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Ficbot discovers a ‘Dark House’ of a novel: Free via Manybooks.net
May 30, 2007 | 9:05 am
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By David Rothman
Who says Charles Dickens is the only guy who can do a good job with orphans? Ficbot, behind the The Best Media in Life is Free blog, likes The Dark House by Ida Alexa Ross Wylie.
She describes the book—available from Manybooks.net, one of her favorite sites and mine, too—as “a somewhat gloomy but well-written coming-of-age story about an orphan-type trying to make his way in the world.”
Ficbot sez: “While this may be ground that has been trod upon before, this obscure addition to the genre makes for a quick and satisfying read. I have not been able to dig up too much information on its author…other than that she was Australian and worked as a journalist. This seems to be one of those ‘obscure works rescued from the dust-piles of history by the internet’ type of books.”
Hello, scriptwriters? Any adaptation possibilities? The Aussies haven’t done too badly in the pub domain film-fodder department. Remember My Brilliant Career, based on another “dust-pile” book (miraculously discovered pre-Web)? Update, 9:35 a.m.: Actually some of Wylie’s books have already been adapted. More info on her via Google.
Related: Ficbot’s pointer to audios of a story story by H.P. Lovecraft.
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Comments:
Hey, thanks for the link! I havebecome a loyal readeer of your blog and have been mouthing off in comments lately too
I think we are going to see more of this type of book in coming years: these out of print books being ‘found’ again via the internet. I think blogs like orus will become more important filters. Manybooks is great, but they had this completely miscategorized (as ‘horror’ no doubt via implication from the title).
And while there are absolutely some books which went out of print for political, financial or social reasons, there are also a healthy lot that went out of print due to natural selection (aka ‘they weren’t that good.’ I came across one of this sort on Gutenberg Australia: a promising-seeming murder mystery which got unfortunately derailed at about the chapter 5 mark when the characters arrive at the country house and gather in the parlour, after which one of these says, paraphrased, “So, what are your feelings about the monarchy?” I slogged through four further chapters of ruminations and discussions on this theme before I put the book away, wondering whether I was ever going to get the promised murder