Grand unified books thread

[Savonarola]

I read EM Forster's "Howards End."  It took me a long time to get through because, about 100 pages in, I realized that the Schlegel sisters were about a silver cow creamer shy of being a PG Wodehouse novel and I took a break to read the Psmith stories.   

 

While I can understand the disdain Forster feels for the Wilcoxes; I found his admiration for the Schlegels (even if it's couched in ironic terms) baffling.  I think that's a common sentiment among Americans, the aforementioned PG Wodehouse was much more successful here than he was in the United Kingdom.  Still a fine portrait of Edwardian England though.  I liked the way that suburbanization plays the same role in this novel that industrialization does in the works of Hardy and Eliot; the unstoppable force that remakes rural England.