Growth of the Soil on Sex and Character: “Otto Weininger, the author of _Sex and Character_, said of _Pan_ that it was "perhaps the most beautiful novel ever written."”
Growth of the Soil on The Cloister and the Hearth: “The book is a harmless picaresque, a _geste_ of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with _Lavengro_ and _The Cloister and the Hearth_, in that ancient, endless order of tales which link up age with age and land with land in the unaltering, unfrontiered fellowship of the road that kept the spirit…”
Growth of the Soil on Tristram Shandy: “There is a touch of Sterne about the book; not the exaggerated super-Sterne of Tristram Shandy, with eighteenth-century-futurist blanks and marbled pages, but the fluent, casual, follow-your-fancy Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_.”
Shallow Soil on King Lear: “an emperor in defeat, King Lear, thoughts and thoughts.”
Shallow Soil on Niels Lyhne: “reminds one of the very greatest passages in that Danish classic, 'Niels Lyhne.'”
Crazy Rich Asians on August: “From the same shelf, Nick picks out 'a volume by Knut Hamsun that he had never heard of, August, and settled into one of the overstuffed club chairs' to read.”