the-last-of-the-mohicans

From Antigua to Anniversaries (of Notable Novels)

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A street in Antigua, Guatemala, that has nothing to do with the topic of this literature post. 🙂 (Photo by me on January 8.)

Glad to be back! I missed writing a post last week because of a trip I took with my wife Laurel and younger daughter Maria to Guatemala, where Maria was born. A memorable visit that included stops in Guatemala City, Tikal, Antigua, Panajachel, and Guatemala City again.

Today, as I do every January, I’m going to mention well-known novels — many of which I’ve read, some of which I haven’t — reaching major round-number anniversaries. So, in 2026, novels published in 2001 are turning 25, 1976-released books are turning 50, 1926 novels are turning 100, etc.

The first 2001 novel that came to mind was Richard Russo’s riveting Pulitzer Prize winner Empire Falls, set in a Maine blue-collar town.

Released that year, too, was Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, about a couple and their three adult children. I liked it better than the author’s much-touted Freedom, though that 2010 novel was pretty good as well.

Also, Yann Martell’s Life of Pi, which features a boy stranded on a boat with a tiger after a shipwreck; Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, which has a lot to say about female relationships as well as racism; Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, a riveting look at a mass-hostage situation; Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, about a Chinese-American woman and her immigrant mother; Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I found both compelling and annoying; John Grisham’s semi-autobiographical A Painted House; Neil Gaiman’s fantasy tour de force American Gods; and Jasper Fforde’s clever The Eyre Affair.

Kristin Hannah’s peak as an author was yet to arrive, but her somewhat-early-in-career 2001 novel Summer Island was quite absorbing as it focused on a fraught mother-daughter relationship and rapprochement.

In the series realm, Diana Gabaldon’s fifth Outlander novel (The Fiery Cross) and Lee Child’s fifth Jack Reacher novel (Echo Burning) came out 25 years ago.

The year 2001 also saw the publication of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind and Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, neither of which I’ve read.

In 1976, the most famous release was Alex Haley’s Roots, which was of course the multi-generational American slavery saga about Kunta Kinte and his descendants.

There was also Margaret Atwood’s third novel Lady Oracle, about a woman with multiple identities; and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, a sci-fi-ish work whose lower-income protagonist is unjustly committed to a psychiatric institution.

Notable 1976 books I haven’t read include Anne Rice’s debut novel Interview with the Vampire and Judith Guest’s made-into-a-memorable-movie Ordinary People.

Exactly a century ago — 1926 — saw the appearance of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which I thought was good not great.

An underrated classic that year was L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, about a young woman who gets very bad news that turns out to be very good news.

There was also Colette’s The Last of Cheri, the sequel to the 1920 Cheri novel about the relationship between a younger man and older woman; and My Mortal Enemy, one of Willa Cather’s lesser works.

Well-known 1926 novels I haven’t read include Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Upton Sinclair’s Oil!

Published 150 years ago, in 1876: Mark Twain’s iconic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, about a rascally boy and his friend Huckleberry Finn.

That year also saw the release of Daniel Deronda, George Eliot’s final novel and one of her best. Its title character, who discovers he’s Jewish, interacts with some very memorable people.

In addition, there was Thomas Hardy’s not-famous-but-interesting The Hand of Ethelberta.

Two 1826 highlights were Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic, late-21st-century-set The Last Man and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans that unfolds in 1757 during the French and Indian War. Two novels with “Last” in the title that lasted.

And in 1726, 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift’s iconic Gulliver’s Travels was published!

Any thoughts on the novels I discussed? Any other titles you’d like to mention from those anniversary years? (I’m sure I missed some.)

Misty the cat says: “Tofu falling from the sky was not on my 2026 bingo card.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about two meetings, a local anti-ICE protest, and more — is here.

Feline Post Includes Mentions of Jane Austen and ‘The Host’

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I, Misty the cat, say: “Putting together a guest blog post is like putting together a puzzle.” (Photo of my kitty self taken by my adult female human Laurel.)

Misty the cat here, returning for my every-two-month takeover of Dave’s blog — which I do by gunpoint, minus the gun. This is a particularly memorable time for me to post because tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of my adoption into my forever family, from whom I’ve received everything I could desire except a bed the size and shape of Buckingham Palace. King Chuck III has some ‘splaining to do.

And in nine days — December 16 — there’ll be a milestone moment for literature: the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s 1775 birth! Rebecca Budd, who comments here every week, has already posted about that anniversary in one of her great blogs. The year 1775 was also significant for being the start of the American Revolutionary War and for Apple’s rollout of the iMusket 9.

Back to Austen. I’m often (well, never) asked how I rank her six novels, and here’s my kitty answer: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Oh, you want titles, too? 1) Persuasion. 2) Pride and Prejudice. 3) Sense and Sensibility. 4) Mansfield Park. 5) Emma. 6) Northanger Abbey. This is also Dave’s order of faves (rhyme alert!), which means we were both bribed by the same literary scholars. Austen’s early 19th-century books have aged well…partly because I keep them in my wine cellar. Actually, I don’t have a wine cellar. No cat does.

And today, December 7, is the 84th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, an event vividly depicted near the end of Herman Wouk’s compelling novel The Winds of War. If those winds had become strong enough, Wouk’s book would’ve been titled The Hurricanes of War — storms that fall alphabetically between Hurricane Violin and Hurricane Xylophone.

The Winds of War was followed by Wouk’s epic War and Remembrance — the title of which has the initials “WAR.” Coincidence? Well, Hurricane Coincidence falls alphabetically between Hurricane Bassoon and Hurricane Didgeridoo.

My current reading? I, Misty the cat, recently finished Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, an excellent work of sci-fi that stars a being who lives inside a human body. So, no, the book is not a historical novel about Johnny Carson, who was not related to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter author Carson McCullers, who was a top-notch writer but apparently didn’t know that a heart can’t hunt animals without a permit and that vegans prefer Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Also, American frontiersman Kit Carson was not a feline like me.

Natty Bumppo did the frontiersman thing, too, in James Fenimore Cooper’s five “Leatherstocking” novels that included The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper was an American contemporary of aforementioned Englishwoman Jane Austen, and there are even rumors that they collaborated on a novel called The Last of the Emmas. So I’m puzzled (see photo) that we later had people such as actresses Emma Thompson and Emma Watson.

The latter of course played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies based on the J.K. Rowling novels. Seven books, eight movies, and nine lives (experienced by cats like me). Plus there are 10 characters in Agatha Christie’s famed mystery novel And Then There Were None, whose plot focuses on the number of dry-food pellets left in my bowl after I finish eating. No mystery where those pellets went.

Which books do I want for Christmas? Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Fannie Flagg’s A Redbird Christmas, John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas, Betty Smith’s A Christmas Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anthony Burgess’ A Christmas Orange, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Christmas and Punishment, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Christmas, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Christmashead, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to Christmas, Chinua Achebe’s Christmas Falls Apart…

Dave will reply to comments as I either finish the puzzle I’m photographed with or swat every piece of that puzzle into January 2026.

I, Misty the cat, say: “There’s gotta be a sidewalk sale around here somewhere.”

Dave and my comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — from which Sir Walter Scott should remove himself from discussion of a referendum-halting court decision — is here.

They’re Serious about Series and Standalone Novels

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Some authors are good at two or more things: novels and short stories, fiction and nonfiction, literary fiction and mass-audience fiction, etc. For this post, I’ll add to that by focusing on authors who are good at series as well as standalone novels. It certainly requires some different writing muscles to wrap up things in one book vs. extending things across multiple books.

This topic occurred to me last week as I read Val McDermid’s A Place of Execution, a superb standalone novel with a concluding twist that will knock your socks off. My previous experience with McDermid was with her series fiction, including the books starring “cold case” detective Karen Pirie.

I followed A Place of Execution with Martin Cruz Smith’s Independence Square — his 10th in the series starring Russian investigator Arkady Renko that began with Gorky Park. (Independence Square was okay; not as good as the earlier Renko books.) Smith has also written standalone novels such as Rose.

Sometimes, authors toggle throughout their careers between standalone books and series — as has been the case with Smith and McDermid as well as authors such as Walter Mosley with his Easy Rawlins books and much more. Other times, authors start with standalone novels before hitting on a hit series and focusing on that — as did Sue Grafton, who wrote two standalones before launching her popular Alphabet Mysteries (25 in all; she reached the letter “Y” before she died).

J.K. Rowling has also written many more series novels than standalone ones: seven Harry Potter books, then The Casual Vacancy one-off, then seven Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott crime novels (so far).

L.M. Montgomery followed her classic Anne of Green Gables with seven sequels over the years, during which time she also penned the Emily trilogy and standalones such as The Blue Castle.

Stephen King is known mostly for standalone novels, with a sprinkling of sequels and trilogies, but has also written many books in The Dark Tower series.

Some long-ago authors also toggled. For instance, James Fenimore Cooper wrote the five “Leatherstocking” novels (including The Last of the Mohicans) as well as various standalone books. Alexandre Dumas did both as well — many standalones (most famously The Count of Monte Cristo) as well as The Three Musketeers and its five sequels (sometimes published as fewer sequels when certain books were combined into one edition).

Your thoughts about and examples of this topic?

Misty the cat says: “My fitness tracker better record backward steps.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a lot of school news during a non-school time — is here.