New poll, new reviewing plans, and poetry

First off, have a new poll running through Thursday night seeing which works you'd most like to see receive the same sort of treatment that I recently gave J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Right now, I have plans for doing something similar for Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels, but there will be gaps between those three novels, as I only now placed orders for the latter two books. Also, I'm awaiting the arrival of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, as I do plan on doing something similar for that as well, once I've read it.

But I thought perhaps there would be interest for this hybrid review/reflective essay to be written on other well-known novels, both speculative and mimetic fiction alike. So I chose from books I'm considering re-reading and about whose authors I haven't yet written much in the way of an overview (that's why I didn't include China Miéville, Ursula Le Guin, or Gene Wolfe in the poll) these past couple of years.

Also, expect to see occasional snippets from Roberto Bolaño's oevre here, as I'm currently 2/3 into his posthumous poetry collection, La Universidad Desconocida. Here is one poem from it that I'll translate (and edit this post to show) after I awake in the morning:

Mi Carrera Literaria

Rechazos de Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, con toda seguridad
también de Alfaguara, Mondadori. Un no de Muchnik,
Seix Barral, Destino...Todas las editoriales.. Todos los lectores...
Todos los gerentes de ventas...
Bajo el puente, mientras llueve, una oportunidad de oro
para verme a mí mismo:
como una culebra en el Polo Norte, pero escribiendo.
Escribiendo poesía en el país de los imbéciles.
Escribiendo con mi hijo en las rodillas.
Escribiendo hasta que cae la noche
con un estruendo de los mil demonios.
Los demonios que han de llevarme al infierno,
pero escribiendo.