I find it interesting, while reading a work of fiction, to come upon the name of another author or the mentioning of a book that one of the characters in the fictional work has read or is reading. I find it of particular interest if I'm familiar with the book mentioned.
One example is in a work of Agatha Christie which I've just finished, Death on the Nile . In the novel, Christie notes that one characters has a copy of Erewhon by Samuel Butler. Erewhon was one of the dystopian novels I read this past April.
Another example is from the Christie novel I've just began reading last night - Appointment with Death. In the very opening of the novel, Hercule Poirot overhears a bit of conversation which reminds him of a story he once heard concerning the writer, Anthony Trollope. According to this story, Trollope was crossing the Atlantic at the time, and overheard two passengers discussing the last published installment of one of his novels.
"Very good", one man said, "but he ought to kill off that tiresome old woman".
Trollope was said to have told the men,
"Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you! I will go and kill her immediately!"
There is no mention of which Trollope novel was being referred to. I spent a good deal of time in April reading Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire ; I don't know if the reference is to one of those novels. If it is, I suspect the "tiresome old woman" might have been the wife of Bishop Proudie.
I suppose I'll never really know for certain.
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