‘Pin Picks: The Sign of Four

Today we will be delving into the heart, mind, and psyche of our own miss buenos aires, who is providing us with her favorite books read over the last six months: “I can’t send my favorite books of all time, because that’s a lot of pressure! For me and for the books. I remember really loving Infinite Jest back in the day, but who knows? Maybe I would find it kind of hard to get through these days. So I’m sending my favorite books that I’ve read in the last six months.”

Well, before we discuss her more recent favorites, I feel obliged to say that Infinite Jest is still completely lovable, and you should feel free to revisit it at any time. I read it for the first time, pre-Kindle, on a four-day camping trip with my father, and I regret only the time it spent at the bottom of the canoe, quietly absorbing liquid until it weighed about fifteen pounds. Like a fine September Vogue. Love you, DFW, wherever you are or aren’t.

Now, miss buenos aires and her favorite books of 2012:

1. The Group, Mary McCarthy — Well, NATURALLY. It’s a fabulous book. Women, interlocking lives, the ideal battling it out with the real…I’m starting to think I already have the right book for you, but let’s wait until we see our other selections.

2. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl — Cliques! Social pressures! Intrigues! Women. I still want to offer you the same book. Pessl took some heat for being a little on the AHHHH LET’S THROW IN ALL OUR CLEVERNESS end of the spectrum, but I find that utterly forgivable in a first novel. Put it out there! It’s what David Foster Wallace did, after all. Was this book my favorite? No. Do I like hearing new, weird female voices? More than anything in the world.

3. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins — Oh HO, madam! Still continuing a bit of a school-trend, more formally in the intrigue and the machinations of the small, enclosed community vein. And, of course, practically perfect in every way. Read it if you haven’t, everyone!

All right, I’ve got it. I had it from the beginning, honestly, but was mildly tempted by a different choice, which we’ll save for a different reader.

For you, miss buenos aires? The Buccaneers, by Edith Wharton, completed (handily) after her death by Marion Mainwaring.

Just so we’re clear, Edith Wharton is the greatest. I could never tire of Edith Wharton. This is not the last time I will recommend an Edith Wharton, but I take particular pleasure in pointing you in the direction of The Buccaneers because it’s a little under the radar, and a lot of fun.

If you ever say to yourself: “Hey, when Downton Abbey wraps up, they should do a prequel that shows how Cora wound up with Lord Grantham, with a lot of fun parties and weird Americanisms and robber barons and so on,” this is the book for you. We follow five American girls in their efforts to secure husbands; hampered in this task by the newness and sheen of their money, they travel to England to pick up titles. Some of the men with titles are awful! Some are dull, some are okay.

It’s brilliant, of course, because Edith Wharton is, and surprisingly successful for a novel completed by a third party (she had Wharton’s original synopsis to go on, and a lot of pluck.) I’m so happy for all of you to read it.