The Great American Internet Fiction Thing

In high school I had an English teacher (American Literature) who liked to talk about The Great American Novel.  Something about its scope and, like, defining a thing.  Or something. 

I assume he had never really read Huckleberry Finn.

Anyway, whatever else a novel is, it is something like a sandwich. 

A sandwich is something between pieces of bread.  (Regional and cultural definition of "bread" may vary.) 

A novel is something between a front cover and a back cover.  At least.  Well that's a place to start. 

So the Great American Novel would be text between covers that says something about America and is all defining and reconstructs the paradigms and all radiant and glorious and stuff.  Depending on whether you're an English (AmLit) major. 

But --

What if there's no back cover?

Well then, if it's a traditional book you call it an unfinished novel, I guess.  Author deceased. 

Thought experiment:  Think of a trilogy of books.  I'm thinking of C. S. Lewis' space trilogy, but you can pick your own.  Say the first book stands on its own as a story.  Say books one and two likewise.  Is the story complete?  Along comes book three.  Now what?  What if there was a book that was a series of books but that was complete in every book? No real "back cover"? Complete in every chapter?  But what if it kept on going, kept on growing, kept on attaining something -- complete and not-complete at every unit.  Is book two of Lewis' space trilogy an unfinished novel?  In what sense is it unfinished? 

And what if the book has no covers?  No paper at all?  What if it is electronic / digital / internet based? 

I think the English majors might not want to aim so low as to write a Great American Novel.  Maybe it would be greater to aspire to being part of a kind of cohesive Homestuck that just keeps going and going and going.  You may say I'm a dreamer.  Together some day we may be writing the Great American Celebrate the Ongoing Life Thing.  Maybe we already are. 

This year in reading

One of the decisions I took as 2011 drew to a close was to do some non-internet reading every day. Little did I know that Christmas of 2011 would bring to me the gift of a Kindle e-reader! My Amazon Kindle Keyboard has made it easier for me to read without fatigue.  The ability to read narrow columns of large text takes me past the disability of my binocular dysfunction. As a result I might justly be accused of spending too much time with my nose buried in an e-book. (Witness the countless number of "home improvements" left undone.)

Be that as it may. 

Here's what happened in 2013.  The books are in reverse chronological order.  I'm not going to bother to put the titles in italics.

In progress and due to be done by end of year:
The Wouldbegoods - E. Nesbit
Soldiers Three Part Two - Rudyard Kipling
A Christmas Carol (with historical annotations) - Charles Dickens (Kathleen Helal)

These are done:
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
The Story of the Treasure Seekers - E. Nesbit
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll
Darkness Rising: Book One of the Catmage Chronicles - Meryl Yourish
Soldiers Three - Rudyard Kipling
Draw One In The Dark - Sarah Hoyt
Actions and Reactions - Rudyard Kipling
Christian Science - Mark Twain
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens
Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Stucture - Nick Schulz
Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles - Larry Correia
Cricket Learns to Sing - Michael A. Hooten
The Buffalo Runners A Tale of the Red River Plains - R. M. Ballantyne
The Scent of Metal - Sabrina Chase
The Gorilla Hunters - R. M. Ballantyne
Terms of Enlistment - Marko Kloos
The North Pole, Its Discovery in 1909 Under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club - Robert E. Peary
A Few Good Men - Sarah Hoyt
Norsemen in the West - R. M. Ballantyne
Five Children and It - E. Nesbit
Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - R. M. Ballantyne
Darkship Renegades - Sarah Hoyt
The Categories - Aristotle
Darkship Thieves - Sarah Hoyt
St. Winifred's (or, The World of School) - Frederic Farrar*
Hukata - Mike Weatherford
Puck of Pook's Hill - Rudyard Kipling
Heroes of Asgard / Tales from Scandinavian Mythology - A. & E. Keary
Erling the Bold - R. M. Ballantyne





Yes, there are a lot of "young reader" books in the list.  So? 

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*WARNING:  Do not read St. Winifred's except as a penitential or academic endeavor! What a dreadful "improving" book.  In my case, the undertaking was academic, as it is mentioned in Stalky & Co.
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What is in store for 2014?  War and Peace, Plato's Republic, Mao's little treatise On Guerrilla Warfare, and more Kipling and more Kipling!  And probably Erling again.  And I'm hoping Sabrina Chase will finish another book!