near-future...

In 2006... get ready to be impressed - I was reading Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. What good fortune that I chose today's date; had it been a week earlier, I would have had to confess to The Devil Wears Prada.

In 2005... Fidelity by Susan Glaspell. Goodness, that doesn't feel like two years ago. A Persephone Books reissue, and a rather wonderful one, though perhaps that is tautologous.

In 2004... In a nice piece of cross-post serendipity, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, read in my preparation for starting university and my VicLit course.

In 2003... The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. This does seem to be a fairly misrepresentative list - I read so few classics, as the rather peculiar books mentioned on this blog demonstrate... perhaps September is my month for reading renowned works?

In 2002... I was reading the very wonderful General Impressions by E. M. Delafield. For those who've loved Diary of a Provincial Lady, do seek out this book, and As Others Hear Us. Both are compilations of sketches, generally writing about an aspect of British domestic life in a way even funnier than the PL herself.

In 2001... First Plays by A. A. Milne. Some of his earliest work was as a playwright, and these are well worth seeking out. Probably due a re-read now...

Hope you didn't find that trip down memory lane too dull! I find these comparisons so interesting, and, if you don't object, they might be back at a later date. If nothing else, they should offer a representation of how my reading has changed and developed over the past seven years. Anyone else able to share their September reads through time??