Phyllis Rose, a writer of literary analysis and criticism, decided to try an experiment. As she describes it in the first paragraph of The Shelf:
"...Believing that literary critics wrongly favor the famous and canonical—that is, writers chosen for us by others—I wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature. So I chose a fiction shelf in the New York Society Library somewhat at random—it happens to be the LEQ-LES shelf—and set out to read my way through it, writing about the experience as I went. I had no reason to believe that the books would be worth the time I would spend on them. They could be dull, even lethally so. I was certain, however, that no one in the history of the world had read exactly this series of novels. That made the project exciting to me."
Among the books from the LEQ-LES shelf that Ms. Rose read and commented on were:
One for the Devil by Etienne Leroux
A Hero of Our Time by Mihail Lermontov
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Call me Ishtar by Rhoda Lerman
Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy
Just Like Beauty by Lisa Lerner
Count Luna by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Gil Blas by Alain-Rene Le Sage
The 13th Juror by John Lescroart
Spies of the Kaiser by William Le Queux
In all, Ms. Rose read about 30 novels. Come join us and let us know what you thought of her experiment.
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