Shropshire Hills in Nigeria

I am reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half a Yellow Sun and the quoted lines appear in the memories of one of the characters:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

I had to look it up it was so lovely and wistful. It's from A.E. Houseman's A Shropshire Lad which according to Wikipedia was in many British mens' pockets when they left to World War I. According to 'Wiki' it has influenced such varied folk as Vaughn Williams, Samuel Barber, Dennis Potter, Allan Bennet, the Simpsons and in a further African connection, in a Chinua Achebe novel 'the main character Obi frequently refers to Housman's poetry'. I suppose I should get to it at some point.

NYTBR Names Ten Best Books

While I have read Goethe and still ponder what intellectual musings I will share with you about it, the NYT is busy assembling the list of the ten best books of the year.

Dangerous Laughter
Steven Millhauser

A Mercy
Toni Morrison

2666
Roberto Bolaño

Netherland
Joseph O'Neill

Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri

The Dark Side. The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
Jane Mayer

The Forever War
Dexter Filkins.

Nothing to be Frightened Of
Julian Barnes

The Republic of Suffering
Death and the American Civil War
Drew Gilpin Faust.

The World is What it Is
The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul
Patrick French.

I see they had the decency to keep Edward Sawtelle off. No surprises here, these are all books they're reviewed everywhere. I've read all the dirty bits in the V.S.Naipaul biography, the Jhumpa Lahiri and Netherland. I will consider the Toni Morrison and Julian Barnes. I have Bolaño's Savage Detectives teetering on my nightstand so 2666, in all its 900 pages, is possible if I am inspired by his 500 page book first. I know who Drew Gilpin Faust (President of Harvard!) is, don't like Steven Milhauser and the other two will exist without my reading them.