Shelf Control: Green Mansions

Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Literary Potpourri to discuss unread books sitting in our to-be-read piles.

  

My Shelf Control book this week is Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by W.H. Hudson*. It was a favorite of my Mom when she was a teen and she still regards it fondly.  She tried to get me to read it time and again when I was younger, but it never struck my fancy because I found it slow to start.  I tried it again, not too long ago, on audiobook, but the narrator was absolutely terrible, so I abandoned it after about an hour.  I'd like to read it, though, for several reasons:  one, because Mom recommends it; two, because it's an Edwardian-era adventure (a genre I truly enjoy); and three, because after researching Hudson, he seems like quite an interesting fellow. 

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was born to British settlers in Argentina, where he lived until he emigrated to England at the age of 33.  He wrote a slew of nonfiction books, including a popular memoir, as well as several novels, with the best known being Green Mansions (1904).  In addition to his literary talent, he was a recognized ornithologist and naturalist; several towns and other public places are named in his honor in his native Argentina (where he is known as Guillermo Enrique Hudson)

I own a copy, which I found in the free bin at our local used book store a few years ago.  Now that I know more about it (particularly the appealing fact it's a turn-of-the-twentieth-century publication) and that Hudson was actually familiar with South America (goodness knows he wouldn't have been the first Victorian or Edwardian author to write about something exotic and completely alien), I'm really keen to give it another go.

What about you?  Have you read Green Mansions?  (It can be read or downloaded for free at the magnificent Project Gutenberg.)  What interesting book do you have on your TBR?

*Goodreads link