Glenn's bookshelf: classics en-US Tue, 18 Apr 2023 19:42:45 -0700 60 Glenn's bookshelf: classics 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Great Gatsby 210090 The Great Gatsby captures all the romance and glitter of the Jazz Age in its portrayal of a young man and his tragic search for love and success. It is a rare combination: a literary masterpiece—and one of the most popular novels of our time. [from edition back cover]]]> 182 F. Scott Fitzgerald 068416325X Glenn 5 3.87 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1925
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/18
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, favorites, modern-library-100, guardian-1000, currently-reading
review:

]]> A Christmas Carol 5981667 A Christmas Carol is one of Charles Dickens' most loved books - a true classic and a Christmas must-read.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean, miserable, bitter old man with no friends. One cold Christmas Eve, three ghosts take him on a scary journey to show him the error of his nasty ways. By visiting his past, present and future, Scrooge learns to love Christmas and the people all around him.

With a light-hearted introduction by bestselling author Anthony Horowitz, creator of the highly successful Alex Rider novels. ]]> 160 Charles Dickens Glenn 5 classics, before-1900

I’ve seen countless film, TV and stage adaptations of A Christmas Carol, but it wasn’t until this week that I read the actual text. Which is strange. I adore Dickens. If pressed, I’d call him one of my all-time favourite authors. But it’s a busy time of year, and when I watch the films it’s usually in a social situation.

This week I found myself with a few extra hours and finally read the novella. Wow. I’m very glad I did. Here are some thoughts:

� I can see why it’s so frequently adapted and has stood the test of time

The structure is brilliant. Think of all the characters Scrooge interacts with in the opening section (Cratchit, his nephew, the people from the charity). Notice how he encounters them all in the final section, too! The dialogue is so clear and sharp screenwriters don’t have to change much. And that dialogue has to be memorable (“Are there no prisons?� “Decrease the surplus population�) in order to register when the lines are thrown back at him later.

� Dickens� description of Scrooge is amazing:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

Look at that series of words (“squeezing, wrenching, grasping…�). They tell you everything you need to know about the man. I'm not sure I like “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster� � we already get that. But what colourful, character-rich description. I LOVE the flint that doesn’t give generous fire! And that then leads to the passage about how the coldness WITHIN HIM affects his features. Brilliant.

� I love the humour

Scrooge (say the name and your face scrunches up in a snarl) walks in the street and here's Dickens explaining how people avoid him:

No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!�

That “what it was o’clock� and “such and such a place� are classic and timeless. I love that bit about the dogs. It’s visual and funny.

When the ghost of Marley visits Scrooge (speaking of which: that chain of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, etc. is a brilliant, brilliant image and metaphor!), I always, ALWAYS laugh at Scrooge's explanation: "a little thing affects [the senses]. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

The smug pun on "gravy" and "grave" is amusing, and there's a poetry of sorts in that "fragment of an underdone potato."

� The story moves at a clip!

After Scrooge leaves his office, there’s this: “Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.� I figured there’d be a whole couple of paragraphs at the restaurant. Nope!

What’s amazing about the text is that after his transformation (I’m assuming this isn’t a spoiler), there are only some 6 pages left for him to realize it’s still Christmas Day, order the turkey (I love the exchange with the boy on the street) for Cratchit and his family, walk the streets as with renewed vigour, go to his nephew’s for Christmas dinner and then surprise Cratchit the next day. That’s a LOT to fit in.

Here’s the exchange at his nephew Fred’s home:

“Why bless my soul!� cried Fred, “who’s that?�
“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?�
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning…�

Most adaptations understandably have Scrooge asking Fred for some sort of forgiveness, to add an emotional beat that recalls Scrooge's dead sister. But Dickens, who’s often accused of writing too much, goes right to the next scene!

� The name of Scrooge’s kindly old boss, Mr. Fezziwig (see above illustration)

His name always makes me laugh. But to READ the name in print is almost more fizzy fun than to merely hear it said.

� Social conscience

Dickens knew poverty and his books shed light on the social inequities of the Victorian era: the workhouses, debtors� prisons, etc. His sensitivity comes through even in this short book, not just in that classic sequence about Ignorance and Want, but also in the scene in which the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the miners� village and then to spy on a couple of sailors (“the elder� with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself�). After the great scene at nephew Fred’s place, where they play the game that involves Scrooge, comes this passage:

The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.

Wow. I love this passage. It’s expansive, encompassing many people and lives.

� Sentimentality

Okay, there’s the matter of Tiny Tim: “and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.� So Tim NEVER dies?

� Let’s instead concentrate on Dickens’s insights into human behaviour:

If you look at the Cratchit’s dinner during the Ghost Of Christmas Present scene, I love how Dickens shows how the family’s in denial about the size of the meal: “There never was such a goose�. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole famly; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough…�

Dickens makes even the most minor character memorable. Consider all the fuss about Master Peter Cratchit’s collars, something that’s classic if you substitute those collars for the latest teen fashion. And Dickens even gives us this little bit near the end of that scene: “� and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s.�

This is Dickens acknowledging human truths. He’s not judging, simply observing. Yes, the book is a ghost story and a tad sentimental. But what makes it a classic are details like this that show how flawed, limited people can be redeemed by the thought and spirit of something larger than themselves.

To quote from near the story's end: "May that be truly said of us, and all of us!"]]> 4.04 1843 A Christmas Carol
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1843
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/17
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves: classics, before-1900
review:


I’ve seen countless film, TV and stage adaptations of A Christmas Carol, but it wasn’t until this week that I read the actual text. Which is strange. I adore Dickens. If pressed, I’d call him one of my all-time favourite authors. But it’s a busy time of year, and when I watch the films it’s usually in a social situation.

This week I found myself with a few extra hours and finally read the novella. Wow. I’m very glad I did. Here are some thoughts:

� I can see why it’s so frequently adapted and has stood the test of time

The structure is brilliant. Think of all the characters Scrooge interacts with in the opening section (Cratchit, his nephew, the people from the charity). Notice how he encounters them all in the final section, too! The dialogue is so clear and sharp screenwriters don’t have to change much. And that dialogue has to be memorable (“Are there no prisons?� “Decrease the surplus population�) in order to register when the lines are thrown back at him later.

� Dickens� description of Scrooge is amazing:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

Look at that series of words (“squeezing, wrenching, grasping…�). They tell you everything you need to know about the man. I'm not sure I like “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster� � we already get that. But what colourful, character-rich description. I LOVE the flint that doesn’t give generous fire! And that then leads to the passage about how the coldness WITHIN HIM affects his features. Brilliant.

� I love the humour

Scrooge (say the name and your face scrunches up in a snarl) walks in the street and here's Dickens explaining how people avoid him:

No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!�

That “what it was o’clock� and “such and such a place� are classic and timeless. I love that bit about the dogs. It’s visual and funny.

When the ghost of Marley visits Scrooge (speaking of which: that chain of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, etc. is a brilliant, brilliant image and metaphor!), I always, ALWAYS laugh at Scrooge's explanation: "a little thing affects [the senses]. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

The smug pun on "gravy" and "grave" is amusing, and there's a poetry of sorts in that "fragment of an underdone potato."

� The story moves at a clip!

After Scrooge leaves his office, there’s this: “Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.� I figured there’d be a whole couple of paragraphs at the restaurant. Nope!

What’s amazing about the text is that after his transformation (I’m assuming this isn’t a spoiler), there are only some 6 pages left for him to realize it’s still Christmas Day, order the turkey (I love the exchange with the boy on the street) for Cratchit and his family, walk the streets as with renewed vigour, go to his nephew’s for Christmas dinner and then surprise Cratchit the next day. That’s a LOT to fit in.

Here’s the exchange at his nephew Fred’s home:

“Why bless my soul!� cried Fred, “who’s that?�
“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?�
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning…�

Most adaptations understandably have Scrooge asking Fred for some sort of forgiveness, to add an emotional beat that recalls Scrooge's dead sister. But Dickens, who’s often accused of writing too much, goes right to the next scene!

� The name of Scrooge’s kindly old boss, Mr. Fezziwig (see above illustration)

His name always makes me laugh. But to READ the name in print is almost more fizzy fun than to merely hear it said.

� Social conscience

Dickens knew poverty and his books shed light on the social inequities of the Victorian era: the workhouses, debtors� prisons, etc. His sensitivity comes through even in this short book, not just in that classic sequence about Ignorance and Want, but also in the scene in which the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the miners� village and then to spy on a couple of sailors (“the elder� with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself�). After the great scene at nephew Fred’s place, where they play the game that involves Scrooge, comes this passage:

The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.

Wow. I love this passage. It’s expansive, encompassing many people and lives.

� Sentimentality

Okay, there’s the matter of Tiny Tim: “and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.� So Tim NEVER dies?

� Let’s instead concentrate on Dickens’s insights into human behaviour:

If you look at the Cratchit’s dinner during the Ghost Of Christmas Present scene, I love how Dickens shows how the family’s in denial about the size of the meal: “There never was such a goose�. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole famly; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough…�

Dickens makes even the most minor character memorable. Consider all the fuss about Master Peter Cratchit’s collars, something that’s classic if you substitute those collars for the latest teen fashion. And Dickens even gives us this little bit near the end of that scene: “� and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s.�

This is Dickens acknowledging human truths. He’s not judging, simply observing. Yes, the book is a ghost story and a tad sentimental. But what makes it a classic are details like this that show how flawed, limited people can be redeemed by the thought and spirit of something larger than themselves.

To quote from near the story's end: "May that be truly said of us, and all of us!"
]]> The Custom of the Country 26950 - Anita Brookner]]> 370 Edith Wharton 0143039709 Glenn 5 1900-1960, classics Is Undine Spragg the most odious fictional character ever?

I know The Custom of the Country is more than a century old, but Undine Spragg is certainly one of the most despicable characters in all of literature. She uses people. She’s vain. She lies. She’s horribly superficial. She treats her child like a pawn. She’s greedy. Long before the term was coined, she was a shop-a-holic. All she cares about is looking fashionable and making her way up society. And once she’s there, she’s bored and wants more.

AND YET!

And yet she keeps on going. She’s tenacious, stubborn. She uses what assets she has (basically her youth and looks) to their full advantage. And wow, can she ever read people, especially men. When she’s down, she figures out a way to get back on top. That’s got to be admirable, right?

And in a way, she’s the product of a consumerist society, one that doesn’t care how you get something as long as you get it.

I’m a huge Wharton fan. I loved The Age Of Innocence and really liked The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. Watching the highly addictive new HBO series made me think I should finally read this book, and I was right. There are passages of absolute brilliance, and Wharton seems to have a love-hate relationship with her protagonist as she works her way up from Midwestern nobody to New York society and then graduates to the jet set (steamer set?) and aristocratic circles in Europe.

Apparently Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes has said The Custom of the Country has inspired his work. There are definitely echoes of Custom in Gilded Age.

I’ll never forget Undine. I think I even like and admire Scarlett O’Hara more, because she at least did what she did for her family. Spragg thinks only of herself. Which, I suppose in this day of self-styled “freedom warriors,� is pretty relevant.]]> 4.04 1913 The Custom of the Country
author: Edith Wharton
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1913
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/09
date added: 2022/12/15
shelves: 1900-1960, classics
review:
Is Undine Spragg the most odious fictional character ever?

I know The Custom of the Country is more than a century old, but Undine Spragg is certainly one of the most despicable characters in all of literature. She uses people. She’s vain. She lies. She’s horribly superficial. She treats her child like a pawn. She’s greedy. Long before the term was coined, she was a shop-a-holic. All she cares about is looking fashionable and making her way up society. And once she’s there, she’s bored and wants more.

AND YET!

And yet she keeps on going. She’s tenacious, stubborn. She uses what assets she has (basically her youth and looks) to their full advantage. And wow, can she ever read people, especially men. When she’s down, she figures out a way to get back on top. That’s got to be admirable, right?

And in a way, she’s the product of a consumerist society, one that doesn’t care how you get something as long as you get it.

I’m a huge Wharton fan. I loved The Age Of Innocence and really liked The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. Watching the highly addictive new HBO series made me think I should finally read this book, and I was right. There are passages of absolute brilliance, and Wharton seems to have a love-hate relationship with her protagonist as she works her way up from Midwestern nobody to New York society and then graduates to the jet set (steamer set?) and aristocratic circles in Europe.

Apparently Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes has said The Custom of the Country has inspired his work. There are definitely echoes of Custom in Gilded Age.

I’ll never forget Undine. I think I even like and admire Scarlett O’Hara more, because she at least did what she did for her family. Spragg thinks only of herself. Which, I suppose in this day of self-styled “freedom warriors,� is pretty relevant.
]]> <![CDATA[The Moon and Sixpence (Penguin Classics)]]> 527174 One of the novels that galvanized W. Somerset Maugham’s reputation as a literary master

The Moon and Sixpence follows the life of one Charles Strickland, a bourgeois city gent whose dull exterior conceals the soul of a genius. Compulsive and impassioned, he abandons his home, wife, and children to devote himself slavishly to painting. In a tiny studio in Paris, he fills canvas after canvas, refusing to sell or even exhibit his work. Beset by poverty, sickness, and his own intransigent, unscrupulous nature, he drifts to Tahiti, where, even after being blinded by leprosy, he produces some of his most extraordinary works of art. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is an unforgettable study of a man possessed by the need to create—regardless of the effect on himself and to others.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 204 W. Somerset Maugham 0143039342 Glenn 4 classics, 1900-1960

W. Somerset Maugham is one of those prolific, craggy-faced British writers who seem rather irrelevant and fusty today. No one reads or discusses him anymore, and I’m sure he’s not taught in schools, although he enjoyed decades of success and wrote many novels, plays, collections of short stories and � a term that perfectly captures his particular era � “belles-lettres.�

(I think his problem was he was writing around the time modernist writing � Joyce, Faulkner � broke through. And his style is definitely not as “innovative,� although in some ways it has aged better.)

That said, I’m glad I picked up this engrossing, compact and well-written novel. It’s “inspired� by the life of post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian works I of course have seen in galleries and reproductions.

Maugham sets up the novel as if it consists of memories from an unnamed semi-autobiographical figure who’s also a young novelist and playwright. (I think it’s a device he also used in The Razor’s Edge, at least according to the Oscar-winning film version I’ve seen.)

Charles Strickland is a perfectly ordinary, comfortable, middle-class 40-something London stockbroker who one day leaves his wife and children to go to Paris to become a painter. His wife, believing he’s run off with another woman, asks the narrator to locate him in Paris, which he does. But instead of finding a man caught up in a torrid mid-life-crisis affair, he discovers a loathsome, hateful, irritable man living in a garret and learning how to paint. Strickland isn’t the most articulate man, but he believes painting is his calling. He doesn’t care about his wife, or his reputation, or even money, although he needs it to live.

The narrator also meets another artist, the corpulent Dutch immigrant Dirk Stroeve, who is commercially successful but a bit of a fool. A lot of poor Parisian artists sponge off him, including Strickland. Stroeve is one of the few people, however, to recognize Strickland’s genius. And he goes out of his way to help him, including opening up his apartment to the man when he falls ill; he and his wife, Blanche, help restore him to health. Not that Strickland is in any way grateful.



I appreciated this novel not as a biographical portrait of Gauguin but rather as a ruthless, unromanticized look at the idea of the artist. Should it matter if an artist is brilliant but a complete and utter asshole? Strickland’s calling almost seems religious, and I liked thinking about this theme as well. Maugham wasn’t as experimental as his modern contemporaries, but I found his use of the narrator figure fascinating. And his writing about sex was telling, especially knowing that Maugham was a closeted gay man, which added depth and richness to his depiction of an outsider figure.

Finally, the idea of someone leaving their comfortable job to pursue something more meaningful felt very timely during this moment, which has been dubbed “The Great Resignation.�

I was all set to give the book 5 stars� until I got to the final section, which felt anti-climactic. And warning: there are some racial and cultural epithets that will seem offensive to contemporary eyes and ears. Plus it’s important to keep in mind that, like Gauguin’s Tahiti paintings themselves, this book � especially the final part � is deeply influenced by colonialism.

One interesting note: the title never comes up in the book. Apparently it comes from a review of Maugham’s earlier book, Of Human Bondage. It’s about being “so busy yearning for the moon that [you] never see the sixpence at [your] feet.� That sentiment in itself is a thoughtful statement about art, idealism, ordinary life and commerce.

This is a remarkable novel. I’m definitely going to read more Maugham.]]> 3.96 1919 The Moon and Sixpence (Penguin Classics)
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1919
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/27
date added: 2022/12/03
shelves: classics, 1900-1960
review:


W. Somerset Maugham is one of those prolific, craggy-faced British writers who seem rather irrelevant and fusty today. No one reads or discusses him anymore, and I’m sure he’s not taught in schools, although he enjoyed decades of success and wrote many novels, plays, collections of short stories and � a term that perfectly captures his particular era � “belles-lettres.�

(I think his problem was he was writing around the time modernist writing � Joyce, Faulkner � broke through. And his style is definitely not as “innovative,� although in some ways it has aged better.)

That said, I’m glad I picked up this engrossing, compact and well-written novel. It’s “inspired� by the life of post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian works I of course have seen in galleries and reproductions.

Maugham sets up the novel as if it consists of memories from an unnamed semi-autobiographical figure who’s also a young novelist and playwright. (I think it’s a device he also used in The Razor’s Edge, at least according to the Oscar-winning film version I’ve seen.)

Charles Strickland is a perfectly ordinary, comfortable, middle-class 40-something London stockbroker who one day leaves his wife and children to go to Paris to become a painter. His wife, believing he’s run off with another woman, asks the narrator to locate him in Paris, which he does. But instead of finding a man caught up in a torrid mid-life-crisis affair, he discovers a loathsome, hateful, irritable man living in a garret and learning how to paint. Strickland isn’t the most articulate man, but he believes painting is his calling. He doesn’t care about his wife, or his reputation, or even money, although he needs it to live.

The narrator also meets another artist, the corpulent Dutch immigrant Dirk Stroeve, who is commercially successful but a bit of a fool. A lot of poor Parisian artists sponge off him, including Strickland. Stroeve is one of the few people, however, to recognize Strickland’s genius. And he goes out of his way to help him, including opening up his apartment to the man when he falls ill; he and his wife, Blanche, help restore him to health. Not that Strickland is in any way grateful.



I appreciated this novel not as a biographical portrait of Gauguin but rather as a ruthless, unromanticized look at the idea of the artist. Should it matter if an artist is brilliant but a complete and utter asshole? Strickland’s calling almost seems religious, and I liked thinking about this theme as well. Maugham wasn’t as experimental as his modern contemporaries, but I found his use of the narrator figure fascinating. And his writing about sex was telling, especially knowing that Maugham was a closeted gay man, which added depth and richness to his depiction of an outsider figure.

Finally, the idea of someone leaving their comfortable job to pursue something more meaningful felt very timely during this moment, which has been dubbed “The Great Resignation.�

I was all set to give the book 5 stars� until I got to the final section, which felt anti-climactic. And warning: there are some racial and cultural epithets that will seem offensive to contemporary eyes and ears. Plus it’s important to keep in mind that, like Gauguin’s Tahiti paintings themselves, this book � especially the final part � is deeply influenced by colonialism.

One interesting note: the title never comes up in the book. Apparently it comes from a review of Maugham’s earlier book, Of Human Bondage. It’s about being “so busy yearning for the moon that [you] never see the sixpence at [your] feet.� That sentiment in itself is a thoughtful statement about art, idealism, ordinary life and commerce.

This is a remarkable novel. I’m definitely going to read more Maugham.
]]> The Turn of the Screw 10882679 The Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?]]> 134 Henry James 0141441356 Glenn 3 classics, before-1900
Perhaps. This time around, I found the book needlessly overwritten and the narrator so obviously psychologically disturbed. As a case study in hysteria, this might be interesting. But I’m afraid I like my horror a tad more nuanced.

James’s book about a governess who looks after two little charges at a creepy old estate in Bly, Essex has been adapted many times. There are countless movies, plays, a recent Netflix TV series, a Benjamin Britten opera. One of my favourite stage versions was performed in one of Toronto’s oldest remaining homes, now a museum, where it was absolutely chilling to follow the actors up creaky staircases investigating strange goings-on.

The book, like many of the era, begins as a story within a story - it’s purportedly a manuscript by the narrator’s sister’s governess. In it, the governess tells us that she lives � she’s narrating the story after the fact (and I suppose went on to teach the narrator’s sister). But there’s no epilogue telling us more. Odd, and a missed opportunity, I think. How did the events in the story affect her in later life?

The tale does have loads of atmosphere. The estate comes into creepy focus. Figures appear on rooftops, near ponds. Scary apparitions pop up in windows. But if you’ve seen even one of the thousands of haunted house movies out there, you’ll be familiar with these tropes.

And often James’s sentences are so dense and full of convoluted phraseology that you have to read them several times to understand what the author’s trying to say. Not exactly page-turning material.

Frankly, I expected a few more turns of the screw.]]> 3.19 1898 The Turn of the Screw
author: Henry James
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.19
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/16
date added: 2022/11/17
shelves: classics, before-1900
review:
I know it’s sacrilegious to give less than 4 or 5 stars to a bonafide classic. And honestly, I first read this back in college and remember loving it. Did I have more patience back then? Was I impressed with James’s dense prose, the novella’s evocative setting and the delightful ambiguity of his narrator?

Perhaps. This time around, I found the book needlessly overwritten and the narrator so obviously psychologically disturbed. As a case study in hysteria, this might be interesting. But I’m afraid I like my horror a tad more nuanced.

James’s book about a governess who looks after two little charges at a creepy old estate in Bly, Essex has been adapted many times. There are countless movies, plays, a recent Netflix TV series, a Benjamin Britten opera. One of my favourite stage versions was performed in one of Toronto’s oldest remaining homes, now a museum, where it was absolutely chilling to follow the actors up creaky staircases investigating strange goings-on.

The book, like many of the era, begins as a story within a story - it’s purportedly a manuscript by the narrator’s sister’s governess. In it, the governess tells us that she lives � she’s narrating the story after the fact (and I suppose went on to teach the narrator’s sister). But there’s no epilogue telling us more. Odd, and a missed opportunity, I think. How did the events in the story affect her in later life?

The tale does have loads of atmosphere. The estate comes into creepy focus. Figures appear on rooftops, near ponds. Scary apparitions pop up in windows. But if you’ve seen even one of the thousands of haunted house movies out there, you’ll be familiar with these tropes.

And often James’s sentences are so dense and full of convoluted phraseology that you have to read them several times to understand what the author’s trying to say. Not exactly page-turning material.

Frankly, I expected a few more turns of the screw.
]]> The Odyssey 34068470 The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.

In this fresh, authoritative version--the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman--this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, this engrossing translation matches the number of lines in the Greek original, thus striding at Homer's sprightly pace and singing with a voice that echoes Homer's music.

Wilson's Odyssey captures the beauty and enchantment of this ancient poem as well as the suspense and drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, from the cunning goddess Athena, whose interventions guide and protect the hero, to the awkward teenage son, Telemachus, who struggles to achieve adulthood and find his father; from the cautious, clever, and miserable Penelope, who somehow keeps clamoring suitors at bay during her husband's long absence, to the "complicated" hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this translation as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.

A fascinating introduction provides an informative overview of the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the major themes of the poem, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers alike.]]> 582 Homer 0393089053 Glenn 0 4.30 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.30
book published: -700
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/25
shelves: currently-reading, before-1900, classics, not-usa-can-uk
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 46168 251 Ernest Hemingway 0684800713 Glenn 4 3.72 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1926
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/16
date added: 2022/06/16
shelves: 1900-1960, nobel-winners, classics, modern-library-100
review:

]]> The House of Mirth 1807836
The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City � people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.]]> 338 Edith Wharton 0140390375 Glenn 4 Her tragic story
will break your heart

She runs in the best circles
Wears the right clothes
And flirts with rich men

But everyone knows
That she needs to marry
Someone � and fast!

At 29 her looks won’t last
She’s ringing up debts
Borrowing from men

And displeasing their wives
Not to mention her friend
Lawrence Selden, a lawyer (but not very rich)

It’s Gilded Age New York
And life’s a bitch
If you’re not old money

Like the Trenors, Dorsets
And that odd Percy Gryce
The most you can do is play very nice

Like Sam Rosedale, the Brys
The Gormers and such,
Who buy their way in (i.e., never go "dutch�)

Just remember: this clique
Who summer in Newport and vacate in France
Can shut you out of the social dance

Which brings me back to Lily Bart
Who’s clearly not as smart as she seems
Stepping right into a terrible scheme

And refusing to clear her name
Or go along with the game
Even though, in the end, it causes her shame

Does she have a choice?
A tragic flaw?
Or is her inaction the point of it all?

Is her refusal to play her hand
A critique of women’s roles
In a world ruled by Man?

And what of that ending
That seems out of place?
I won't give a spoiler (that’d be a disgrace)

But melodrama and tears crop up near the end
When Lily appears
To want for a friend

Her author, Ms. Wharton, knew this world well
It looked like heaven
But was nasty as hell

It’s a fine portrait of Old New York
But please don’t forget another great work
An even better one, written

Some 16 years hence
Full of wisdom, passion, sensibility and sense
The title? You guessed it: The Age Of Innocence]]> 4.00 1905 The House of Mirth
author: Edith Wharton
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1905
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/17
date added: 2022/04/01
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, guardian-1000, modern-library-100
review:
Poor, lovely Lily Bart
Her tragic story
will break your heart

She runs in the best circles
Wears the right clothes
And flirts with rich men

But everyone knows
That she needs to marry
Someone � and fast!

At 29 her looks won’t last
She’s ringing up debts
Borrowing from men

And displeasing their wives
Not to mention her friend
Lawrence Selden, a lawyer (but not very rich)

It’s Gilded Age New York
And life’s a bitch
If you’re not old money

Like the Trenors, Dorsets
And that odd Percy Gryce
The most you can do is play very nice

Like Sam Rosedale, the Brys
The Gormers and such,
Who buy their way in (i.e., never go "dutch�)

Just remember: this clique
Who summer in Newport and vacate in France
Can shut you out of the social dance

Which brings me back to Lily Bart
Who’s clearly not as smart as she seems
Stepping right into a terrible scheme

And refusing to clear her name
Or go along with the game
Even though, in the end, it causes her shame

Does she have a choice?
A tragic flaw?
Or is her inaction the point of it all?

Is her refusal to play her hand
A critique of women’s roles
In a world ruled by Man?

And what of that ending
That seems out of place?
I won't give a spoiler (that’d be a disgrace)

But melodrama and tears crop up near the end
When Lily appears
To want for a friend

Her author, Ms. Wharton, knew this world well
It looked like heaven
But was nasty as hell

It’s a fine portrait of Old New York
But please don’t forget another great work
An even better one, written

Some 16 years hence
Full of wisdom, passion, sensibility and sense
The title? You guessed it: The Age Of Innocence
]]> <![CDATA[Little House in the Big Woods (Little House, #1)]]> 1212409 Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams.

Little House in the Big Woods takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She shares the cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their lovable dog, Jack.

Pioneer life isn’t easy for the Ingalls family, since they must grow or catch all their own food as they get ready for the cold winter. But they make the best of every tough situation. They celebrate Christmas with homemade toys and treats, do their spring planting, bring in the harvest in the fall, and make their first trip into town. And every night, safe and warm in their little house, the sound of Pa’s fiddle lulls Laura and her sisters into sleep.

The nine books in the timeless Little House series tell the story of Laura’s real childhood as an American pioneer, and are cherished by readers of all generations. They offer a unique glimpse into life on the American frontier, and tell the heartwarming, unforgettable story of a loving family.]]> 238 Laura Ingalls Wilder 0060264314 Glenn 5 classics
There’s not much plot in this first book, which isn’t set on the prairie (that’s book #3) but in a little log house in a forest outside Pepin, Wisconsin in the early 1870s. Wilder recounts a year in the life of her family � she’s there in her autobiographical alter ego, bright middle child Laura � and most of it has to do with household and seasonal farm chores, with vignettes about rag dolls, Christmas, dangerous animals, visiting town for the first time, etc.

Wilder was in her 60s when she wrote this, and the clear, effective writing is suffused with a nostalgic but never sentimental air. You get a subtle sense of the differences between her and her more proper and attractive older sister, Mary, and you wonder at the life of their mother, who left what seemed to have been a more genteel upbringing in the east for a challenging, often hard life in the middle of nowhere.

Wilder’s respect for the land and nature � and her love for her family � comes through in every page. And the descriptions of things like churning butter and collecting maple syrup are more vivid than anything you might see on the Food Network.

I’m so impressed I now plan to read the other books in this series.]]> 4.29 1932 Little House in the Big Woods (Little House, #1)
author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/20
date added: 2022/02/05
shelves: classics
review:
I was familiar with the TV show based on this series, but I’d never read the books themselves. What a delight!

There’s not much plot in this first book, which isn’t set on the prairie (that’s book #3) but in a little log house in a forest outside Pepin, Wisconsin in the early 1870s. Wilder recounts a year in the life of her family � she’s there in her autobiographical alter ego, bright middle child Laura � and most of it has to do with household and seasonal farm chores, with vignettes about rag dolls, Christmas, dangerous animals, visiting town for the first time, etc.

Wilder was in her 60s when she wrote this, and the clear, effective writing is suffused with a nostalgic but never sentimental air. You get a subtle sense of the differences between her and her more proper and attractive older sister, Mary, and you wonder at the life of their mother, who left what seemed to have been a more genteel upbringing in the east for a challenging, often hard life in the middle of nowhere.

Wilder’s respect for the land and nature � and her love for her family � comes through in every page. And the descriptions of things like churning butter and collecting maple syrup are more vivid than anything you might see on the Food Network.

I’m so impressed I now plan to read the other books in this series.
]]> <![CDATA[Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust]]> 294459 Miss Lonelyhearts

Miss Lonelyhearts was a newspaper reporter, so named because he had been assigned to write the agony column, to answer the letters from Desperate, Sick-of-It-All, Disillusioned. A joke at first; but then he was caught up, terrifyingly, in a vision of suffering, and he sought a way out, turning first here, then there—Art, Sex, Religion. Shrike, the cynical editor, the friend and enemy, compulsively destroyed each of his friend’s gestures toward idealism. Together, in the city’s dim underworld, Shrike and Miss Lonelyhearts turn round and round in a loathsome dance, unresolvable, hating until death�

The Day of the Locust

To Hollywood comes Tod Hackett, hoping for a career in scene designing, but he finds the way hard and falls in with others—extras, technicians, old vaudeville hands—who are also in difficulty. Around him he sees the great mass of inland Americans who have retired to California in expectation of health and ease. But boredom consumes them, their own emptiness maddens them; they search out any abnormality in their lust for excitement—drugs, perversion, crime. In the end only blood will serve; unreasoned, undirected violence. The day of the locust is at hand…]]> 247 Nathanael West 0811202151 Glenn 0 3.90 1939 Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
author: Nathanael West
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves: currently-reading, classics, 1900-1960
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes]]> 23292 Joyce's correspondence with his publisher about the composition of Dubliners, including "A Curious History," Joyce's own "preface" to the work
Earlier drafts of "Eveline," "The Boarding House," and "The Sisters," as well as a facsimile page from the first version of "A Painful Case" written in Joyce's hand
three new essays by Jane. E. Miller, Bruce Avery, and Michael Levenson
Commentary on the use of epiphany in Joyce's work
Essays on the most famous of the Dubliners stories, "The Dead," by Frank O'Connor, Allen Tate, Kenneth Burke, C.C. Loomis and others
An introduction by the editors, a chronology, a list of topics for discussion and papers, and a bibliography
(back cover)]]> 492 James Joyce 0140247742 Glenn 5 4.09 1914 Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes
author: James Joyce
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1914
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/02
date added: 2022/01/02
shelves: classics, favorites, short-stories, 1900-1960
review:

]]> Lord of the Flies 12675225 223 William Golding Glenn 5 LORD OF THE REREADINGS

A couple of months ago, I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird, a book I last read in high school. What fascinated me about the exercise was how much I remembered and how much I didn’t, what I appreciated as a teen and what I do now.

After that, I began wondering how I would respond to the other books I had to read and analyze as a youth. Hence my rereading of Lord Of The Flies. It’s equally powerful � shocking, even by today’s standards. And it’s all very efficiently done.

Both books are deserved classics. I don’t regret a moment spent rereading either one.

So� perhaps this will become a series. What’s next: Catcher In The Rye? A Separate Peace? Anyhow, on with the review... and keep in mind that if you weren't forced to read this back in school, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD (or A-HEAD - if you'll excuse the pun).

What do I remember from my first reading?
� The set-up, of course. After a plane crashes, a group of English boys finds themselves stranded on an island and, with no adults to guide them, form a kind of society that quickly breaks down, resulting in madness and murder.
� The symbols, among them: the conch (for order and civilization, I suppose, since if one holds it one can speak in front of a group); the glasses (or “specs�), which help create fire and, since they belong to the nearsighted, brainy yet mercilessly bullied Piggy, might also represent intelligence.
� The idea of monsters, both real and imagined.
� I remember being entertained by the nickname Piggy � what a childish thing, but it is memorable and symbolic in its own way. What a smart move on author William Golding’s part to call him that.
� The ending. I knew a couple of children died, and that eventually the rest were rescued.

What don’t I remember from that reading?
� I’d forgotten that many of the book’s “hunters� were (back in civilian life) members of a choir!
� I’d totally forgotten about the young twins, Sam and Eric, whose names are blended by Golding into the very contemporary-sounding name Samneric.
� I should have, but didn’t, realize the book took place during some unspecified war.

What do I appreciate now?
� The economy and compactness of the book. There’s very little fat in it (besides the fat dripping from the roasted boar). And though there are lots of vivid descriptions of clouds, forests and sun glinting on sand, nothing feels gratuitous.
� How beautifully Golding captures children’s behaviour, especially in groups. This was Golding’s first novel, and he knew boys so well. (Perhaps he was raising sons at the time.)
� There are lots of characters with Anglo names that sound a lot alike (Ralph, Jack, Roger, Robert, Simon, Henry � something that instantly “dates� it, I suppose), but Golding gradually fills you in on them. It took a while for me to understand Roger’s sadistic nature, for instance.
� The theme of bullying, which is as relevant as ever. Is this a fact of nature? Does every species find someone/thing among them to tease and ridicule? Piggy is overweight, unathletic, myopic and has asthma (and another thing I didn’t notice: his speech places him in a slightly lower class than everyone else), but he’s also incredibly smart. He can see things that the charismatic, initial leader Ralph doesn’t, which is why they make a good pair. But the fact that everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, teases him, is very disturbing.
� The hallucinatory scenes with Simon (often thought of as the book’s most intuitive character) and the “beast,� which gives the novel its title. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer nightmarish horror of these episodes. No wonder Stephen King was so influenced by this book (he borrowed the novel's “Castle Rock� and uses it regularly as a setting).
� The political/social allegory at its centre. How do we make a society work? Is hunting (to feed us) more important than providing shelter or coming up with a way to be rescued? What happens when people don’t pull their weight?
� All of this is done so very subtly. There’s a moment when “chief� Ralph is gradually losing his power, and Piggy suggests he blow the conch to form an assembly. And Ralph knows that if he blows the conch and no one comes, it will be irrevocable. Brilliant observation.
� The idea of the “beast.� Is the idea of the “other� something intrinsic and primitive? Or do we create monsters as a mere projection of our own fears?
� The little visual details, like Ralph pushing the hair out of his face. It’s both a naturalistic detail and one that points out how all the boys are becoming savage (funnily enough, Piggy’s hair doesn’t grow)
� I had no idea how exciting the plot got in the last couple of chapters. Golding cranked up the tension to 11. Even though I knew how the book ended, I was still turning every page, heart thumping, hoping Ralph survived being pursued by Jack and his gang.

The few things that didn’t work this time around:
� The line “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…� in the penultimate paragraph of the book seems way too on the nose. I can imagine a million students underlining that with a big "Aha!"
� I forgot Piggy used the N-word. Really. It’s there.

***

I recalled a lot more of this book than Mockingbird. Once read, it has the power and heft of something that is so true and essential that it must have always been around. (I’ve felt this way about other literary works, like Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,� for instance.)

But, and here’s the weird thing, I think this book is better appreciated as an adult. Younger people are so caught up in the immediacy of every complication. I remember studiously talking about themes before I fully understood them from life. Adults, because we’ve lived through decades, can recognize the patterns of behaviour, the archetypal figures looming behind bullies and visionaries, both in private and public life, that emerge so strikingly in this book.

Finally: why haven’t I read more William Golding?]]> 3.70 1954 Lord of the Flies
author: William Golding
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at: 2018/06/05
date added: 2021/12/12
shelves: classics, nobel-winners, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000, rereading-series
review:
LORD OF THE REREADINGS

A couple of months ago, I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird, a book I last read in high school. What fascinated me about the exercise was how much I remembered and how much I didn’t, what I appreciated as a teen and what I do now.

After that, I began wondering how I would respond to the other books I had to read and analyze as a youth. Hence my rereading of Lord Of The Flies. It’s equally powerful � shocking, even by today’s standards. And it’s all very efficiently done.

Both books are deserved classics. I don’t regret a moment spent rereading either one.

So� perhaps this will become a series. What’s next: Catcher In The Rye? A Separate Peace? Anyhow, on with the review... and keep in mind that if you weren't forced to read this back in school, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD (or A-HEAD - if you'll excuse the pun).

What do I remember from my first reading?
� The set-up, of course. After a plane crashes, a group of English boys finds themselves stranded on an island and, with no adults to guide them, form a kind of society that quickly breaks down, resulting in madness and murder.
� The symbols, among them: the conch (for order and civilization, I suppose, since if one holds it one can speak in front of a group); the glasses (or “specs�), which help create fire and, since they belong to the nearsighted, brainy yet mercilessly bullied Piggy, might also represent intelligence.
� The idea of monsters, both real and imagined.
� I remember being entertained by the nickname Piggy � what a childish thing, but it is memorable and symbolic in its own way. What a smart move on author William Golding’s part to call him that.
� The ending. I knew a couple of children died, and that eventually the rest were rescued.

What don’t I remember from that reading?
� I’d forgotten that many of the book’s “hunters� were (back in civilian life) members of a choir!
� I’d totally forgotten about the young twins, Sam and Eric, whose names are blended by Golding into the very contemporary-sounding name Samneric.
� I should have, but didn’t, realize the book took place during some unspecified war.

What do I appreciate now?
� The economy and compactness of the book. There’s very little fat in it (besides the fat dripping from the roasted boar). And though there are lots of vivid descriptions of clouds, forests and sun glinting on sand, nothing feels gratuitous.
� How beautifully Golding captures children’s behaviour, especially in groups. This was Golding’s first novel, and he knew boys so well. (Perhaps he was raising sons at the time.)
� There are lots of characters with Anglo names that sound a lot alike (Ralph, Jack, Roger, Robert, Simon, Henry � something that instantly “dates� it, I suppose), but Golding gradually fills you in on them. It took a while for me to understand Roger’s sadistic nature, for instance.
� The theme of bullying, which is as relevant as ever. Is this a fact of nature? Does every species find someone/thing among them to tease and ridicule? Piggy is overweight, unathletic, myopic and has asthma (and another thing I didn’t notice: his speech places him in a slightly lower class than everyone else), but he’s also incredibly smart. He can see things that the charismatic, initial leader Ralph doesn’t, which is why they make a good pair. But the fact that everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, teases him, is very disturbing.
� The hallucinatory scenes with Simon (often thought of as the book’s most intuitive character) and the “beast,� which gives the novel its title. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer nightmarish horror of these episodes. No wonder Stephen King was so influenced by this book (he borrowed the novel's “Castle Rock� and uses it regularly as a setting).
� The political/social allegory at its centre. How do we make a society work? Is hunting (to feed us) more important than providing shelter or coming up with a way to be rescued? What happens when people don’t pull their weight?
� All of this is done so very subtly. There’s a moment when “chief� Ralph is gradually losing his power, and Piggy suggests he blow the conch to form an assembly. And Ralph knows that if he blows the conch and no one comes, it will be irrevocable. Brilliant observation.
� The idea of the “beast.� Is the idea of the “other� something intrinsic and primitive? Or do we create monsters as a mere projection of our own fears?
� The little visual details, like Ralph pushing the hair out of his face. It’s both a naturalistic detail and one that points out how all the boys are becoming savage (funnily enough, Piggy’s hair doesn’t grow)
� I had no idea how exciting the plot got in the last couple of chapters. Golding cranked up the tension to 11. Even though I knew how the book ended, I was still turning every page, heart thumping, hoping Ralph survived being pursued by Jack and his gang.

The few things that didn’t work this time around:
� The line “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…� in the penultimate paragraph of the book seems way too on the nose. I can imagine a million students underlining that with a big "Aha!"
� I forgot Piggy used the N-word. Really. It’s there.

***

I recalled a lot more of this book than Mockingbird. Once read, it has the power and heft of something that is so true and essential that it must have always been around. (I’ve felt this way about other literary works, like Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,� for instance.)

But, and here’s the weird thing, I think this book is better appreciated as an adult. Younger people are so caught up in the immediacy of every complication. I remember studiously talking about themes before I fully understood them from life. Adults, because we’ve lived through decades, can recognize the patterns of behaviour, the archetypal figures looming behind bullies and visionaries, both in private and public life, that emerge so strikingly in this book.

Finally: why haven’t I read more William Golding?
]]> The Portrait of a Lady 264
]]> 797 Henry James 0141439637 Glenn 5 10 Things I Love About Henry James’s The Portrait Of A Lady

1. Isabel Archer
The “lady� in the title. Beautiful, young, headstrong and spirited, the American woman visits her wealthy relatives in England, rejects marriage proposals by two worthy suitors, inherits a fortune and then is manipulated into marrying one of the most odious creatures on the planet, Gilbert Osmond. She’s utterly fascinating, and if I were back in university, I imagine having long conversations and arguments about her character. What does she want: Freedom? The ability to choose, even if it’s a bad choice? Is she a projection of James’s latent homosexuality? Is she a feminist or not? There are no simple answers.

2. The Prose and Psychological Complexity
Damn, James knew how to write long, luxuriant sentences that dig deep into his characters� minds. Sometimes the effect can be claustrophobic � get me out of this person’s head! � but more often it’s utterly compelling and convincing. We partly read fiction to learn about other people’s lives, right? Well, James does that. (The exceptions: Isabel’s two wealthy, handsome suitors, Warburton and Goodwood, are less than believable, and remind me of eager (or horny?) dogs, their tails wagging whenever they’re around their love/lust object.)

3. The Story
Okay, not much really happens. But as the book progressed, even though I sort of knew the outcome (it’s hard to avoid spoilers from a 135-year-old classic), I was increasingly curious to see how Isabel would act. In fact, I raced through the final chapters, breathlessly. Who knew: Henry James, page-turner! And have a theory about that ending? Take your turn...

4. The Humour
It’s not a comedy, but there are lots of amusing bits. James’s narrator is genial and funny. Henrietta Stackpole, her gentleman friend, Mr. Bantling, and even Gilbert Osmond’s sister, the Countess Gemini, are all very colourful characters who elicit a chuckle or two. And Isabel’s aunt can be terribly cutting as well. I love Ralph (Isabel's cousin) and the dignified British Lord Warburton’s reactions to the enterprising, no-fuss American “lady journalist� Henrietta.

5. The Settings
Each one is significant: from the stately Gardencourt, home of Isabel’s relatives the Touchetts, to the bustle and anonymity of London, to the ruins of Rome, where Isabel finds herself stuck in a dead, fossilized marriage. James is a master at finding the right place to stage a scene. I could write an essay about interiors and exteriors in the book, but I’ll spare you.

6. The Villains
Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond: individually they’re sinister, but together they’re positively Machiavellian. In fact, in one scene, it’s revealed that they both like Machiavelli, and Isabel doesn’t get the clue! They totally play her. And yet they’re believable, too. Osmond’s scene in which he professes his love is brilliant in its manipulation; and the final turn of the screw (asking her to do him a favour!) is very clever. Madame Merle’s motivations always keep you guessing. Does she see herself in Isabel? Is she jealous? Does she just want to exert her power over her? The scene in which Isabel sees both in her home, conspiring (evident from their attitudes) is so powerful James refers to it a couple of times. And of course, it’s missing from the Jane Campion film (see below).

7. The Themes
Does money corrupt? What do you really know about someone before you marry? What is the true nature of freedom? What happens when New World (American) "innocence" meets Old World (European) "experience"? All these themes � and many others � come across naturally, and never feel shoe-horned into the story.

8. The Technique
I remember hearing people go on about the architecture of Henry James’s novels, and this one is sturdily, handsomely built. The book begins and ends in the same setting. And there are some ingenious sections in the middle, where time has passed and the reader discovers major information through conversations. Like any great writer, James knows what to leave out. He makes you do work to fill in the pieces, but the novel becomes more memorable because of that. And he bridges the Victorian and Modern eras, in the same way that Beethoven bridges the Classical and Romantic eras.

9. Chapter 42
After a huge blowup with Osmond, Isabel stays up all night, staring into the fireplace, and ponders her life, thinking: "How did I get here?" James considered it one of the best things he’d ever written, and although I haven’t read a lot of his work (which I will soon remedy), I’d have to agree. It’s right up there with Hamlet’s soliloquies.

10. The Fact that the Book Doesn't Lend Itself Well To Adaptation
A couple days after finishing the book, I watched the Campion film starring Nicole Kidman. Besides an evocative score and a brilliant performance by Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle and a suitably slimy one by John Malkovich (basically changing costumes from his Dangerous Liaisons character), it was dreadfully dull. There have been other James adaptations � The Wings Of The Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Bostonians � but none of these films has achieved the critical or popular success of an Age Of Innocence, Howards End or Room With A View. Maybe it's hard to get that psychological complexity onscreen? Read the books.

***
Conclusion: James is The Master. Up til now, I’d only read his shorter works, like the novellas “The Turn Of The Screw,� “Daisy Miller� and “The Beast In The Jungle.� Now I’m eyeing his other major novels; perhaps I’ll even get through the notoriously difficult late period James. Can't wait to try!]]> 3.79 1881 The Portrait of a Lady
author: Henry James
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1881
rating: 5
read at: 2015/05/03
date added: 2021/12/11
shelves: before-1900, favorites, classics, guardian-1000
review:
10 Things I Love About Henry James’s The Portrait Of A Lady

1. Isabel Archer
The “lady� in the title. Beautiful, young, headstrong and spirited, the American woman visits her wealthy relatives in England, rejects marriage proposals by two worthy suitors, inherits a fortune and then is manipulated into marrying one of the most odious creatures on the planet, Gilbert Osmond. She’s utterly fascinating, and if I were back in university, I imagine having long conversations and arguments about her character. What does she want: Freedom? The ability to choose, even if it’s a bad choice? Is she a projection of James’s latent homosexuality? Is she a feminist or not? There are no simple answers.

2. The Prose and Psychological Complexity
Damn, James knew how to write long, luxuriant sentences that dig deep into his characters� minds. Sometimes the effect can be claustrophobic � get me out of this person’s head! � but more often it’s utterly compelling and convincing. We partly read fiction to learn about other people’s lives, right? Well, James does that. (The exceptions: Isabel’s two wealthy, handsome suitors, Warburton and Goodwood, are less than believable, and remind me of eager (or horny?) dogs, their tails wagging whenever they’re around their love/lust object.)

3. The Story
Okay, not much really happens. But as the book progressed, even though I sort of knew the outcome (it’s hard to avoid spoilers from a 135-year-old classic), I was increasingly curious to see how Isabel would act. In fact, I raced through the final chapters, breathlessly. Who knew: Henry James, page-turner! And have a theory about that ending? Take your turn...

4. The Humour
It’s not a comedy, but there are lots of amusing bits. James’s narrator is genial and funny. Henrietta Stackpole, her gentleman friend, Mr. Bantling, and even Gilbert Osmond’s sister, the Countess Gemini, are all very colourful characters who elicit a chuckle or two. And Isabel’s aunt can be terribly cutting as well. I love Ralph (Isabel's cousin) and the dignified British Lord Warburton’s reactions to the enterprising, no-fuss American “lady journalist� Henrietta.

5. The Settings
Each one is significant: from the stately Gardencourt, home of Isabel’s relatives the Touchetts, to the bustle and anonymity of London, to the ruins of Rome, where Isabel finds herself stuck in a dead, fossilized marriage. James is a master at finding the right place to stage a scene. I could write an essay about interiors and exteriors in the book, but I’ll spare you.

6. The Villains
Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond: individually they’re sinister, but together they’re positively Machiavellian. In fact, in one scene, it’s revealed that they both like Machiavelli, and Isabel doesn’t get the clue! They totally play her. And yet they’re believable, too. Osmond’s scene in which he professes his love is brilliant in its manipulation; and the final turn of the screw (asking her to do him a favour!) is very clever. Madame Merle’s motivations always keep you guessing. Does she see herself in Isabel? Is she jealous? Does she just want to exert her power over her? The scene in which Isabel sees both in her home, conspiring (evident from their attitudes) is so powerful James refers to it a couple of times. And of course, it’s missing from the Jane Campion film (see below).

7. The Themes
Does money corrupt? What do you really know about someone before you marry? What is the true nature of freedom? What happens when New World (American) "innocence" meets Old World (European) "experience"? All these themes � and many others � come across naturally, and never feel shoe-horned into the story.

8. The Technique
I remember hearing people go on about the architecture of Henry James’s novels, and this one is sturdily, handsomely built. The book begins and ends in the same setting. And there are some ingenious sections in the middle, where time has passed and the reader discovers major information through conversations. Like any great writer, James knows what to leave out. He makes you do work to fill in the pieces, but the novel becomes more memorable because of that. And he bridges the Victorian and Modern eras, in the same way that Beethoven bridges the Classical and Romantic eras.

9. Chapter 42
After a huge blowup with Osmond, Isabel stays up all night, staring into the fireplace, and ponders her life, thinking: "How did I get here?" James considered it one of the best things he’d ever written, and although I haven’t read a lot of his work (which I will soon remedy), I’d have to agree. It’s right up there with Hamlet’s soliloquies.

10. The Fact that the Book Doesn't Lend Itself Well To Adaptation
A couple days after finishing the book, I watched the Campion film starring Nicole Kidman. Besides an evocative score and a brilliant performance by Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle and a suitably slimy one by John Malkovich (basically changing costumes from his Dangerous Liaisons character), it was dreadfully dull. There have been other James adaptations � The Wings Of The Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Bostonians � but none of these films has achieved the critical or popular success of an Age Of Innocence, Howards End or Room With A View. Maybe it's hard to get that psychological complexity onscreen? Read the books.

***
Conclusion: James is The Master. Up til now, I’d only read his shorter works, like the novellas “The Turn Of The Screw,� “Daisy Miller� and “The Beast In The Jungle.� Now I’m eyeing his other major novels; perhaps I’ll even get through the notoriously difficult late period James. Can't wait to try!
]]> First Love 403642 107 Ivan Turgenev 0140443355 Glenn 5 First Love is the absorbing, painfully candid account of 16-year-old Vladimir’s young, idealistic passion for his next-door-neighbour, a capricious 21-year-old named Zinaida, who, alas, is in love with someone else.

I read Turgenev’s Fathers And Sons years ago, and forgot what an elegant and psychologically penetrating writer he was. The Russian author said this was one of his most autobiographical works, and it shows. It’s there in Vladimir’s loathing of Zinaida’s other suitors and his roiling, turbulent emotions. Reading his words, I can practically feel the acne on my skin from my teen years. (Oh youth!)

Zinada is a fascinating figure � there’s more than a touch of Great Expectations’s Estella about her, although that book would come out a year later, in 1861 � and you’re left to interpret her motivations from what we’re given of Vladimir’s (albeit limited) account of her actions.

This slim book � a novella, really � is less shocking than it would have been to a 19th century reader, and it’s pretty easy to figure out who Zinaida’s lover is. But it’s evocative enough to make me want to read more Turgenev, or some of his Russian colleagues. After all, I live in Canada, another cold climate, and winter is coming.]]> 3.76 1860 First Love
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1860
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/03
date added: 2021/11/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, not-usa-can-uk
review:
First Love is the absorbing, painfully candid account of 16-year-old Vladimir’s young, idealistic passion for his next-door-neighbour, a capricious 21-year-old named Zinaida, who, alas, is in love with someone else.

I read Turgenev’s Fathers And Sons years ago, and forgot what an elegant and psychologically penetrating writer he was. The Russian author said this was one of his most autobiographical works, and it shows. It’s there in Vladimir’s loathing of Zinaida’s other suitors and his roiling, turbulent emotions. Reading his words, I can practically feel the acne on my skin from my teen years. (Oh youth!)

Zinada is a fascinating figure � there’s more than a touch of Great Expectations’s Estella about her, although that book would come out a year later, in 1861 � and you’re left to interpret her motivations from what we’re given of Vladimir’s (albeit limited) account of her actions.

This slim book � a novella, really � is less shocking than it would have been to a 19th century reader, and it’s pretty easy to figure out who Zinaida’s lover is. But it’s evocative enough to make me want to read more Turgenev, or some of his Russian colleagues. After all, I live in Canada, another cold climate, and winter is coming.
]]> <![CDATA[The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories]]> 77168
Selected from Winner Take Nothing , Men Without Women , and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories , this collection includes "The Killers," the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical; the autobiographical "Fathers and Sons," which alludes, for the first time in Hemingway's career, to his father's suicide; "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," a "brilliant fusion of personal observation, hearsay and invention," wrote Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker; and the title story itself, of which Hemingway "I put all the true stuff in," with enough material, he boasted, to fill four novels. Beautiful in their simplicity, startling in their originality, and unsurpassed in their craftsmanship, the stories in this volume highlight one of America's master storytellers at the top of his form.]]> 155 Ernest Hemingway 0684804441 Glenn 4
There’s an impressive range of work here, from the ambitious title story about a man dying of gangrene while on safari and slipping into and out of consciousness, remembering scenes from his (wasted) life � the story has the depth and richness of a novel � to the noir classic “The Killers,� which inspired two famous films and contains some very amusing gangster dialogue.

“Fifty Grand� takes you into the world of boxing (there’s also a boxer in “The Killers�), and has a narrative left hook you might not see coming (I didn’t), while “The Gambler, The Nun, And The Radio� � about a man who’s been shot and his colourful hospital visitors � shows you just how funny Hemingway could be.

Also included is a classic story that I’ve read several times but still seems mysterious to me: “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,� about two waiters discussing the final patron in their bar before it closes for the night. The old, deaf man tried to kill himself the week before, and the contrasting reactions of the waiters is very telling.

Some stories in the book didn’t resonate with me, particularly the Nick Adams war tales. (I recall the Adams stories from In Our Time working much better.) But their themes � grace under pressure, war and death, initiations of various sorts � are in keeping with the rest of the volume.

I think my favourite story is the final one, “The Short And Happy Life Of Francis Macomber,� which feels connected to the opening tale because it’s also set on safari and includes a man, woman, death and the concepts of courage and dignity. I love the way it’s constructed and how the characters� actions in a moment of pressure tell you things that will affect their entire lives. Also, it and “Fifty Grand,� the story that precedes it, are simply exciting on a narrative level.

I don’t know why I’ve been on a Hemingway kick recently � three of his books in less than a month � but I’m glad I picked this up. These days, the author’s legend seems to overshadow his work; it’s encouraging to know the writing, at least in the author’s prime, was solid.]]> 3.76 1936 The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at: 2016/01/02
date added: 2021/10/24
shelves: classics, nobel-winners, short-stories
review:
I’d forgotten what a good short story writer Ernest Hemingway could be. This collection came out in 1961, the same year as the author’s death. But most of the stories were published in magazines in the 1920s and 30s, when he was at the height of his powers, and all were available in earlier volumes.

There’s an impressive range of work here, from the ambitious title story about a man dying of gangrene while on safari and slipping into and out of consciousness, remembering scenes from his (wasted) life � the story has the depth and richness of a novel � to the noir classic “The Killers,� which inspired two famous films and contains some very amusing gangster dialogue.

“Fifty Grand� takes you into the world of boxing (there’s also a boxer in “The Killers�), and has a narrative left hook you might not see coming (I didn’t), while “The Gambler, The Nun, And The Radio� � about a man who’s been shot and his colourful hospital visitors � shows you just how funny Hemingway could be.

Also included is a classic story that I’ve read several times but still seems mysterious to me: “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,� about two waiters discussing the final patron in their bar before it closes for the night. The old, deaf man tried to kill himself the week before, and the contrasting reactions of the waiters is very telling.

Some stories in the book didn’t resonate with me, particularly the Nick Adams war tales. (I recall the Adams stories from In Our Time working much better.) But their themes � grace under pressure, war and death, initiations of various sorts � are in keeping with the rest of the volume.

I think my favourite story is the final one, “The Short And Happy Life Of Francis Macomber,� which feels connected to the opening tale because it’s also set on safari and includes a man, woman, death and the concepts of courage and dignity. I love the way it’s constructed and how the characters� actions in a moment of pressure tell you things that will affect their entire lives. Also, it and “Fifty Grand,� the story that precedes it, are simply exciting on a narrative level.

I don’t know why I’ve been on a Hemingway kick recently � three of his books in less than a month � but I’m glad I picked this up. These days, the author’s legend seems to overshadow his work; it’s encouraging to know the writing, at least in the author’s prime, was solid.
]]> Maurice 11693236 Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]> 222 E.M. Forster Glenn 4 classics, 1900-1960

E.M. Forster ( Howards End , A Room With A View ) finished this gay-themed novel in 1914, and though he showed it to some close friends, he didn't publish it in his lifetime. It eventually came out after his death, in the early 1970s.

What a gift to have a novel about same sex love written a century ago by one of the premier 20th century British authors!

When Forster penned Maurice, homosexuality was so taboo that there was no name for it. For a man to be with another man was a criminal offense. One of the most touching things about this very moving book is seeing the protagonist � the closeted, very ordinary stockbroker Maurice � struggling to describe who he is and what he's feeling. He eventually comes up with something about Oscar Wilde. So very sad.

But how triumphant for Forster to have written this book and dedicated it "to a happier year." No one would argue that this is Forster's best novel. But it's an invaluable document about a group of men who experience the love that dare not speak its name (to borrow from Wilde).

I appreciate the fact that Maurice, unlike Forster himself, is a very unremarkable man: he's conservative, a bit of a snob, not very interested in music or philosophy and rather dull. But he's living with this extraordinary secret that affects his entire life. And the book shows how he deals with it, in his secretive relationship with his Cambridge friend Clive Durham, and later with gamekeeper Alec Scudder.

It would have been so easy for Forster to write a novel about a sensitive, soulful, brilliant, sympathetic character. How could we not love him, even though he's gay? But that seems to be part of his point. Maurice is a middle-class Everyman � certainly he's not as intelligent as Clive � but isn't he as worthy of love as anyone else?

Some details in the book are dated. The language at times feels stilted. The class system isn't as pronounced today as it was then. And of course there's a whole new attitude towards homosexuality and thousands of books to reflect that.

But there are still people and organizations trying to "cure" others of homosexuality (think of the group Exodus); young people are still committing suicide because of their sexuality; gays and lesbians are still choosing to live a closeted life by marrying members of the opposite sex; and let's not forget that in some parts of the world, being gay is cause for death.

So really: how dated is this book?

Considering that authors decades after Forster wrote veiled gay characters in straight drag, or killed off one or more characters (see: Brokeback Mountain), how revolutionary is it to have a gay love story with a happy ending?

It's absolutely revolutionary.

Now: who's going to write the sequel?]]> 4.15 1971 Maurice
author: E.M. Forster
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/01
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: classics, 1900-1960
review:


E.M. Forster ( Howards End , A Room With A View ) finished this gay-themed novel in 1914, and though he showed it to some close friends, he didn't publish it in his lifetime. It eventually came out after his death, in the early 1970s.

What a gift to have a novel about same sex love written a century ago by one of the premier 20th century British authors!

When Forster penned Maurice, homosexuality was so taboo that there was no name for it. For a man to be with another man was a criminal offense. One of the most touching things about this very moving book is seeing the protagonist � the closeted, very ordinary stockbroker Maurice � struggling to describe who he is and what he's feeling. He eventually comes up with something about Oscar Wilde. So very sad.

But how triumphant for Forster to have written this book and dedicated it "to a happier year." No one would argue that this is Forster's best novel. But it's an invaluable document about a group of men who experience the love that dare not speak its name (to borrow from Wilde).

I appreciate the fact that Maurice, unlike Forster himself, is a very unremarkable man: he's conservative, a bit of a snob, not very interested in music or philosophy and rather dull. But he's living with this extraordinary secret that affects his entire life. And the book shows how he deals with it, in his secretive relationship with his Cambridge friend Clive Durham, and later with gamekeeper Alec Scudder.

It would have been so easy for Forster to write a novel about a sensitive, soulful, brilliant, sympathetic character. How could we not love him, even though he's gay? But that seems to be part of his point. Maurice is a middle-class Everyman � certainly he's not as intelligent as Clive � but isn't he as worthy of love as anyone else?

Some details in the book are dated. The language at times feels stilted. The class system isn't as pronounced today as it was then. And of course there's a whole new attitude towards homosexuality and thousands of books to reflect that.

But there are still people and organizations trying to "cure" others of homosexuality (think of the group Exodus); young people are still committing suicide because of their sexuality; gays and lesbians are still choosing to live a closeted life by marrying members of the opposite sex; and let's not forget that in some parts of the world, being gay is cause for death.

So really: how dated is this book?

Considering that authors decades after Forster wrote veiled gay characters in straight drag, or killed off one or more characters (see: Brokeback Mountain), how revolutionary is it to have a gay love story with a happy ending?

It's absolutely revolutionary.

Now: who's going to write the sequel?
]]> Nicholas Nickleby 325085 817 Charles Dickens 0140435123 Glenn 4 before-1900, classics Was there ever a novelist with a bigger heart than Charles Dickens?



This is the sixth Dickens book I’ve read (including the novella A Christmas Carol ). And, like most of his other works, it’s expansive, bursting with all manner of incident and life. Some of that life, mind you, goes ON AND ON. And a few scenes about social graces/manners might need explaining to a contemporary reader. But the overall effect, if you ignore the repetition, is absorbing and very satisfying.

Just as we binge-watch the latest Netflix or Hulu series, I can imagine Victorian readers binge-reading the installments of this novel as they were published in the late 1830s.

After his father dies, Nicholas, his sister Kate and their mother are left penniless and at the mercy of the father’s brother, Ralph, a miserly moneylender who’s clearly possibly an early model for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ralph, who hated his brother, promptly separates the family and does the absolute minimum for his poor relations; he sends Nicholas off to work in Yorkshire as an assistant to the loathsome Wackford Squeers, who runs an abusive sham of a school for boys; he sends Kate and her mother to live in a slum, and arranges for Kate to work for a milliner, Madame Mantalini, and her no-good, hanger-on husband.

Soon Nicholas and Ralph have a huge falling out, and the family is cut off from any financial aid. How will they survive?

What follows is an episodic narrative that includes forays into the theatre world (no doubt drawing on Dickens’s own experiences as an actor), several businesses and shadowy corners of London lowlife. This being a Dickens novel, there are lots of coincidences, some broad caricatures and a heavy social conscience, especially around the plight of the poor and helpless.

Oddly enough, while Nicholas and Kate Nickleby are thinly drawn goody-goody characters, their chattering mother leaps off the page with her humorous conjectures and genteel pronouncements; Ralph and Squeers make fascinating contrasting villains.

Other memorable characters include Ralph’s clerk, Newman Noggs, who takes a shine to the Nicklebys; Lord Frederick Verisopht (say the surname aloud) and Sir Mulberry Hawk, two of Ralph’s slimy business associates; Miss La Creevy, a miniature portrait painter; all of the lively actors involved in the travelling theatre troupe run by Vincent Crummles; John Browdie, a simple but warm-hearted Yorkshireman who might bring to mind Great Expectations� Joe Gargery.

And then there’s the pathetic, friendless, sad-sack Smike, whom Nicholas meets and befriends at Squeers� school. He’s one of those idealized, sentimentalized characters found only in Dickens novels.

It’s a little unfair to judge an early Dickens novel (his third, written when he was in his 20s) against his later works, particularly masterpieces like David Copperfield and Great Expectations . These later books were more carefully structured, and I don’t recall sighing and wanting to get through any passages the way I did with this book. (There’s one story-within-a-story set in a tavern that practically stops the novel in its tracks.)

But even though I pretty much knew where the novel was going (I’d seen the two-part stage adaptation years ago), Dickens still made me laugh, cry and gasp at certain passages.

More than most major English novelists except perhaps D.H. Lawrence, Dickens was familiar with poverty and the lower classes, and that gave him lots of knowledge about the human condition, the vanity fair that makes up life, now and nearly 200 years ago.]]> 3.92 1839 Nicholas Nickleby
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1839
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/01
date added: 2021/02/08
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:
Was there ever a novelist with a bigger heart than Charles Dickens?



This is the sixth Dickens book I’ve read (including the novella A Christmas Carol ). And, like most of his other works, it’s expansive, bursting with all manner of incident and life. Some of that life, mind you, goes ON AND ON. And a few scenes about social graces/manners might need explaining to a contemporary reader. But the overall effect, if you ignore the repetition, is absorbing and very satisfying.

Just as we binge-watch the latest Netflix or Hulu series, I can imagine Victorian readers binge-reading the installments of this novel as they were published in the late 1830s.

After his father dies, Nicholas, his sister Kate and their mother are left penniless and at the mercy of the father’s brother, Ralph, a miserly moneylender who’s clearly possibly an early model for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ralph, who hated his brother, promptly separates the family and does the absolute minimum for his poor relations; he sends Nicholas off to work in Yorkshire as an assistant to the loathsome Wackford Squeers, who runs an abusive sham of a school for boys; he sends Kate and her mother to live in a slum, and arranges for Kate to work for a milliner, Madame Mantalini, and her no-good, hanger-on husband.

Soon Nicholas and Ralph have a huge falling out, and the family is cut off from any financial aid. How will they survive?

What follows is an episodic narrative that includes forays into the theatre world (no doubt drawing on Dickens’s own experiences as an actor), several businesses and shadowy corners of London lowlife. This being a Dickens novel, there are lots of coincidences, some broad caricatures and a heavy social conscience, especially around the plight of the poor and helpless.

Oddly enough, while Nicholas and Kate Nickleby are thinly drawn goody-goody characters, their chattering mother leaps off the page with her humorous conjectures and genteel pronouncements; Ralph and Squeers make fascinating contrasting villains.

Other memorable characters include Ralph’s clerk, Newman Noggs, who takes a shine to the Nicklebys; Lord Frederick Verisopht (say the surname aloud) and Sir Mulberry Hawk, two of Ralph’s slimy business associates; Miss La Creevy, a miniature portrait painter; all of the lively actors involved in the travelling theatre troupe run by Vincent Crummles; John Browdie, a simple but warm-hearted Yorkshireman who might bring to mind Great Expectations� Joe Gargery.

And then there’s the pathetic, friendless, sad-sack Smike, whom Nicholas meets and befriends at Squeers� school. He’s one of those idealized, sentimentalized characters found only in Dickens novels.

It’s a little unfair to judge an early Dickens novel (his third, written when he was in his 20s) against his later works, particularly masterpieces like David Copperfield and Great Expectations . These later books were more carefully structured, and I don’t recall sighing and wanting to get through any passages the way I did with this book. (There’s one story-within-a-story set in a tavern that practically stops the novel in its tracks.)

But even though I pretty much knew where the novel was going (I’d seen the two-part stage adaptation years ago), Dickens still made me laugh, cry and gasp at certain passages.

More than most major English novelists except perhaps D.H. Lawrence, Dickens was familiar with poverty and the lower classes, and that gave him lots of knowledge about the human condition, the vanity fair that makes up life, now and nearly 200 years ago.
]]> Wuthering Heights 348914 Alternate cover edition for ISBN: 9780141439556.

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.]]> 359 Emily Brontë Glenn 5 3.84 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/12/19
shelves: classics, before-1900, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Washington Square 13478556 At the age of twenty-two, Catherine Sloper is regarded as a rather mature blossom, such as could be plucked from the stem only with a vigorous jerk.

Yet although she is neither clever nor beautiful (her taste in dress verges on the vulgar), Morris Townsend finds Catherine exceedingly charming. Less, it must be admitted because of her evident goodness and truth than because she is due to inherit a substantial fortune. Meanwhile, the curious spectacle of his daughter's being courted by a handsome, athletic fortune-hunter is, for Doctor Sloper, at once an entertainment and a challenge...

Washington Square, set in New York, belongs with Henry James's early novels. It is a spare and intensely moving story of divided loyalties and innocence betrayed, and it is also, as Graham Greene has said, 'perhaps the only novel in which a man has successfully invaded the feminine field and produced a work comparable to Jane Austen's'

]]> 223 Henry James Glenn 5 3.70 1880 Washington Square
author: Henry James
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1880
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/07
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 5685 "Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's 'characters, acts, situations.'" (James Wood, "The New Yorker")]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0142000272 Glenn 5 4.16 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1878
rating: 5
read at: 2011/06/23
date added: 2020/11/29
shelves: before-1900, favorites, not-usa-can-uk, classics, guardian-1000
review:
One of the best novels I've ever read and expect to read. Levin's farming dilemmas were as interesting � if not more so � than the central romantic tragedy. I hope to return to it again and again. The grand variety of life � from the sublime to the ridiculous � is in these pages. I bow down to Tolstoy, the master, who sees and knows all.
]]> Middlemarch 271276 853 George Eliot 0141439548 Glenn 5 4.19 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1872
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/11/28
shelves: favorites, before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)]]> 2247142
It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.� Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game.

“Sinister and strangely alluring,� (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.]]> 271 Patricia Highsmith Glenn 5

I don't know how Patricia Highsmith did it. But she got me to root for a psychopathic murderer.

Tom Ripley is a smart, nondescript young man in his 20s barely scraping by in 1950s Manhattan. When the wealthy father of an acquaintance offers to pay him to go to Italy to convince his aspiring artist son to return to America, Tom can't believe his luck. An all expenses paid trip to Europe? To hang out on beaches, drink cocktails and visit galleries? Si!

Alas, things don't go as planned. The son, Richard (or Dickie) Greenleaf, is happy with his life painting in a sun-drenched village on the Amalfi coast. He's also got a sort of relationship with another ex-pat, Marge Sherwood, and is perfectly content where he is. Soon Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie. He wants his life � the leisure, the trust fund, the nice clothes. Perhaps he even wants Dickie himself.

So some bad things happen. Tom � who's got a gift for impersonation and improvisation � covers them up. But one lie begets another, and another. Soon other bad things happen. And then people start investigating: Marge, Italian police officers, Dickie's father, an American detective...

Can the resourceful Tom not only cover his tracks but stay a step ahead of everyone?

Anyone who's seen the Anthony Minghella movie starring Matt Damon (as Tom), Jude Law (Dickie) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Marge) knows the answer, of course. (The film introduced another major character not in the book.) Also, this is the first of five Ripley books, so you know he survives to go on to other adventures.

But Highsmith is such a good writer that she keeps you constantly on edge. She also fills in Tom's backstory so you sympathize with him. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised by a cold, judgemental aunt. He was never the popular kid, always an outsider. Doesn't he deserve some happiness? True friendship? Love? Who among us hasn't envied � and perhaps resented � the beautiful and privileged one-percent?

What's fascinating to a contemporary reader is how submerged Tom's same-sex desires are. I'm not sure what a typical 1950s reader would have thought, but it's pretty clear that he's in love with Dickie; Highsmith, who wrote the ahead-of-its-time classic lesbian novel Carol under a pen name, depicts both men's private lives in a suggestive, tantalizing way that was probably clear in its implications to queer readers at the time.

It's also amusing to think how a modern-day Tom Ripley would flourish in the digital world. Imagine what he could discover about people through Instagram and Google.

Repressed desires; elegant clothes; lavish European settings (including Rome, the Cote d'Azur, Naples and Venice); shakers full of martinis; plus a murder or two and a generous helping of guilt � what's not to love?

A classic novel that shouldn't be relegated to genre fiction.]]> 3.96 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2020/06/06
date added: 2020/10/16
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, guardian-1000
review:


I don't know how Patricia Highsmith did it. But she got me to root for a psychopathic murderer.

Tom Ripley is a smart, nondescript young man in his 20s barely scraping by in 1950s Manhattan. When the wealthy father of an acquaintance offers to pay him to go to Italy to convince his aspiring artist son to return to America, Tom can't believe his luck. An all expenses paid trip to Europe? To hang out on beaches, drink cocktails and visit galleries? Si!

Alas, things don't go as planned. The son, Richard (or Dickie) Greenleaf, is happy with his life painting in a sun-drenched village on the Amalfi coast. He's also got a sort of relationship with another ex-pat, Marge Sherwood, and is perfectly content where he is. Soon Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie. He wants his life � the leisure, the trust fund, the nice clothes. Perhaps he even wants Dickie himself.

So some bad things happen. Tom � who's got a gift for impersonation and improvisation � covers them up. But one lie begets another, and another. Soon other bad things happen. And then people start investigating: Marge, Italian police officers, Dickie's father, an American detective...

Can the resourceful Tom not only cover his tracks but stay a step ahead of everyone?

Anyone who's seen the Anthony Minghella movie starring Matt Damon (as Tom), Jude Law (Dickie) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Marge) knows the answer, of course. (The film introduced another major character not in the book.) Also, this is the first of five Ripley books, so you know he survives to go on to other adventures.

But Highsmith is such a good writer that she keeps you constantly on edge. She also fills in Tom's backstory so you sympathize with him. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised by a cold, judgemental aunt. He was never the popular kid, always an outsider. Doesn't he deserve some happiness? True friendship? Love? Who among us hasn't envied � and perhaps resented � the beautiful and privileged one-percent?

What's fascinating to a contemporary reader is how submerged Tom's same-sex desires are. I'm not sure what a typical 1950s reader would have thought, but it's pretty clear that he's in love with Dickie; Highsmith, who wrote the ahead-of-its-time classic lesbian novel Carol under a pen name, depicts both men's private lives in a suggestive, tantalizing way that was probably clear in its implications to queer readers at the time.

It's also amusing to think how a modern-day Tom Ripley would flourish in the digital world. Imagine what he could discover about people through Instagram and Google.

Repressed desires; elegant clothes; lavish European settings (including Rome, the Cote d'Azur, Naples and Venice); shakers full of martinis; plus a murder or two and a generous helping of guilt � what's not to love?

A classic novel that shouldn't be relegated to genre fiction.
]]> A Room with a View 1348444
A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor, and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.

The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster's colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room With A View is one of E.M. Forster's earliest and most celebrated works.]]> 256 E.M. Forster 0141182644 Glenn 4 Edwardian-era propriety meets Italian passion with entertaining results in E.M. Forster’s sunny, slight, but ever so charming comedy of manners.

Well-known from the sumptuous Merchant-Ivory adaptation (which I rewatched immediately after finishing the book), the novel tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a proper English girl who, while on vacation in Florence with her cousin/chaperone, Miss Bartlett, meets George Emerson, a handsome but odd philosophical soul, who’s travelling with his eccentric, truth-telling father.

All four are staying at the Pension Bertolini, and the others they meet there � the lady novelist Eleanor Lavish, the two older, unmarried sisters (dubbed the Miss Alans), and someone from Lucy’s village, the very accommodating Reverend Arthur Beebe � will cross paths with them later in unexpected ways.

As in the other books by him I’ve read, Forster’s narration is delightfully genial. He’ll remind us, for instance, that we haven’t really spent much time with a particular character, tell us that we know more about Lucy’s actions than she does herself, hint at plot developments to come, and generally treat his characters with a satiric, gently chiding tone. At times that tone can seem trivial; midway through the book I felt it was all just so much upper-middle-class flim flam.

(More quibbles: George’s physical treatment of Lucy, especially in light of today’s sensitivity around consent, seems less romantic than troubling. And I know we’re meant to be at a remove from the authentic Italians in the first half of the book, but I wish we got more than just clichés about tempestuous murderers and horny carriage drivers.)

But there is so much to enjoy in the book: the tart dialogue, the grand themes of love, country vs. city life, fate and coincidence� there’s even a comment on the idea of novels and writers themselves. Lucy’s mother, a fine comic creation, has a preposterous attitude towards female writers that I’m sure Forster, a friend and admirer of Virginia Woolf’s, for one, didn’t share.

I also like that the book’s stuffiest character, Lucy’s fiancé, the pretentious aesthete Cecil Vyse (a whole review could be written on the book’s beautifully suggestive names), comes across with his dignity intact in his later scenes.

If anything, of the main players only the character of George seems the thinnest, which is perhaps why he’s given some intriguing actions in the film (otherwise he might be a cipher). And I like how a significant scene near the end makes us reflect on the nature and motivation of Charlotte.

But above all, I’ll remember this book for its knowing glimpse into the life of a girl discovering her voice, freedom and strength � even in a restrictive society. It’s suggested early in the book that Lucy, a pianist, plays Beethoven in a way that is surprising; if she could apply that same passion to her life it would be quite thrilling to watch.

By the end of the book, we see her begin to do that, and yes, it’s quite something.]]> 3.76 1908 A Room with a View
author: E.M. Forster
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1908
rating: 4
read at: 2018/09/03
date added: 2020/08/06
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, guardian-1000, modern-library-100
review:
Edwardian-era propriety meets Italian passion with entertaining results in E.M. Forster’s sunny, slight, but ever so charming comedy of manners.

Well-known from the sumptuous Merchant-Ivory adaptation (which I rewatched immediately after finishing the book), the novel tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a proper English girl who, while on vacation in Florence with her cousin/chaperone, Miss Bartlett, meets George Emerson, a handsome but odd philosophical soul, who’s travelling with his eccentric, truth-telling father.

All four are staying at the Pension Bertolini, and the others they meet there � the lady novelist Eleanor Lavish, the two older, unmarried sisters (dubbed the Miss Alans), and someone from Lucy’s village, the very accommodating Reverend Arthur Beebe � will cross paths with them later in unexpected ways.

As in the other books by him I’ve read, Forster’s narration is delightfully genial. He’ll remind us, for instance, that we haven’t really spent much time with a particular character, tell us that we know more about Lucy’s actions than she does herself, hint at plot developments to come, and generally treat his characters with a satiric, gently chiding tone. At times that tone can seem trivial; midway through the book I felt it was all just so much upper-middle-class flim flam.

(More quibbles: George’s physical treatment of Lucy, especially in light of today’s sensitivity around consent, seems less romantic than troubling. And I know we’re meant to be at a remove from the authentic Italians in the first half of the book, but I wish we got more than just clichés about tempestuous murderers and horny carriage drivers.)

But there is so much to enjoy in the book: the tart dialogue, the grand themes of love, country vs. city life, fate and coincidence� there’s even a comment on the idea of novels and writers themselves. Lucy’s mother, a fine comic creation, has a preposterous attitude towards female writers that I’m sure Forster, a friend and admirer of Virginia Woolf’s, for one, didn’t share.

I also like that the book’s stuffiest character, Lucy’s fiancé, the pretentious aesthete Cecil Vyse (a whole review could be written on the book’s beautifully suggestive names), comes across with his dignity intact in his later scenes.

If anything, of the main players only the character of George seems the thinnest, which is perhaps why he’s given some intriguing actions in the film (otherwise he might be a cipher). And I like how a significant scene near the end makes us reflect on the nature and motivation of Charlotte.

But above all, I’ll remember this book for its knowing glimpse into the life of a girl discovering her voice, freedom and strength � even in a restrictive society. It’s suggested early in the book that Lucy, a pianist, plays Beethoven in a way that is surprising; if she could apply that same passion to her life it would be quite thrilling to watch.

By the end of the book, we see her begin to do that, and yes, it’s quite something.
]]> For Whom the Bell Tolls 7783103 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Glenn 0 3.86 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/22
shelves: currently-reading, classics, nobel-winners, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Death in Venice 53061
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."]]> 142 Thomas Mann 0060576170 Glenn 4 Death in Venice is one of those works of art that is so familiar it seems to have been around forever.

Stuffy middle-aged German writer Gustav von Aschenbach vacations in the Floating City, where he gradually becomes obsessed with a beautiful Polish youth named Tadzio staying at his hotel and eventually succumbs to a mysterious cholera epidemic.

The novella is a curious mixture of allegorical tale, campy melodrama and academic study of the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy.

Mann's prose is alternately fussy, claustrophobic and hypnotically sensual. There's no clear explanation of what happens. Is Tadzio the angel of death? Does he represent everything the intellectual Aschenbach avoided in his life? Is the scholar simply going through a major midlife crisis, involving coming out? All of the above; none of the above � which makes the story frustrating but also amusingly enigmatic.

I'm looking forward to reading more Mann, especially one of his big novels like The Magic Mountain.]]> 3.77 1911 Death in Venice
author: Thomas Mann
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2020/05/31
date added: 2020/07/06
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, nobel-winners, not-usa-can-uk, guardian-1000
review:
Death in Venice is one of those works of art that is so familiar it seems to have been around forever.

Stuffy middle-aged German writer Gustav von Aschenbach vacations in the Floating City, where he gradually becomes obsessed with a beautiful Polish youth named Tadzio staying at his hotel and eventually succumbs to a mysterious cholera epidemic.

The novella is a curious mixture of allegorical tale, campy melodrama and academic study of the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy.

Mann's prose is alternately fussy, claustrophobic and hypnotically sensual. There's no clear explanation of what happens. Is Tadzio the angel of death? Does he represent everything the intellectual Aschenbach avoided in his life? Is the scholar simply going through a major midlife crisis, involving coming out? All of the above; none of the above � which makes the story frustrating but also amusingly enigmatic.

I'm looking forward to reading more Mann, especially one of his big novels like The Magic Mountain.
]]> Great Expectations 12673375 Great Expectations (first published in 1860/61) is one of the most mature and serious of Dickens's novels. As Angus Calder points out in his introduction, it resembles a detective story - but in the sense in which Oedipus Rex also resembles one. From the first shock of the early pages, when Pip encounters the convict Magwitch, the mystery grips our attention and its psychological and moral truth holds us until the end. For, in discovering the secret of his 'great expectations', Pip also begins to discover the truth about himself.]]> 512 Charles Dickens Glenn 5 How Great Expectations changed my own expectations



Great Expectations changed my life.

Up until Grade 11, I was simply an okay student. I had skipped a grade a few years earlier, and I was doing fine, but I didn’t stand out. And no wonder. I barely remember doing any homework. I didn’t feel particularly challenged by anything; like most adolescents, I was probably more interested in watching TV or appearing cool and trying to fit in than I was with marks or learning.

But something happened in Grade 11, and I think it had to do with Great Expectations. The book was assigned for English class, and we were supposed to start reading it over the Christmas break. I procrastinated. It seemed like such a chore; there was so much description in the book; I couldn’t relate to the idea of a “gentleman�; and what the hell were “victuals�? But soon enough, I was entranced by Dickens’s storytelling skills.

When we finally came to study the book in the new year, I’m sure I ended up skimming some passages. But I remember, thanks to my excellent teacher, being fully swept up in Dickens’s tale of a simple country boy’s sudden change in fortune. Suddenly, I got excited about the past. Suddenly, I got excited about school. My grades improved. The next year, I got into the “Scholarship,� or “Enriched,� English class, which offered a much heavier course load that included (!) Oliver Twist.

After that, I began reading Dickens on my own. I read Bleak House one summer. Ditto David Copperfield. I don’t know why I stopped. University, perhaps? My loss. But my lifelong love of reading probably began around this time.

Rereading this book over the past week has brought back that rush of excitement and discovery. To be clear, this wasn’t my second encounter with the material. I’ve seen many film, TV and stage adaptations of the story, and one Christmas, Santa (i.e., my book-loving mom) had left an abridged audiotape recording of the book in my stocking. Even in this format, I was enchanted again.

But there’s really nothing like experiencing the journey of Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Estella, et al. from the start. I’ve always considered it one of my favourite novels of all time, and this rereading has reaffirmed my love for it.

So I proudly add this to my Rereading series, the rest of which can be found here: /review/list...


What do I remember from my first reading?
� The great opening scene in the churchyard cemetery between Pip and the convict (see illustration above). It’s truly one of the most memorable inciting events in all of literature.
[spoilers removed]]]> 3.89 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1861
rating: 5
read at: 2019/05/17
date added: 2020/05/14
shelves: before-1900, classics, favorites, guardian-1000, rereading-series
review:
How Great Expectations changed my own expectations



Great Expectations changed my life.

Up until Grade 11, I was simply an okay student. I had skipped a grade a few years earlier, and I was doing fine, but I didn’t stand out. And no wonder. I barely remember doing any homework. I didn’t feel particularly challenged by anything; like most adolescents, I was probably more interested in watching TV or appearing cool and trying to fit in than I was with marks or learning.

But something happened in Grade 11, and I think it had to do with Great Expectations. The book was assigned for English class, and we were supposed to start reading it over the Christmas break. I procrastinated. It seemed like such a chore; there was so much description in the book; I couldn’t relate to the idea of a “gentleman�; and what the hell were “victuals�? But soon enough, I was entranced by Dickens’s storytelling skills.

When we finally came to study the book in the new year, I’m sure I ended up skimming some passages. But I remember, thanks to my excellent teacher, being fully swept up in Dickens’s tale of a simple country boy’s sudden change in fortune. Suddenly, I got excited about the past. Suddenly, I got excited about school. My grades improved. The next year, I got into the “Scholarship,� or “Enriched,� English class, which offered a much heavier course load that included (!) Oliver Twist.

After that, I began reading Dickens on my own. I read Bleak House one summer. Ditto David Copperfield. I don’t know why I stopped. University, perhaps? My loss. But my lifelong love of reading probably began around this time.

Rereading this book over the past week has brought back that rush of excitement and discovery. To be clear, this wasn’t my second encounter with the material. I’ve seen many film, TV and stage adaptations of the story, and one Christmas, Santa (i.e., my book-loving mom) had left an abridged audiotape recording of the book in my stocking. Even in this format, I was enchanted again.

But there’s really nothing like experiencing the journey of Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Estella, et al. from the start. I’ve always considered it one of my favourite novels of all time, and this rereading has reaffirmed my love for it.

So I proudly add this to my Rereading series, the rest of which can be found here: /review/list...


What do I remember from my first reading?
� The great opening scene in the churchyard cemetery between Pip and the convict (see illustration above). It’s truly one of the most memorable inciting events in all of literature.
[spoilers removed]
]]> Moby-Dick; or, the Whale 7848
The Modern Library Classics edition contains original illustrations by Rockwell Kent.

Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick.]]> 851 Herman Melville Glenn 5
Moby-Dick is as mammoth, mysterious and elusive as the enormous white whale that gives the book its name. The opening line (“Call me Ishmael�) is one of the most famous in all literature. And even people who’ve never read it are familiar with the peg-legged, vengeance-seeking Captain Ahab, the archetype for any maniacally obsessed leader.

What makes the novel so fascinating is how modern it feels. It’s an adventure tale about a man who’s driven to hunt down the beast who maimed him, but it’s also a treatise on whales and the whaling industry, a sharp look at class and culture (the sailors hail from all around the world), and a bold literary experiment, for 1851 or even today.

It’s hugely digressive, contains dialogue that at times sounds Shakespearean, and there’s not really much action until the end. But somehow it’s still very entertaining. Melville (who, of course, knew all about whaling) is such a clever, genial writer, that you’ll be smiling and chuckling throughout and gasping at his powers of description and observation.

You’ll smell the salty air, feel the churning waves and your heart will beat a little faster when one of the crew cries “There she blows!�

I wasn’t especially moved by the story, but I don’t think we’re meant to be. Each of the characters is distinct, and Melville is savvy in the way that he uses silence to reveal dissent, particularly in the growing animosity between Ahab and Starbuck, the responsible first mate. (Yup, that’s where the coffee chain got its name.)

But what I do feel about the book is awe and respect. Like the ocean itself, it is vast and has unknowable depths, and I can see myself in another couple of years venturing back out for another rewarding trip.]]> 3.97 1851 Moby-Dick; or, the Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1851
rating: 5
read at: 2015/01/02
date added: 2020/04/24
shelves: favorites, before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:
What can I say about this great American novel that hasn’t already been said by generations of readers and academics?

Moby-Dick is as mammoth, mysterious and elusive as the enormous white whale that gives the book its name. The opening line (“Call me Ishmael�) is one of the most famous in all literature. And even people who’ve never read it are familiar with the peg-legged, vengeance-seeking Captain Ahab, the archetype for any maniacally obsessed leader.

What makes the novel so fascinating is how modern it feels. It’s an adventure tale about a man who’s driven to hunt down the beast who maimed him, but it’s also a treatise on whales and the whaling industry, a sharp look at class and culture (the sailors hail from all around the world), and a bold literary experiment, for 1851 or even today.

It’s hugely digressive, contains dialogue that at times sounds Shakespearean, and there’s not really much action until the end. But somehow it’s still very entertaining. Melville (who, of course, knew all about whaling) is such a clever, genial writer, that you’ll be smiling and chuckling throughout and gasping at his powers of description and observation.

You’ll smell the salty air, feel the churning waves and your heart will beat a little faster when one of the crew cries “There she blows!�

I wasn’t especially moved by the story, but I don’t think we’re meant to be. Each of the characters is distinct, and Melville is savvy in the way that he uses silence to reveal dissent, particularly in the growing animosity between Ahab and Starbuck, the responsible first mate. (Yup, that’s where the coffee chain got its name.)

But what I do feel about the book is awe and respect. Like the ocean itself, it is vast and has unknowable depths, and I can see myself in another couple of years venturing back out for another rewarding trip.
]]> Dracula 588495
For this completely updated edition, Maurice Hindle has revised his introduction, list of further reading and notes, and added two appendices: Stoker's essay on censorship and his interview with Winston Churchill, both published in 1908. Christopher Frayling's preface discusses Stoker's significance and the influences that contributed to his creation of the Dracula myth.]]> 454 Bram Stoker 014143984X Glenn 5 3.83 1897 Dracula
author: Bram Stoker
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1897
rating: 5
read at: 2019/10/22
date added: 2020/03/01
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> The Island of Dr Moreau 341272 176 H.G. Wells 014144102X Glenn 4 3.62 1896 The Island of Dr Moreau
author: H.G. Wells
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1896
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/23
date added: 2020/03/01
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats]]> 402128
Enjoy the show!

With all your favourite cats, starring ...
Macavity, the Mystery Cat
Mr Mistofelees, the Original Conjuring Cat
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
and many more!]]> 56 T.S. Eliot 0151686564 Glenn 4 1900-1960, classics 4.07 1939 Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
author: T.S. Eliot
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/31
date added: 2020/01/20
shelves: 1900-1960, classics
review:

]]> The Little Prince 157993
Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.]]> 96 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0152023984 Glenn 4 4.32 1943 The Little Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1943
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/09
date added: 2020/01/20
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, not-usa-can-uk
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 Glenn 4 4.21 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/17
date added: 2019/06/17
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Glenn 5 Classics are classics for a reason
I was too busy to write a proper review of this last year after I'd finished it, but let me try now. It's Steinbeck's epic look at two families � the Trasks and the Hamiltons � in the Salinas Valley, California setting of his own childhood. (Steinbeck himself is a minor character in the book.)

There are lots of biblical echoes: Cain and Abel; the sins of the father; etc.

What amazed me was how contemporary the book's language and insights felt. This is not some dusty, fusty classic.

I'm not sure about the character of the depraved Cathy, who seems to have been born simply evil. But she's certainly a powerful figure in the book, and the mystery around her drives a big chunk of the book. Also of interest is the character of Lee, the Chinese-American cook, who speaks in a pidgin English (even though he's well-educated) because he says that's a reality the people can accept.

East Of Eden is like a lot of great art; it feels like it's always been around. When you read it, it will resonate deep in your bones as something essential, true and disturbing.

Note: the famous James Dean movie only covers a fraction of the novel. I tried watching it afterwards, but found it overwrought and unduly melodramatic. ]]> 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2018/07/29
date added: 2019/04/04
shelves: classics, guardian-1000, nobel-winners, 1900-1960
review:
Classics are classics for a reason
I was too busy to write a proper review of this last year after I'd finished it, but let me try now. It's Steinbeck's epic look at two families � the Trasks and the Hamiltons � in the Salinas Valley, California setting of his own childhood. (Steinbeck himself is a minor character in the book.)

There are lots of biblical echoes: Cain and Abel; the sins of the father; etc.

What amazed me was how contemporary the book's language and insights felt. This is not some dusty, fusty classic.

I'm not sure about the character of the depraved Cathy, who seems to have been born simply evil. But she's certainly a powerful figure in the book, and the mystery around her drives a big chunk of the book. Also of interest is the character of Lee, the Chinese-American cook, who speaks in a pidgin English (even though he's well-educated) because he says that's a reality the people can accept.

East Of Eden is like a lot of great art; it feels like it's always been around. When you read it, it will resonate deep in your bones as something essential, true and disturbing.

Note: the famous James Dean movie only covers a fraction of the novel. I tried watching it afterwards, but found it overwrought and unduly melodramatic.
]]> Gone with the Wind 819699 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Scarlett O'Hara, the beautiful, spoiled daughter of a well-to-do Georgia plantation owner, must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea.]]> 1037 Margaret Mitchell 068483068X Glenn 5 Gone With The Wind? Rather than write a traditional review, I’ve decided to organize my thoughts into separate sections.

*One of the many quaint and highly amusing Southernisms used in the book

WHY READ THIS 1,037-PAGE BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’d seen the film several times, and had always wanted to read the novel, if only to compare the two. Also: it won the Pulitzer Prize � so it had to have literary merit, right? And many people whose tastes I respect on this site love it. Then, while perusing my local library, I saw a brand new hardcover copy of the 75th anniversary edition, and that was my sign. I thought: As God is my witness, now is the time to read it. And read it. And keep on reading it. I renewed it several times. It took me well over a month to get through (albeit during a super busy time at work). But like Scarlett clawing her way back to Tara after the war, I persevered. And I'm so glad I did.

A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
There’s everything in here. Immigration. Slavery. A brutal war and its aftermath. A moving romance. An examination of ethics and morality. There are big themes like money vs. love, passion vs. friendship, the old world vs. the new. And at its centre is one of the most complex characters in all of literature, Scarlett O’Hara.

OH, SCARLETT
She’s vain. Selfish. Petty. Culturally ignorant. She’s a terrible, terrible mother (the film only shows her with one child, Bonnie, but she has two other children from different husbands, and barely pays them any attention). She is deluded about her beloved golden boy Ashley Wilkes (at times the book reads like an Old South take on He’s Just Not That Into You) and doesn’t appreciate Ashley’s wife, Melanie, until the end. BUT: Margaret Mitchell makes us root for her. She’s a survivor. She’s a hard worker. She’s street smart. And ultimately, even though she complains while doing it, she helps her family. She doesn’t care about social niceties or appearances (unless they can help her); they won’t feed and clothe her and her brood. Her eye’s always on the bottom line. And if something’s not working out, she’ll ignore it and think about it tomorrow. She’ll find a solution. What. A. Character.

RHETT
Swarthy, muscular, tanned, hairy, interested in fashion, well-travelled, super well-educated even though he was kicked out of West Point, Rhett Butler is a bit of a romance novel wish fulfillment type. And he always seems steps ahead of everyone else. But the dashing, enterprising blockade-runner is one helluva romantic lead. The evolution of his relationship with Scarlett is so carefully and artfully structured that the final 100 pages will make your heart ache. And what Mitchell got away from censors � the love-making on the night of Ashley’s surprise birthday party is pretty much rape � is incredible.

A CAVEAT
Reading this book in 2018 is often an uncomfortable experience because of the treatment of the African-American characters. The N-word and the euphemism “darkie� are all over the place. Few of the Black characters are given any agency or dignity, except Scarlett’s Mammy, and even she is often described in animal terms - compared to an old ape. There's a strange disconnect, too. Often the Blacks are described as lazy and loafing. And yet, Mitchell frequently has her characters working "as hard as a field hand." So who was lazy? Worse, in sections that are supposed to be written in some objective third-person narration (they provide lots of fascinating information, to be fair), Mitchell clearly sides with the Confederates. One chapter in particular, 37, was extremely difficult to read; it’s pure propaganda.

THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
As a Canadian, I didn’t have to study the war in school, and what I know about it has been cobbled together from bits and pieces. The way Mitchell interweaves the war into the narrative is incredible. You see it from a macro and micro perspective. I’m very curious now and want to read other books, both fiction and non, about it.

THE MOVIE
I plan on rewatching the film in the next month or so, but I wanted the book to settle in first. Here’s what I remember about the differences: Besides leaving out Scarlett’s other two children, we don’t get Archie, an ex-convict taken in by Melanie, who becomes Scarlett’s driver for a time, and Will Benteen, a simple but hard-working man who helps run Tara while Scarlett’s away, but you can see why the filmmakers excluded them. One of the best minor characters is Grandma Fontaine, an embittered old woman whom everyone (including Scarlett) fears. She digs the truth out of Scarlett in a scene that is seared into my brain it’s so powerful. I also don’t recall anything about the Ku Klux Klan, and that Ashley and Scarlett’s second husband, Frank Kennedy, are part of it. Good call, filmmakers! Rhett’s determination that Bonnie be accepted by good society is much more pronounced than it was in the movie. And it’s interesting that Scarlett’s aristocratic mother, Ellen, was in love with someone else but married her husband, Gerald, in the same way that Scarlett, in love with Ashley, did with husbands 1, 2 and 3. That’s not in the movie, but it adds so much texture to the book, and makes you see patterns in human behaviour. (Also: Scarlett’s daughter, Bonnie, has inherited Scarlett’s and Gerald’s stubbornness.) And the book also features a fascinating motif of Scarlett having nightmares that is ingeniously integrated into the climax. That couldn't be done in the movie.

SUMMARY
A flawed masterpiece about a flawed character and a flawed country that’s still, in some ways, dealing with the effects of this chapter in its history. The book features one of the most unforgettable characters and romances in the canon. I can’t give it anything less than 5 stars.]]> 4.44 1936 Gone with the Wind
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at: 2018/10/25
date added: 2018/12/01
shelves: classics, pulitzer-winners, guardian-1000, favorites, 1900-1960
review:
“God’s nightgown!�* How can I ever review the behemoth that is Gone With The Wind? Rather than write a traditional review, I’ve decided to organize my thoughts into separate sections.

*One of the many quaint and highly amusing Southernisms used in the book

WHY READ THIS 1,037-PAGE BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’d seen the film several times, and had always wanted to read the novel, if only to compare the two. Also: it won the Pulitzer Prize � so it had to have literary merit, right? And many people whose tastes I respect on this site love it. Then, while perusing my local library, I saw a brand new hardcover copy of the 75th anniversary edition, and that was my sign. I thought: As God is my witness, now is the time to read it. And read it. And keep on reading it. I renewed it several times. It took me well over a month to get through (albeit during a super busy time at work). But like Scarlett clawing her way back to Tara after the war, I persevered. And I'm so glad I did.

A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
There’s everything in here. Immigration. Slavery. A brutal war and its aftermath. A moving romance. An examination of ethics and morality. There are big themes like money vs. love, passion vs. friendship, the old world vs. the new. And at its centre is one of the most complex characters in all of literature, Scarlett O’Hara.

OH, SCARLETT
She’s vain. Selfish. Petty. Culturally ignorant. She’s a terrible, terrible mother (the film only shows her with one child, Bonnie, but she has two other children from different husbands, and barely pays them any attention). She is deluded about her beloved golden boy Ashley Wilkes (at times the book reads like an Old South take on He’s Just Not That Into You) and doesn’t appreciate Ashley’s wife, Melanie, until the end. BUT: Margaret Mitchell makes us root for her. She’s a survivor. She’s a hard worker. She’s street smart. And ultimately, even though she complains while doing it, she helps her family. She doesn’t care about social niceties or appearances (unless they can help her); they won’t feed and clothe her and her brood. Her eye’s always on the bottom line. And if something’s not working out, she’ll ignore it and think about it tomorrow. She’ll find a solution. What. A. Character.

RHETT
Swarthy, muscular, tanned, hairy, interested in fashion, well-travelled, super well-educated even though he was kicked out of West Point, Rhett Butler is a bit of a romance novel wish fulfillment type. And he always seems steps ahead of everyone else. But the dashing, enterprising blockade-runner is one helluva romantic lead. The evolution of his relationship with Scarlett is so carefully and artfully structured that the final 100 pages will make your heart ache. And what Mitchell got away from censors � the love-making on the night of Ashley’s surprise birthday party is pretty much rape � is incredible.

A CAVEAT
Reading this book in 2018 is often an uncomfortable experience because of the treatment of the African-American characters. The N-word and the euphemism “darkie� are all over the place. Few of the Black characters are given any agency or dignity, except Scarlett’s Mammy, and even she is often described in animal terms - compared to an old ape. There's a strange disconnect, too. Often the Blacks are described as lazy and loafing. And yet, Mitchell frequently has her characters working "as hard as a field hand." So who was lazy? Worse, in sections that are supposed to be written in some objective third-person narration (they provide lots of fascinating information, to be fair), Mitchell clearly sides with the Confederates. One chapter in particular, 37, was extremely difficult to read; it’s pure propaganda.

THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
As a Canadian, I didn’t have to study the war in school, and what I know about it has been cobbled together from bits and pieces. The way Mitchell interweaves the war into the narrative is incredible. You see it from a macro and micro perspective. I’m very curious now and want to read other books, both fiction and non, about it.

THE MOVIE
I plan on rewatching the film in the next month or so, but I wanted the book to settle in first. Here’s what I remember about the differences: Besides leaving out Scarlett’s other two children, we don’t get Archie, an ex-convict taken in by Melanie, who becomes Scarlett’s driver for a time, and Will Benteen, a simple but hard-working man who helps run Tara while Scarlett’s away, but you can see why the filmmakers excluded them. One of the best minor characters is Grandma Fontaine, an embittered old woman whom everyone (including Scarlett) fears. She digs the truth out of Scarlett in a scene that is seared into my brain it’s so powerful. I also don’t recall anything about the Ku Klux Klan, and that Ashley and Scarlett’s second husband, Frank Kennedy, are part of it. Good call, filmmakers! Rhett’s determination that Bonnie be accepted by good society is much more pronounced than it was in the movie. And it’s interesting that Scarlett’s aristocratic mother, Ellen, was in love with someone else but married her husband, Gerald, in the same way that Scarlett, in love with Ashley, did with husbands 1, 2 and 3. That’s not in the movie, but it adds so much texture to the book, and makes you see patterns in human behaviour. (Also: Scarlett’s daughter, Bonnie, has inherited Scarlett’s and Gerald’s stubbornness.) And the book also features a fascinating motif of Scarlett having nightmares that is ingeniously integrated into the climax. That couldn't be done in the movie.

SUMMARY
A flawed masterpiece about a flawed character and a flawed country that’s still, in some ways, dealing with the effects of this chapter in its history. The book features one of the most unforgettable characters and romances in the canon. I can’t give it anything less than 5 stars.
]]> Howards End 1901051 352 E.M. Forster 0140431756 Glenn 4 Howards End is a chatty, witty, philosophical novel about the state of England in the years leading up to the first world war.

There’s a sharp sense of place (Howards End, the estate, was modelled after Forster’s childhood home), and by focusing on three separate families, you certainly understand the social hierarchy of Edwardian England. The book’s famous epigraph (“Only connect...�) refers to the need for humans to empathize with others, cutting across boundaries of class, culture, geography and the sins of the past. This theme comes through vividly.

The characters often feel a little thin, however, and the plot slightly contrived. Forster’s omniscient narrator can be wonderfully casual, as in the relaxed, conversational opening: “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.�

But we never get too deep into anyone’s consciousness, so occasionally characters� actions seem perplexing. Sometimes you can feel Forster overworking his symbols, not letting them emerge organically. A few passages are so densely poetic that they require several readings to grasp. And the climax � in which all three families� fates intersect irrevocably � seems forced.

But you get the sense throughout that Forster is trying to root out deep human truths and question the basis of charity, forgiveness, duty and mercy. Noble goals. And there are passages of great beauty and intelligence.

Despite its period setting, the themes still feel relevant. In light of the recent economic crisis, and things like the Occupy movement, Forster's examination of the haves and the have-nots hits home powerfully.]]> 3.95 1910 Howards End
author: E.M. Forster
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1910
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/07
date added: 2018/08/11
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:
Howards End is a chatty, witty, philosophical novel about the state of England in the years leading up to the first world war.

There’s a sharp sense of place (Howards End, the estate, was modelled after Forster’s childhood home), and by focusing on three separate families, you certainly understand the social hierarchy of Edwardian England. The book’s famous epigraph (“Only connect...�) refers to the need for humans to empathize with others, cutting across boundaries of class, culture, geography and the sins of the past. This theme comes through vividly.

The characters often feel a little thin, however, and the plot slightly contrived. Forster’s omniscient narrator can be wonderfully casual, as in the relaxed, conversational opening: “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.�

But we never get too deep into anyone’s consciousness, so occasionally characters� actions seem perplexing. Sometimes you can feel Forster overworking his symbols, not letting them emerge organically. A few passages are so densely poetic that they require several readings to grasp. And the climax � in which all three families� fates intersect irrevocably � seems forced.

But you get the sense throughout that Forster is trying to root out deep human truths and question the basis of charity, forgiveness, duty and mercy. Noble goals. And there are passages of great beauty and intelligence.

Despite its period setting, the themes still feel relevant. In light of the recent economic crisis, and things like the Occupy movement, Forster's examination of the haves and the have-nots hits home powerfully.
]]> The Street of Crocodiles 16301061 The collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick)

Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.]]> 160 Bruno Schulz Glenn 0 3.95 1933 The Street of Crocodiles
author: Bruno Schulz
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/02
shelves: to-read, classics, not-usa-can-uk
review:

]]> The Maltese Falcon 24995861 217 Dashiell Hammett 0385364156 Glenn 4 Quick: Can you remember the plot of The Maltese Falcon?

I read it a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve seen the classic 1941 film noir at least twice. But even I’m hazy on the fine details of the story.

In late 1920s San Francisco, a bunch of people want the priceless titular statue, and will do anything � bribe, steal, frame, kill, and lie their faces off � to get their claws on it.

It’s up to detective Sam Spade to keep various parties in the dark about what the others know. There’s the mysterious woman who initially hires him and his partner Miles Archer to “find her sister� � that backfires, since Miles winds up dead (not a spoiler: it's revealed a dozen pages in). There are the two cops who suspect Sam killed Miles because he’d been sleeping with the guy’s wife. And there are the three unsavoury characters who’ve been following the black bird across the globe.

While navigating all of these rather unlikeable characters (I think the receptionist is the only “good� person in the book), Sam has to figure out where the statue is, who killed Miles and try to pocket a few bills as well. And damn it, he's not gonna take the fall for anyone.

The thing is, the plot isn’t the point of this crime classic. It’s about the mood, the atmosphere, the hardboiled language and tough talk. It’s about people being up at 3 am in the morning and thinking nothing of it. It’s a character using sex to distract someone from asking difficult questions. It’s the pair of contrasting, grotesque quasi villains, one an effeminate Greek homosexual* (whose relationship with another character was written out of the film version), the other a morbidly obese man whose fat rolls jiggle every time he laughs.

And it’s about the steady and cool way Spade figures out what’s going on, the way he gets out of situations using his brains and brawn, and his nearly expressionless attitude towards crime and carnality. He’s tough, but he’s still got something of a moral code buried beneath his stony demeanour.

I noticed some things in the book that aren’t in the movie (besides the two gay lovers subplot):

� A full description of the history of the eponymous statuette! It has quite the provenance! (These details would have slowed down the film’s pace.)
� When there’s the suspicion that the central female, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, may have stolen a $1000 bill, Spade takes her to the washroom and demands she remove all her clothes so he can see if she’s hiding it. She complies. Wow. This definitely wouldn’t have passed the Production Code inspection!

Dashiell Hammett’s writing is entertaining and quite effective. There’s one passage where a woman talks, looks down at a settee, her eyes “tracing eights,� which is a clever way of showing us that she’s probably lying.

I literally LOL'd when I read the following description of a contemptuous bit of dialogue: "two words, the first a short, guttural verb, the second you." (We can assume that "short, guttural verb" began with the letter F.)

And there are Sam’s classic quotes: “If they hang you I’ll always remember you.� “I don’t care who loves who I’m not going to play the sap for you.�

Rumour has it that director John Huston said, while approving the script (and I’m paraphrasing), “How can you improve on the dialogue in the book?�

So true. I look forward to reading some other Hammett books, like The Glass Key and The Thin Man.

* By today's standards, reading the descriptions of Joel Cairo with his mincing walk, his use of perfume and his "high-pitched voice" � and the sneering, dismissive way the other characters treat him and call him "queer" and "a fairy" � is difficult. But this book was written in 1930, so I suppose it's understandable.]]> 3.59 1930 The Maltese Falcon
author: Dashiell Hammett
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1930
rating: 4
read at: 2018/04/30
date added: 2018/05/17
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, guardian-1000, modern-library-100
review:
Quick: Can you remember the plot of The Maltese Falcon?

I read it a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve seen the classic 1941 film noir at least twice. But even I’m hazy on the fine details of the story.

In late 1920s San Francisco, a bunch of people want the priceless titular statue, and will do anything � bribe, steal, frame, kill, and lie their faces off � to get their claws on it.

It’s up to detective Sam Spade to keep various parties in the dark about what the others know. There’s the mysterious woman who initially hires him and his partner Miles Archer to “find her sister� � that backfires, since Miles winds up dead (not a spoiler: it's revealed a dozen pages in). There are the two cops who suspect Sam killed Miles because he’d been sleeping with the guy’s wife. And there are the three unsavoury characters who’ve been following the black bird across the globe.

While navigating all of these rather unlikeable characters (I think the receptionist is the only “good� person in the book), Sam has to figure out where the statue is, who killed Miles and try to pocket a few bills as well. And damn it, he's not gonna take the fall for anyone.

The thing is, the plot isn’t the point of this crime classic. It’s about the mood, the atmosphere, the hardboiled language and tough talk. It’s about people being up at 3 am in the morning and thinking nothing of it. It’s a character using sex to distract someone from asking difficult questions. It’s the pair of contrasting, grotesque quasi villains, one an effeminate Greek homosexual* (whose relationship with another character was written out of the film version), the other a morbidly obese man whose fat rolls jiggle every time he laughs.

And it’s about the steady and cool way Spade figures out what’s going on, the way he gets out of situations using his brains and brawn, and his nearly expressionless attitude towards crime and carnality. He’s tough, but he’s still got something of a moral code buried beneath his stony demeanour.

I noticed some things in the book that aren’t in the movie (besides the two gay lovers subplot):

� A full description of the history of the eponymous statuette! It has quite the provenance! (These details would have slowed down the film’s pace.)
� When there’s the suspicion that the central female, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, may have stolen a $1000 bill, Spade takes her to the washroom and demands she remove all her clothes so he can see if she’s hiding it. She complies. Wow. This definitely wouldn’t have passed the Production Code inspection!

Dashiell Hammett’s writing is entertaining and quite effective. There’s one passage where a woman talks, looks down at a settee, her eyes “tracing eights,� which is a clever way of showing us that she’s probably lying.

I literally LOL'd when I read the following description of a contemptuous bit of dialogue: "two words, the first a short, guttural verb, the second you." (We can assume that "short, guttural verb" began with the letter F.)

And there are Sam’s classic quotes: “If they hang you I’ll always remember you.� “I don’t care who loves who I’m not going to play the sap for you.�

Rumour has it that director John Huston said, while approving the script (and I’m paraphrasing), “How can you improve on the dialogue in the book?�

So true. I look forward to reading some other Hammett books, like The Glass Key and The Thin Man.

* By today's standards, reading the descriptions of Joel Cairo with his mincing walk, his use of perfume and his "high-pitched voice" � and the sneering, dismissive way the other characters treat him and call him "queer" and "a fairy" � is difficult. But this book was written in 1930, so I suppose it's understandable.
]]> A Handful of Dust 12712964
Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, 'A Handful of Dust' captures the irresponsible mood of the 'crazy and sterile generation' between the wars. The breakdown of the Last marriage is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh's own divorce, and a symbol of the disintegration of society.


Alternate (newer) cover for ISBN 0141183969 (ISBN13: 9780141183961) .]]> 255 Evelyn Waugh Glenn 5
Set between the wars in the chic upper-middle classes in and around London, A Handful Of Dust is full of horrible people doing horrible things to each other, but it adds up to a bitter indictment of human behaviour. And it’s not all jokes. There’s despair lurking beneath the brittle laughs, and sadness at the waste of potential. I believe it was partly inspired by Waugh’s wife of one year leaving him for one of their friends. I suppose it’s better to laugh at pain than cry�

Country gentleman Tony Last seems more attached to his ugly ancestral estate, Hetton Abbey, than he does to his bored and attractive wife, Brenda. So Brenda takes up with the dull and penniless social climber John Beaver, even going so far as to rent out a flat in London, telling Tony that she’s studying economics while she’s carrying on this affair that everyone knows about except her dim husband.

When tragedy strikes � I won’t spoil things by revealing the event and the astonishing reaction to it � Brenda insists on a divorce. This leads to a completely absurd scene in which the cold fish Tony attempts to get himself caught being unfaithful so Brenda can get one.

One section near the end, set in Brazil and completely inappropriate and wrong in its treatment of natives (there are many instances throughout of inappropriate remarks), at first seems absurd, but when bits of dialogue from the previous 200 pages crop up, you get to see how carefully Waugh has crafted the book. (And how memorable his dialogue has been.) There’s a plot point about reading Dickens that results in the darkest comedy, and perhaps a scathing statement about literature and civilization.

Waugh is simply a brilliant writer. I don’t think satire requires characters of much depth. But Waugh gives you enough details so you know everyone in this particular vanity fair. Their conversations are tart and suggestive, with people seldom saying what they’re thinking.

What’s remarkable is that beneath the exaggeration, there’s a brutal examination of the horrible things people are capable of doing � to themselves and each other.

In one of the silliest scenes, two adults play a children's card game where they're reduced to making animal noises. It's played for laughs, but Waugh knew what he was doing. Oink oink, cluck cluck cluck indeed.]]> 3.72 1934 A Handful of Dust
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2016/06/19
date added: 2018/05/15
shelves: classics, guardian-1000, modern-library-100, 1900-1960
review:
I’m not generally a fan of satirical novels (as opposed to, say, satirical sketch comedy), but this book was terrific. Seldom have I seen tragedy and comedy so successfully intermingled.

Set between the wars in the chic upper-middle classes in and around London, A Handful Of Dust is full of horrible people doing horrible things to each other, but it adds up to a bitter indictment of human behaviour. And it’s not all jokes. There’s despair lurking beneath the brittle laughs, and sadness at the waste of potential. I believe it was partly inspired by Waugh’s wife of one year leaving him for one of their friends. I suppose it’s better to laugh at pain than cry�

Country gentleman Tony Last seems more attached to his ugly ancestral estate, Hetton Abbey, than he does to his bored and attractive wife, Brenda. So Brenda takes up with the dull and penniless social climber John Beaver, even going so far as to rent out a flat in London, telling Tony that she’s studying economics while she’s carrying on this affair that everyone knows about except her dim husband.

When tragedy strikes � I won’t spoil things by revealing the event and the astonishing reaction to it � Brenda insists on a divorce. This leads to a completely absurd scene in which the cold fish Tony attempts to get himself caught being unfaithful so Brenda can get one.

One section near the end, set in Brazil and completely inappropriate and wrong in its treatment of natives (there are many instances throughout of inappropriate remarks), at first seems absurd, but when bits of dialogue from the previous 200 pages crop up, you get to see how carefully Waugh has crafted the book. (And how memorable his dialogue has been.) There’s a plot point about reading Dickens that results in the darkest comedy, and perhaps a scathing statement about literature and civilization.

Waugh is simply a brilliant writer. I don’t think satire requires characters of much depth. But Waugh gives you enough details so you know everyone in this particular vanity fair. Their conversations are tart and suggestive, with people seldom saying what they’re thinking.

What’s remarkable is that beneath the exaggeration, there’s a brutal examination of the horrible things people are capable of doing � to themselves and each other.

In one of the silliest scenes, two adults play a children's card game where they're reduced to making animal noises. It's played for laughs, but Waugh knew what he was doing. Oink oink, cluck cluck cluck indeed.
]]> Siddhartha 52036 152 Hermann Hesse Glenn 4
It’s about the lifelong journey of Siddhartha, a Brahmin’s son who leaves the comfort and intellectual stimulation of his home life to become a wandering ascetic, renouncing all possessions. After meeting the famous Buddha, Gautama, he realizes he wants or needs more, and so crosses a river with the help of a ferryman (who lets him ride for free - saying he’ll be back and will pay him in another way) and goes to take part in city life. There, he embarks on an extended affair with a beautiful courtesan and works for a ruthless businessman. He has mind-blowing sex, amasses wealth and drapes himself in fine clothes, but he’s unfulfilled. In fact, he’s in despair. Then, revisiting the river he was at years earlier, and meeting the same wise but uneducated ferryman who helped him cross, he has a sort of epiphany. People from his earlier life eventually find him at the river, and he comes to a fuller and richer understanding of the nature of time, life, suffering. And he reconnects with a childhood friend, now a Buddhist monk, who recognizes in Siddhartha true enlightenment.

What an unusual but powerful book: quiet but full of profound things to say about what’s ultimately important in life. I can see how the book would have resonated with generations of young people in the 1960s seeking meaning in a society clamouring after wealth and power.

It makes you think about essential things: How important are possessions? What’s the purpose of pain and hardship? Does learning only happen in the classroom?

It’s a slim volume, but it’s written in a clear, timeless prose, and it’s packed with wisdom. I’ll definitely be making repeat journeys to it in the years to come.]]> 4.07 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/11
date added: 2018/03/11
shelves: classics, nobel-winners, not-usa-can-uk, 1900-1960
review:
Hermann Hesse’s 1922 book feels absolutely timeless and ageless � almost like a religious or spiritual text, not a work of fiction.

It’s about the lifelong journey of Siddhartha, a Brahmin’s son who leaves the comfort and intellectual stimulation of his home life to become a wandering ascetic, renouncing all possessions. After meeting the famous Buddha, Gautama, he realizes he wants or needs more, and so crosses a river with the help of a ferryman (who lets him ride for free - saying he’ll be back and will pay him in another way) and goes to take part in city life. There, he embarks on an extended affair with a beautiful courtesan and works for a ruthless businessman. He has mind-blowing sex, amasses wealth and drapes himself in fine clothes, but he’s unfulfilled. In fact, he’s in despair. Then, revisiting the river he was at years earlier, and meeting the same wise but uneducated ferryman who helped him cross, he has a sort of epiphany. People from his earlier life eventually find him at the river, and he comes to a fuller and richer understanding of the nature of time, life, suffering. And he reconnects with a childhood friend, now a Buddhist monk, who recognizes in Siddhartha true enlightenment.

What an unusual but powerful book: quiet but full of profound things to say about what’s ultimately important in life. I can see how the book would have resonated with generations of young people in the 1960s seeking meaning in a society clamouring after wealth and power.

It makes you think about essential things: How important are possessions? What’s the purpose of pain and hardship? Does learning only happen in the classroom?

It’s a slim volume, but it’s written in a clear, timeless prose, and it’s packed with wisdom. I’ll definitely be making repeat journeys to it in the years to come.
]]> Ethan Frome 6691415
Book is introduced by Mrs. Edith Wharton.]]> 181 Edith Wharton Glenn 4 1900-1960, classics Ethan Frome in the winter. I’m one of those folks who likes to time reading a book with the season in which the book is set.

This year, I finally got around to it. I think what had prevented me from finishing the book before was the narrative device Wharton uses. You know the one: the narrator comes upon a scene, spots the central character, and then somehow gets enough information to tell the main tale. (See also: Wuthering Heights.)

The thing is: this technique can seem fussy, distracting and gimmicky. But after I’d finished the short novel I went back and reread the opening chapters, and it’s an interesting device. I still don’t think it’s necessary, but it’s not as awkward as I at first thought.

But back to the book. It’s about a poor farmer who’s stuck in a dead marriage with his sickly wife, Zeena. Zeena’s pretty cousin, Mattie, is living with them to help with the chores, but she’s not a very good housekeeper and Zeena doesn’t like her. To complicate matters, Ethan has fallen in love with Mattie, and we think she has similar feelings.

We’re told early on about the winter “smash up� that gave Ethan his limp, and there’s a rich description of a great big (symbolic) tree early on� and so we know an accident will probably figure into the tale.

What’s remarkable isn’t the simple story, but the evocative language and the generous empathy Wharton has for her characters. The author is best known, of course, for being a sharp observer of upper-class New York society in books like The Age Of Innocence and The House Of Mirth. What does she know about simple country folk?

There’s not an ounce of sentimentality about her portrait, and even though the working class characters� speech is plain and colloquial, you don’t get the feeling that Wharton judges them. If anything, she pities them. This is a sad story.

And the descriptions of the wintry landscape? Absolutely stunning. If, like me, you’ve wanted to read this, here’s my advice. Get a nice warm blanket. Put on a pot of tea or coffee. And cuddle up with the book. You won’t regret it.]]> 3.74 1911 Ethan Frome
author: Edith Wharton
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2017/12/19
date added: 2017/12/28
shelves: 1900-1960, classics
review:
For over a decade, I’ve wanted to read Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome in the winter. I’m one of those folks who likes to time reading a book with the season in which the book is set.

This year, I finally got around to it. I think what had prevented me from finishing the book before was the narrative device Wharton uses. You know the one: the narrator comes upon a scene, spots the central character, and then somehow gets enough information to tell the main tale. (See also: Wuthering Heights.)

The thing is: this technique can seem fussy, distracting and gimmicky. But after I’d finished the short novel I went back and reread the opening chapters, and it’s an interesting device. I still don’t think it’s necessary, but it’s not as awkward as I at first thought.

But back to the book. It’s about a poor farmer who’s stuck in a dead marriage with his sickly wife, Zeena. Zeena’s pretty cousin, Mattie, is living with them to help with the chores, but she’s not a very good housekeeper and Zeena doesn’t like her. To complicate matters, Ethan has fallen in love with Mattie, and we think she has similar feelings.

We’re told early on about the winter “smash up� that gave Ethan his limp, and there’s a rich description of a great big (symbolic) tree early on� and so we know an accident will probably figure into the tale.

What’s remarkable isn’t the simple story, but the evocative language and the generous empathy Wharton has for her characters. The author is best known, of course, for being a sharp observer of upper-class New York society in books like The Age Of Innocence and The House Of Mirth. What does she know about simple country folk?

There’s not an ounce of sentimentality about her portrait, and even though the working class characters� speech is plain and colloquial, you don’t get the feeling that Wharton judges them. If anything, she pities them. This is a sad story.

And the descriptions of the wintry landscape? Absolutely stunning. If, like me, you’ve wanted to read this, here’s my advice. Get a nice warm blanket. Put on a pot of tea or coffee. And cuddle up with the book. You won’t regret it.
]]> The Mystery of Edwin Drood 1907813 320 Charles Dickens Glenn 3 before-1900, classics More like 3.5 stars, but having read many Dickens novels, this isn't one of his best.... so I'm rounding down to 3

I came to The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s last and unfinished novel, by chance.

Earlier this year I’d read The Last Dickens, Matthew Pearl’s novel about the mystery surrounding Dickens’s final book. Pearl’s literary thriller involved murder, opium addiction, autobiographical elements about Dickens’s American speaking tour and affairs, international publishing rights, “bookaneers� (look up the term � I’d never heard it before). Fascinating stuff.

So I thought I’d track down the source material. I was also familiar with the musical based on Dickens’s book � the one in which the audience votes on the show’s outcome. I saw it in its most recent Broadway revival and quite enjoyed it.

The book itself, alas, isn’t first-rate Chuck D. One of the main problems is the central character, Edwin, who’s a bit of a cipher. Edwin is engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Rosa Bud, who, like him, is an orphan. Edwin doesn’t have much ambition or personality. Edwin and Rosa aren’t terribly passionate about each other. In fact, they’re more like siblings.

Edwin’s uncle, John Jasper, is a much more compelling figure. Besides being an opium addict (and some of the early scenes set in opium dens positively ooze with atmosphere), the haunted, lecherous and terribly unhappy Jasper is also the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. In his spare time he acts as Rosa's music master, but it soon becomes clear that he’d like to do more to the girl than just teach her music.

Two twins from Ceylon, Neville and Helena Landless, also arrive in town. Helena befriends Rosa, and her brother Neville is smitten with her. Neville and Edwin get into a fight that was too subtle for me to really comprehend.

Soon, during a requisite dark and stormy night, Edwin disappears. Was he murdered? If so, who did it? Neville, having fought him, is under suspicion, and Jasper seems happy to point the finger at him. Or... does Edwin disappear only to reappear later in disguise? (A couple of characters mysteriously do indeed show up midway through the book.) We’ll never know.

Dickens plants lots of details that would likely have popped up later in the unraveling of the mystery: a ring, a walking stick, a black scarf�

But a lot of the writing feels laboured, particularly involving minor characters. And it’s a big problem when you don’t feel anything when your “hero� disappears.

Still, Dickens was a marvelous plotter, and it’s unfair to comment on the book without knowing what he intended.

If anything, this book makes me want to go back to Dickens’s other books. I’ve read the biggies (Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Oliver Twist), but there are still many left.

Apparently this book was Dickens’s attempt to write in the mystery genre that his friend, Wilkie Collins, had mastered. So perhaps it’s about time I read Collins’s books like The Woman In White and The Moonstone. I've been meaning to anyway. ]]> 3.62 1870 The Mystery of Edwin Drood
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1870
rating: 3
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/08/21
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:
More like 3.5 stars, but having read many Dickens novels, this isn't one of his best.... so I'm rounding down to 3

I came to The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s last and unfinished novel, by chance.

Earlier this year I’d read The Last Dickens, Matthew Pearl’s novel about the mystery surrounding Dickens’s final book. Pearl’s literary thriller involved murder, opium addiction, autobiographical elements about Dickens’s American speaking tour and affairs, international publishing rights, “bookaneers� (look up the term � I’d never heard it before). Fascinating stuff.

So I thought I’d track down the source material. I was also familiar with the musical based on Dickens’s book � the one in which the audience votes on the show’s outcome. I saw it in its most recent Broadway revival and quite enjoyed it.

The book itself, alas, isn’t first-rate Chuck D. One of the main problems is the central character, Edwin, who’s a bit of a cipher. Edwin is engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Rosa Bud, who, like him, is an orphan. Edwin doesn’t have much ambition or personality. Edwin and Rosa aren’t terribly passionate about each other. In fact, they’re more like siblings.

Edwin’s uncle, John Jasper, is a much more compelling figure. Besides being an opium addict (and some of the early scenes set in opium dens positively ooze with atmosphere), the haunted, lecherous and terribly unhappy Jasper is also the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. In his spare time he acts as Rosa's music master, but it soon becomes clear that he’d like to do more to the girl than just teach her music.

Two twins from Ceylon, Neville and Helena Landless, also arrive in town. Helena befriends Rosa, and her brother Neville is smitten with her. Neville and Edwin get into a fight that was too subtle for me to really comprehend.

Soon, during a requisite dark and stormy night, Edwin disappears. Was he murdered? If so, who did it? Neville, having fought him, is under suspicion, and Jasper seems happy to point the finger at him. Or... does Edwin disappear only to reappear later in disguise? (A couple of characters mysteriously do indeed show up midway through the book.) We’ll never know.

Dickens plants lots of details that would likely have popped up later in the unraveling of the mystery: a ring, a walking stick, a black scarf�

But a lot of the writing feels laboured, particularly involving minor characters. And it’s a big problem when you don’t feel anything when your “hero� disappears.

Still, Dickens was a marvelous plotter, and it’s unfair to comment on the book without knowing what he intended.

If anything, this book makes me want to go back to Dickens’s other books. I’ve read the biggies (Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Oliver Twist), but there are still many left.

Apparently this book was Dickens’s attempt to write in the mystery genre that his friend, Wilkie Collins, had mastered. So perhaps it’s about time I read Collins’s books like The Woman In White and The Moonstone. I've been meaning to anyway.
]]> Brideshead Revisited 111618
But he gradually comes to recognize his spiritual and social distance from them, eventually discovering a world where duty and desire, faith and happiness are in conflict.]]> 331 Evelyn Waugh 0141187476 Glenn 4 Brideshead Revisited, I was seduced by Evelyn Waugh’s gorgeous prose, elegy to lost youth and dreams, and the glamorous between the wars setting.

The pacing is strange, but it’s hinted at in the subtitle: “The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.� Memories are sporadic, apt to be uncomprehensive, subjective.

Ryder, an officer (“homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless�), is stationed at the magnificent Brideshead estate, and looks back on how his life has intertwined with many of its members � first the fey, teddy bear-clutching Sebastian, at Oxford, and then, later, with Sebastian’s sister Julia.

The family is presided over by the understated but quietly manipulative Lady Marchmain � a terrifying portrait � and gradually Charles learns about all the skeletons rattling away in the family’s enormous closets. He also comprehends what role the devout grand dame wants him to play in helping save Sebastian from a life of drink and debauchery.

I know Waugh is best known as a razor sharp satirist, and there are many funny passages and descriptions in this book. (Ryder’s father, for one, is a hoot.) But this is a serious book about big issues: faith, desire, class, loyalty.

I had watched the excellent Granada miniseries, so there were few narrative surprises. But Waugh’s prose lived up to its reputation. It’s sophisticated without being pedantic; lyrical without being fussy.

And although I knew it was coming, the deathbed scene with Lord Marchmain, a garrulous old man who’s lived outside the Catholic faith for decades, had me on the proverbial edge of my seat.

I find it fascinating that Waugh converted to Catholicism later in life. Recent biographies have hinted that he may have been a latent, or not so latent, homosexual. I wonder if these things were related.

Many readers get hung up about Charles’s relationship with Sebastian. Was it sexual? There’s this passage:

Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.

I love that impish word, “naughtiness,� especially when contrasted with the sombre “catalogue of grave sins.�

Certainly there are gay characters in the book, including the fascinating figure of Anthony Blanche, a flamboyant Wildean character who warns Charles early on about the Marchmains (and he’s pretty accurate).

I should add that I read the revised version of the text, with some additions and, apparently, many cuts of florid, overwritten passages.

I’m looking forward to reading more Waugh. Based on this book, I could happily, naughtily, become a convert.]]> 3.99 1945 Brideshead Revisited
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/24
date added: 2016/06/06
shelves: classics, modern-library-100, 1900-1960
review:
Just as Charles Ryder is seduced by the aristocratic Marchmain family in Brideshead Revisited, I was seduced by Evelyn Waugh’s gorgeous prose, elegy to lost youth and dreams, and the glamorous between the wars setting.

The pacing is strange, but it’s hinted at in the subtitle: “The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.� Memories are sporadic, apt to be uncomprehensive, subjective.

Ryder, an officer (“homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless�), is stationed at the magnificent Brideshead estate, and looks back on how his life has intertwined with many of its members � first the fey, teddy bear-clutching Sebastian, at Oxford, and then, later, with Sebastian’s sister Julia.

The family is presided over by the understated but quietly manipulative Lady Marchmain � a terrifying portrait � and gradually Charles learns about all the skeletons rattling away in the family’s enormous closets. He also comprehends what role the devout grand dame wants him to play in helping save Sebastian from a life of drink and debauchery.

I know Waugh is best known as a razor sharp satirist, and there are many funny passages and descriptions in this book. (Ryder’s father, for one, is a hoot.) But this is a serious book about big issues: faith, desire, class, loyalty.

I had watched the excellent Granada miniseries, so there were few narrative surprises. But Waugh’s prose lived up to its reputation. It’s sophisticated without being pedantic; lyrical without being fussy.

And although I knew it was coming, the deathbed scene with Lord Marchmain, a garrulous old man who’s lived outside the Catholic faith for decades, had me on the proverbial edge of my seat.

I find it fascinating that Waugh converted to Catholicism later in life. Recent biographies have hinted that he may have been a latent, or not so latent, homosexual. I wonder if these things were related.

Many readers get hung up about Charles’s relationship with Sebastian. Was it sexual? There’s this passage:

Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence.

I love that impish word, “naughtiness,� especially when contrasted with the sombre “catalogue of grave sins.�

Certainly there are gay characters in the book, including the fascinating figure of Anthony Blanche, a flamboyant Wildean character who warns Charles early on about the Marchmains (and he’s pretty accurate).

I should add that I read the revised version of the text, with some additions and, apparently, many cuts of florid, overwritten passages.

I’m looking forward to reading more Waugh. Based on this book, I could happily, naughtily, become a convert.
]]> <![CDATA[A Moveable Feast (Scribner Classic)]]> 321568 211 Ernest Hemingway 0020519605 Glenn 4

Memoir� or fiction? It doesn’t matter with this amusing classic, a series of poignant and light vignettes about the author’s time as a poor, struggling writer in 1920s Paris.

Hem (as people refer to him in the book) offers up clear, unfussy portraits of everyone from salon-mistress/tastemaker Gertrude Stein and Shakespeare & Co’s generous owner, Sylvia Beach, to a snobbish, forgetful Ford Madox Ford and a nasty Wyndham Lewis, whom he compares to “toe-jam.�

I especially liked the couple of chapters devoted to fellow expat F. Scott Fitzgerald, including one that tells of a disastrous trip the pair took to retrieve Fitzgerald’s broken-down car in Lyon. It’s in this book that Hem praises Fitzgerald’s innate talent, blames Zelda for ruining that talent and recounts the famous anatomy lesson he gave Fitzgerald at the Louvre, prompted by a catty comment about the man’s genitals by Zelda.

There’s lots in here about Hem’s writing practices (he was publishing his first stories and working on The Sun Also Rises), struggling to make rent, gambling, alcohol and what authors he was reading.

An air of bittersweet regret hangs over the passages concerning his first wife, Hadley (pictured above), especially near the end when he confesses to an infidelity (to us, not to her).

The understatement here, and the book’s lyrical concluding passage, make this a warm, enduring portrait of the artist as a young man.

Even if not all of it really happened.
]]> 4.01 1964 A Moveable Feast (Scribner Classic)
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2015/12/14
date added: 2016/01/11
shelves: memoir, non-fiction, nobel-winners, classics
review:


Memoir� or fiction? It doesn’t matter with this amusing classic, a series of poignant and light vignettes about the author’s time as a poor, struggling writer in 1920s Paris.

Hem (as people refer to him in the book) offers up clear, unfussy portraits of everyone from salon-mistress/tastemaker Gertrude Stein and Shakespeare & Co’s generous owner, Sylvia Beach, to a snobbish, forgetful Ford Madox Ford and a nasty Wyndham Lewis, whom he compares to “toe-jam.�

I especially liked the couple of chapters devoted to fellow expat F. Scott Fitzgerald, including one that tells of a disastrous trip the pair took to retrieve Fitzgerald’s broken-down car in Lyon. It’s in this book that Hem praises Fitzgerald’s innate talent, blames Zelda for ruining that talent and recounts the famous anatomy lesson he gave Fitzgerald at the Louvre, prompted by a catty comment about the man’s genitals by Zelda.

There’s lots in here about Hem’s writing practices (he was publishing his first stories and working on The Sun Also Rises), struggling to make rent, gambling, alcohol and what authors he was reading.

An air of bittersweet regret hangs over the passages concerning his first wife, Hadley (pictured above), especially near the end when he confesses to an infidelity (to us, not to her).

The understatement here, and the book’s lyrical concluding passage, make this a warm, enduring portrait of the artist as a young man.

Even if not all of it really happened.

]]> <![CDATA[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)]]> 481509 They open a door and enter a world.

NARNIA . . . the land beyond the wardrobe, the secret country known only to Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy . . . the place where adventure begins.

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first, no one believes her when she tells of her adventures in the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund and then Peter and Susan discover the Magic and meet Aslan, the Great Lion, for themselves. In blink of an eye, their lives are changed forever.

Enter this enchanted world countless times in The Chronicles of Narnia.

This edition is complete with full-color cover and interior art by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.]]> 189 C.S. Lewis 0064409422 Glenn 4 4.32 1950 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1950
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/10/24
shelves: classics, guardian-1000, 1900-1960
review:

]]> Winesburg, Ohio 80176 Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented by his hands. In "Adventure," lonely Alice Hindman impulsively walks naked into the night rain. Threaded through the stories is the viewpoint of George Willard, the young newspaper reporter who, like his creator, stands witness to the dark and despairing dealings of a community of isolated people.]]> 240 Sherwood Anderson 0192839772 Glenn 2 Winesburg? More like Whines-burg...

I know this book of linked short stories about the lonely inhabitants of a small American town in the first decades of the 20th century has been influential, and is considered a classic, but I found it a drag: opaque, vague, obvious, tiresome.

Yeah yeah, I get it: small town = claustrophobic, gossipy, repressive, hypocritical, lonely.

Honestly? I’d suggest flipping through a book of Edward Hopper painting reproductions (see below), since he deals with some similar themes: how people don’t connect, the bleak flatness of existence, how you can feel isolated even among others.





The book’s not very long, but it took me over three months to finish. Not a good sign. And even though some people call it a “coming of age� book about a character named George Willard, a young reporter and perhaps an autobiographical stand-in for the author, I never got any sense of him or what he wanted.

In fact, I don’t remember much about the book at all: another bad sign. There are hints of pedophilia, exhibitionism, reincarnation, lots of premarital sex, a couple of murders, alcoholism. And so much loneliness. (Note: I think all of the above are in the book; I tried leafing through it again for specific details, but got bored even rereading the flat, declarative sentences and their dull, portentous titles like “The Strength Of God,� “The Thinker� and (seriously!) “Loneliness.�)

I liked best a series of stories linked by a couple of characters: one group of four stories tells the history of a prosperous farming family, while another pairing of two tales links a lonely, horny pastor and a schoolteacher he becomes obsessed with and George himself.

Just writing that I'm so bored I can’t... even�. zzzzzz
]]> 3.83 1919 Winesburg, Ohio
author: Sherwood Anderson
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1919
rating: 2
read at: 2015/08/21
date added: 2015/09/08
shelves: modern-library-100, short-stories, classics, 1900-1960
review:
Winesburg? More like Whines-burg...

I know this book of linked short stories about the lonely inhabitants of a small American town in the first decades of the 20th century has been influential, and is considered a classic, but I found it a drag: opaque, vague, obvious, tiresome.

Yeah yeah, I get it: small town = claustrophobic, gossipy, repressive, hypocritical, lonely.

Honestly? I’d suggest flipping through a book of Edward Hopper painting reproductions (see below), since he deals with some similar themes: how people don’t connect, the bleak flatness of existence, how you can feel isolated even among others.





The book’s not very long, but it took me over three months to finish. Not a good sign. And even though some people call it a “coming of age� book about a character named George Willard, a young reporter and perhaps an autobiographical stand-in for the author, I never got any sense of him or what he wanted.

In fact, I don’t remember much about the book at all: another bad sign. There are hints of pedophilia, exhibitionism, reincarnation, lots of premarital sex, a couple of murders, alcoholism. And so much loneliness. (Note: I think all of the above are in the book; I tried leafing through it again for specific details, but got bored even rereading the flat, declarative sentences and their dull, portentous titles like “The Strength Of God,� “The Thinker� and (seriously!) “Loneliness.�)

I liked best a series of stories linked by a couple of characters: one group of four stories tells the history of a prosperous farming family, while another pairing of two tales links a lonely, horny pastor and a schoolteacher he becomes obsessed with and George himself.

Just writing that I'm so bored I can’t... even�. zzzzzz

]]> <![CDATA[The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers]]> 12950 'The apparition had reached the landing half-way up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, where, at the sight of me, it stopped short'

Oscar Wilde called James's chilling The Turn of the Screw 'a most wonderful, lurid poisonous little tale.' It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. Obsession of a more worldly variety lies at the heart of The Aspern Papers, the tale of a literary historian determined to get his hands on some letters written by a great poet-and prepared to use trickery and deception to achieve his aims. Both works show James's mastery of the short story and his genius for creating haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension.

Anthony Curtis's wide-ranging introduction traces the development of the two stories from initial inspiration to finished work and examines their critical reception.]]> 272 Henry James 0141439904 Glenn 5 before-1900, classics 3.79 1898 The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers
author: Henry James
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1898
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/07/01
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daisy Miller (Modern Library Classics)]]> 569347 112 Henry James 0375759662 Glenn 4 before-1900, classics 3.28 1879 Daisy Miller (Modern Library Classics)
author: Henry James
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.28
book published: 1879
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/01
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]> 954469
So begins, in characteristic fashion, one of the greatest American novels. Narrated by a poor, illiterate white boy living in America's dep South before the Civil War, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of Huck's escape from his brutal father and the relationship that grows between him and Jim, the slave who is fleeing from an even more brutal opression. As they journey down the Mississippi their adventures address some of the most profound human conundrums: the prejudices of class, age and colour are pitted against the qualities of hope, courage, and moral character.

Enormously influential in the development of American literature, Huckleberry Finn remains a controversial novel at the centre of impassioned debate. This edition discusses all the current issues and the evolution of Mark Twain's penetrating genius.
(back cover)]]> 284 Mark Twain 0192824414 Glenn 5 Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn before? Was it Twain’s copious use of the N word? (I vaguely recall a primary school teacher abruptly halting a class read-aloud session, perhaps because of that.) Was it the air of earnest solemnity that surrounds so-called classics? Sheer laziness?

No matter. I’ve read it now, and I’ll never be the same again. Hemingway was right when he said (and I’m paraphrasing) all American literature comes from Huck Finn. While it’d be entertaining to read as a kid, it’s even more rewarding to approach as an adult.

Savour that wonderful opening paragraph (and tell me you can't hear Holden Caulfield in the cadences):

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly � Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is � and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.


Everything to come is in those opening lines, penned in that distinct, nearly illiterate yet crudely poetic voice. You get a sense of Huck’s humility (compared to Tom Sawyer’s braggadocio); his intelligence; a cute postmodern nod to the author; the idea that storytelling contains “stretchers� but can also tell “the truth�; and the fact that everyone lies, including Huck. Especially Huck. He gets into so many tight spots that part of the joy is wondering how he’ll get out of them.

The outlines of the plot should be familiar: Huck, a scrappy, barely literate boy, flees his abusive, alcoholic father by faking his death and travelling the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers with Jim, an escaped slave, on a raft.

Huck's gradual awakening to Jim's plight is subtle and touching, never sentimental. In a sense the book chronicles his growing conscience. And the colourful characters he and Jim meet and the adventures they have add up to a fascinating, at times disturbing look at a conflicted, pre-Civil War nation.

We meet a Hatfields vs. McCoys type situation; a group of rapscallions who put on a vaudeville-style act and try to fleece rubes; a scene of desperation and danger on a collapsed boat. We witness greed, anger and most of the other deadly sins � all from a little raft on the Mississipi. And before the midway point, we see the toll that a cruel joke can have on someone’s feelings.

To a contemporary reader, some of the humour can feel a little forced, and the gags do get repetitive, particularly when Huck’s savvier, better-read friend Tom enters the scene.

And then comes a passage like this:

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sun-shiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering � spirits that's been dead ever so many years � and you always think they're talking about YOU.


Wow. You can see, hear and feel what he's describing. Hard to believe this was written more than 150 years ago.

In the book's closing pages, Huck tells us this:

If I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a-going to no more.


Well, gosh, Huck, it war worth all yer trouble. We’re darn glad you dunnit. Yessir.]]> 3.72 1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
author: Mark Twain
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1884
rating: 5
read at: 2015/02/09
date added: 2015/06/19
shelves: before-1900, classics, favorites, guardian-1000
review:
Why have I never read Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn before? Was it Twain’s copious use of the N word? (I vaguely recall a primary school teacher abruptly halting a class read-aloud session, perhaps because of that.) Was it the air of earnest solemnity that surrounds so-called classics? Sheer laziness?

No matter. I’ve read it now, and I’ll never be the same again. Hemingway was right when he said (and I’m paraphrasing) all American literature comes from Huck Finn. While it’d be entertaining to read as a kid, it’s even more rewarding to approach as an adult.

Savour that wonderful opening paragraph (and tell me you can't hear Holden Caulfield in the cadences):

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly � Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is � and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.


Everything to come is in those opening lines, penned in that distinct, nearly illiterate yet crudely poetic voice. You get a sense of Huck’s humility (compared to Tom Sawyer’s braggadocio); his intelligence; a cute postmodern nod to the author; the idea that storytelling contains “stretchers� but can also tell “the truth�; and the fact that everyone lies, including Huck. Especially Huck. He gets into so many tight spots that part of the joy is wondering how he’ll get out of them.

The outlines of the plot should be familiar: Huck, a scrappy, barely literate boy, flees his abusive, alcoholic father by faking his death and travelling the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers with Jim, an escaped slave, on a raft.

Huck's gradual awakening to Jim's plight is subtle and touching, never sentimental. In a sense the book chronicles his growing conscience. And the colourful characters he and Jim meet and the adventures they have add up to a fascinating, at times disturbing look at a conflicted, pre-Civil War nation.

We meet a Hatfields vs. McCoys type situation; a group of rapscallions who put on a vaudeville-style act and try to fleece rubes; a scene of desperation and danger on a collapsed boat. We witness greed, anger and most of the other deadly sins � all from a little raft on the Mississipi. And before the midway point, we see the toll that a cruel joke can have on someone’s feelings.

To a contemporary reader, some of the humour can feel a little forced, and the gags do get repetitive, particularly when Huck’s savvier, better-read friend Tom enters the scene.

And then comes a passage like this:

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sun-shiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering � spirits that's been dead ever so many years � and you always think they're talking about YOU.


Wow. You can see, hear and feel what he's describing. Hard to believe this was written more than 150 years ago.

In the book's closing pages, Huck tells us this:

If I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a-going to no more.


Well, gosh, Huck, it war worth all yer trouble. We’re darn glad you dunnit. Yessir.
]]> My Ăntonia 157975 320 Willa Cather 0140187642 Glenn 5

My rating for My Ăntonia? 5 stars shining brightly in the cloudless Nebraska sky, so vividly and lovingly evoked by Willa Cather in this elegiac novel about farmers and immigrant settlers making lives for themselves in the harsh, beautiful, bountiful prairies.

(Sorry about that graceless run-on incomplete sentence. Cather, with her clear, descriptive, unpretentious prose, would never commit such a sin.)

Some people and places are forever etched in our memories. Can you recall the landscapes of your childhood? The fields or sidewalks where you'd play? Do you have friends who � even if you see them decades later � you still remember as young? Have you ever seen a sparkle in a child’s eye that reminds you of his or her parent?

Cather makes you think of all that. And much more.

On the surface, it’s the tale of Jim Burden’s friendship/quasi-obsession with Ăntonia (pronounced Anton-ee-ah) Schimerda, the oldest child of a Bohemian (Czech) immigrant family that moves to a neighbouring farm that’s really a hole in the ground.

Through Jim’s eyes, in a series of episodes, we follow Ăntonia, from scrappy farm helper to hard-working “hired girlâ€� in town (there was a tradition for immigrant girls to work in town to send money to their families) to restless charismatic young woman with a talent for dance toâ€� well, I don’t want to spoil the plot, such as it is.

The book provides a fascinating look at various European immigrant communities in that era. Sometimes a scene will consist of a character simply telling a story to entertain others (remember, this was a time before TV and radio). Cather, a lesbian who never married, also offers up a glimpse into the lives of strong, determined women in a hardscrabble world dominated by men.

A gentle, nostalgic feeling suffuses the book, and it’s full of love and affection for the industry and ethos of a bygone era. It’s not all pleasant, however. There’s suicide, cheating, death by wild animals, attempted rape, and lots and lots of mournful longing � as symbolized by the lonesome chugging of a train.

Here's a passage, from early on in the book:

I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.


Simple, unfussy, evocative. I’ve never been to Nebraska. But Cather’s powers of description are so strong, I now feel like I have. And I look forward to a repeat visit in her other prairie books, O Pioneers! and The Song Of The Lark.
]]> 3.90 1918 My Ăntonia
author: Willa Cather
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1918
rating: 5
read at: 2015/03/07
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, favorites, guardian-1000
review:


My rating for My Ăntonia? 5 stars shining brightly in the cloudless Nebraska sky, so vividly and lovingly evoked by Willa Cather in this elegiac novel about farmers and immigrant settlers making lives for themselves in the harsh, beautiful, bountiful prairies.

(Sorry about that graceless run-on incomplete sentence. Cather, with her clear, descriptive, unpretentious prose, would never commit such a sin.)

Some people and places are forever etched in our memories. Can you recall the landscapes of your childhood? The fields or sidewalks where you'd play? Do you have friends who � even if you see them decades later � you still remember as young? Have you ever seen a sparkle in a child’s eye that reminds you of his or her parent?

Cather makes you think of all that. And much more.

On the surface, it’s the tale of Jim Burden’s friendship/quasi-obsession with Ăntonia (pronounced Anton-ee-ah) Schimerda, the oldest child of a Bohemian (Czech) immigrant family that moves to a neighbouring farm that’s really a hole in the ground.

Through Jim’s eyes, in a series of episodes, we follow Ăntonia, from scrappy farm helper to hard-working “hired girlâ€� in town (there was a tradition for immigrant girls to work in town to send money to their families) to restless charismatic young woman with a talent for dance toâ€� well, I don’t want to spoil the plot, such as it is.

The book provides a fascinating look at various European immigrant communities in that era. Sometimes a scene will consist of a character simply telling a story to entertain others (remember, this was a time before TV and radio). Cather, a lesbian who never married, also offers up a glimpse into the lives of strong, determined women in a hardscrabble world dominated by men.

A gentle, nostalgic feeling suffuses the book, and it’s full of love and affection for the industry and ethos of a bygone era. It’s not all pleasant, however. There’s suicide, cheating, death by wild animals, attempted rape, and lots and lots of mournful longing � as symbolized by the lonesome chugging of a train.

Here's a passage, from early on in the book:

I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.


Simple, unfussy, evocative. I’ve never been to Nebraska. But Cather’s powers of description are so strong, I now feel like I have. And I look forward to a repeat visit in her other prairie books, O Pioneers! and The Song Of The Lark.

]]> Persuasion 31693 'She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older'

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

In her introduction, Gillian Beer discusses Austen’s portrayal of the double-edged nature of persuasion and the clash between old and new worlds. This edition also includes a new chronology and full textual notes.]]> 250 Jane Austen 0141439688 Glenn 4
Jane Austen’s last completed novel is briskly plotted, contains some biting satire � especially in the portrait of Anne’s vain father and frivolous sisters � and has a lovely, bittersweet theme about second chances. The setting is especially evocative, with one of the book’s most striking scenes occurring on the famous, wind-swept Cobb in Lyme. There’s lots of fascinating detail about navy life, too.

The book was published posthumously after Austen’s death at 41; the title isn’t even hers (she was considering calling it The Elliots). So some people suggest the novel lacks the polish of her earlier books. Perhaps.

But Anne is one of Austen’s most sympathetic heroines, and there’s a maturity about the novel that is deeply satisfying. It also contains one of the best letter-writing scenes since Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
]]> 4.08 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1817
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/08
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:
Years after being persuaded by a close friend to break off an engagement with a non-wealthy man from an undistinguished family, the no-longer-young Anne Elliot meets that same man again. He’s now rich, single and looking for a wife � but he’s decidedly not interested in Anne.

Jane Austen’s last completed novel is briskly plotted, contains some biting satire � especially in the portrait of Anne’s vain father and frivolous sisters � and has a lovely, bittersweet theme about second chances. The setting is especially evocative, with one of the book’s most striking scenes occurring on the famous, wind-swept Cobb in Lyme. There’s lots of fascinating detail about navy life, too.

The book was published posthumously after Austen’s death at 41; the title isn’t even hers (she was considering calling it The Elliots). So some people suggest the novel lacks the polish of her earlier books. Perhaps.

But Anne is one of Austen’s most sympathetic heroines, and there’s a maturity about the novel that is deeply satisfying. It also contains one of the best letter-writing scenes since Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

]]> The Age of Innocence 113312
Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingénue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence.

Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty.]]> 330 Edith Wharton Glenn 5
Newland Archer, a young lawyer, is engaged to be married to May Welland, a sweet but (he soon comes to realize) rather limited girl. Their two families are prominent ones in 1870s Manhattan so everything is as it should be. And then Archer meets Countess Ellen Olenska, a childhood sweetheart and May's cousin, who is back in NYC after fleeing a disastrous marriage in Europe. She is unconventional, beautiful, and shares Newland's interest in art and books. Can you guess what happens?

Wharton knows everything about this Gilded Age world. The prose is subtle and elegant yet so sharply observed; the central characters live and breathe and have a feeling of mystery; the sense of place is vivid; the plotting and structure are tight.

And although it's set 150 years ago, the situations are universal. When the smitten Newland sees Ellen after a long time he exclaims: "Each time you happen to me all over again," which gave me shivers because it sounds so contemporary.

The final chapter, in particular, is a model of economy: decades flash by showing changing mores, and a poignant sense of regret and acceptance suffuses everything. I was sobbing during the final pages.

It took me a while to get used to all the secondary characters and their foibles. And of course not all of that era's NYC population is represented. But there are fascinating insights into class and hierarchy and the role of women in this unique world.

The Age Of Innocence is must reading, especially if you're engaged to be married. I will definitely revisit it and read Wharton's other novels.]]> 4.04 1920 The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1920
rating: 5
read at: 2014/02/09
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: pulitzer-winners, favorites, classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:
A masterpiece.

Newland Archer, a young lawyer, is engaged to be married to May Welland, a sweet but (he soon comes to realize) rather limited girl. Their two families are prominent ones in 1870s Manhattan so everything is as it should be. And then Archer meets Countess Ellen Olenska, a childhood sweetheart and May's cousin, who is back in NYC after fleeing a disastrous marriage in Europe. She is unconventional, beautiful, and shares Newland's interest in art and books. Can you guess what happens?

Wharton knows everything about this Gilded Age world. The prose is subtle and elegant yet so sharply observed; the central characters live and breathe and have a feeling of mystery; the sense of place is vivid; the plotting and structure are tight.

And although it's set 150 years ago, the situations are universal. When the smitten Newland sees Ellen after a long time he exclaims: "Each time you happen to me all over again," which gave me shivers because it sounds so contemporary.

The final chapter, in particular, is a model of economy: decades flash by showing changing mores, and a poignant sense of regret and acceptance suffuses everything. I was sobbing during the final pages.

It took me a while to get used to all the secondary characters and their foibles. And of course not all of that era's NYC population is represented. But there are fascinating insights into class and hierarchy and the role of women in this unique world.

The Age Of Innocence is must reading, especially if you're engaged to be married. I will definitely revisit it and read Wharton's other novels.
]]> Gulliver’s Travels 7733 A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire - in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 306 Jonathan Swift 0141439491 Glenn 5 3.59 1726 Gulliver’s Travels
author: Jonathan Swift
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1726
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> The Mayor of Casterbridge 56759 Librarian note: The same ISBN is now being used here with a new cover.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled â€A Story of a Man of Characterâ€�, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.]]> 393 Thomas Hardy Glenn 4 3.85 1886 The Mayor of Casterbridge
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1886
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> The Rainbow 1237122 The Rainbow is the epic story of three generations of the Brangwens, a Midlands family. A visionary novel, considered to be one of Lawrence's finest, it explores the complex sexual and psychological relationships between men and women in an increasingly industrialized world. "Lives are separate, but life is continuous - it continues in the fresh start by the separate life in each generation," wrote F.R. Leavis. "No work, I think, has presented this perception as an imaginatively realized truth more compellingly than The Rainbow."]]> 528 D.H. Lawrence 0375759654 Glenn 4 3.73 1915 The Rainbow
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Far From the Madding Crowd 31463 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439655

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.]]> 433 Thomas Hardy Glenn 5 3.96 1874 Far From the Madding Crowd
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1874
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Animal Farm 831431 alternate cover for ISBN 0140008381/9780140008388

First published in 1945, Animal Farm has become the classic political fable of the twentieth century. Adding his own brand of poignancy and wit, George Orwell tells the story of a revolution among animals of a farm, and how idealism was betrayed by power, corruption and lies.

]]> 120 George Orwell Glenn 4 4.14 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Tess of the D’Urbervilles 32261 here and here.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her â€cousinâ€� Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.]]> 518 Thomas Hardy Glenn 5 3.83 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1891
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Fathers and Sons 6094772 Fathers and Sons explores the ageless conflict between generations through a period in Russian history when a new generation of revolutionary intellectuals threatened the state. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian by Peter Carson, with an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett and an afterword by Tatyana Tolstaya.

Returning home after years away at university, Arkady is proud to introduce his clever friend Bazarov to his father and uncle. But their guest soon stirs up unrest on the quiet country estate - his outspoken nihilist views and his scathing criticisms of the older men expose the growing distance between Arkady and his father. And when Bazarov visits his own doting but old-fashioned parents, his disdainful rejection of traditional Russian life causes even further distress. In Fathers and Sons, Turgeneve created a beautifully-drawn and highly influential portrayal of the clash between generations, at a time just before the end of serfdom, when the refined yet vanishing landowning class was being overturned by a brash new breed that strove to change the world.

Peter Carson's elegant, naturalistic new translation brings Turgenev's masterpiece to life for a new generation of readers. In her introduction, Rosamund Bartlett discusses the novel's subtle characterisation and the immense social changes that took place in the 1850s Russia of Fathers and Sons. This edition also includes a chronology, suggested further reading and notes.

If you enjoyed Fathers and Sons, you might like Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

'One of the first Russian novels to be translated for a wider European audience. It is a difficult art: in this superb new version, Peter Carson has succeeded splendidly' Michael Binyon, The Times

'If you want to get as close as an English reader can to enjoying Turgenev, Carson is probably the best'
Donald Rayfield, The Times Literary Supplement]]> 200 Ivan Turgenev 014144133X Glenn 5 3.98 1862 Fathers and Sons
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1862
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, not-usa-can-uk, before-1900, guardian-1000
review:

]]> As I Lay Dying 609037 250 William Faulkner 0394702549 Glenn 5 3.93 1930 As I Lay Dying
author: William Faulkner
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1930
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, nobel-winners, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> To the Lighthouse 11851733
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 192 Virginia Woolf Glenn 5 3.67 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1927
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Frankenstein 18490 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439471

'Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ...'

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.]]> 288 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Glenn 5 3.77 1818 Frankenstein
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1818
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, before-1900, guardian-1000
review:

]]> A Passage to India 280681 362 E.M. Forster 0140432582 Glenn 5 3.62 1924 A Passage to India
author: E.M. Forster
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Glenn 5 4.26 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, favorites, not-usa-can-uk, before-1900, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Women in Love 332435 The Rainbow, Women in Love follows the tumultuous lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Turning his keen eye on the nature of love, commitment, passion, and marriage, Lawrence gives us the stories of two intelligent, incisive, and observant women, whose temperamental differences spark an ongoing debate regarding their society and their inner lives. The two very different sisters pursue thrilling, torrid affairs; but their quest for more mature emotional relationships uncovers some startling information about tehir lvoers and themselves.]]> 541 D.H. Lawrence 0140014853 Glenn 5 3.55 1920 Women in Love
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1920
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barchester Towers (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #2)]]> 125321
Barchester Towers is one of the best-loved novels in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which captured nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterization. It is the second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.]]> 418 Anthony Trollope 1406923044 Glenn 5 4.03 1857 Barchester Towers (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #2)
author: Anthony Trollope
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1857
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]> 2918398 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to fully come into themselves.]]> 253 James Joyce 0140014772 Glenn 4 3.65 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
author: James Joyce
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1916
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> The Time Machine 2494 'I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised'

When a Victorian scientist propels himself in the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity - the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist's time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era.

The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time travel. Part of a brand-new Penguin series of H.G. Wells' works, this edition includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a further reading list and detailed notes. Marina Warner's introduction considers Wells' development of the 'scientific romance' and places the novel in the context of its times.]]> 104 H.G. Wells 0141439971 Glenn 4 3.63 1895 The Time Machine
author: H.G. Wells
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Sons and Lovers 2497494
The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.]]> 511 D.H. Lawrence 0140006680 Glenn 5 3.66 1913 Sons and Lovers
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1913
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 175254 Alternative covers for this ISBN can be found here and here.

During the decade when Napoleon was transforming Europe, Jane Austen wrote this novel in which the main events are that a man changes his manners and a young lady her mind.

Much has been said of the light and sparkling side of Pride and Prejudice -- the delicious social comedy, the unerring dialogue, the satisfying love stories and its enchanting and spirited heroine. None the less, the novel is also about deeper issues in which Jane Austen demonstrates her belief that the truly civilized being maintains a proper balance between reason and energy. As Tony Tanner remarks in his stimulating introduction: 'Since to stress one at the expense of the other can either way mean loss, both to self and society, the picture of achieved congruence between them offered in Pride and Prejudice is of unfading relevance. It is perhaps no wonder that it has also proved capable of giving eternal delight.'
--back cover]]> 399 Jane Austen 0140430725 Glenn 5 4.34 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, favorites, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Oliver Twist 18254
The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

This Penguin Classics edition of Oliver Twist is the first critical edition to faithfully reproduce the text as its earliest readers would have encountered it from its serialisation in Bentley's Miscellany, and includes an introduction by Philip Horne, a glossary of Victorian thieves' slang, a chronology of Dickens's life, a map of contemporary London and all of George Cruikshank's original illustrations.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 608 Charles Dickens Glenn 4 3.88 1838 Oliver Twist
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1838
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, guardian-1000
review:

]]> The Catcher in the Rye 518803 214 J.D. Salinger 0553250256 Glenn 5 3.80 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, 1900-1960, modern-library-100, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Jane Eyre 11016 A newer edition is here. An older one can be found here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davies in Penguin Classics.

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 578 Charlotte Brontë Glenn 5 4.23 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: before-1900, classics, favorites, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Bleak House 526813
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce� is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case started but many different individuals have found their fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and disappointments with the proceedings. But while the intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by lawyers, other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that involve heartbreak, lost children, blackmail and murder.

The fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all his passion, brilliance, and narrative verve to this huge novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational lawsuit—and through it, he achieved, at age 41, a stature almost Shakespearean.]]> 1032 Charles Dickens 0679405682 Glenn 5 4.20 1853 Bleak House
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1853
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: classics, before-1900, guardian-1000
review:

]]> Lord of the Flies 13482763 243 William Golding Glenn 5 3.96 1954 Lord of the Flies
author: William Golding
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, modern-library-100, nobel-winners, guardian-1000
review:
It's been way too long since I read this in high school. Obviously I need to reread it, especially since I picked up a replica of the book's first U.S. edition.
]]> This Side of Paradise 845089 268 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0141185570 Glenn 4 1900-1960, classics An Apprentice Work, With Flashes Of Genius



This Side Of Paradise was Fitzgerald’s first novel, the one that made him, at age 23, a literary star, the unofficial chronicler of the flapper era. It was such a success that his ex-girlfriend, Zelda Sayre, agreed to marry him. And we know how that turned out.

Autobiographical protagonist Amory Blaine is insufferably narcissistic and egotistical. Fitzgerald was clearly aware of this, and there’s more than a bit of satire to his portrait of the vain golden boy; he titled an earlier version The Romantic Egotist. Structurally, the book is all over the place, a collection of vignettes, impressions, poems� there’s even something resembling a one-act play near the end. WWI is oddly glossed over in an interlude.

It’s a coming of age novel with an experimental feel; at one point Fitzgerald refers to Joyce’s A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, and you can sense its influence, especially in the second half.

The book covers Amory’s comfortable midwest childhood, his Princeton years and the restless post-war Jazz Age generation. Throughout there’s the search for all those things you rhapsodize about when you’re very young: love, beauty, spirituality, fulfillment. The narrator occasionally drones on, telling us stuff, like some pedantic teaching assistant outlining a course.

But while the book is clearly, at times painfully, an apprentice work, it shows a ton of potential; you can see why legendary editor Maxwell Perkins agreed to publish it, despite the protests of his less enthusiastic colleagues at Scribner’s.

The book has an undeniable vitality, a spark of originality and the occasional flash of genius. You feel that Fitzgerald is attempting to capture his generation, one unshackling itself from pre-war mores. What it needs is a Nick Carraway figure, an outsider among the privileged to comment on the action. Amory is living in the eye of his own dramatic hurricane, and it’s hard to get a balanced point of view.

What’s eerie, though, is how many prescient passages there are. Like this one:

“Amory, you’re young. I’m young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people like Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you’ve got a lot of knocks coming to you.�


Indeed he does.

Also included is one post-breakup bender that foreshadows the author’s later alcoholism. An elegiac feeling suffuses the book, especially near the end. When Amory revisits Princeton after the war, full of early disillusion, Fitzgerald gives us this stunning passage.


Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light � and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a reverie of long days and nights, destined finally to go out into the dirty grey turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all God’s dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken�


Fitzgerald's obvious lyrical gift is on display, but there’s also a knowledge of the currents and rhythms of life that, even at so young an age, he intuitively grasped.

In short: there’s real artistry.
]]> 3.53 1920 This Side of Paradise
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1920
rating: 4
read at: 2015/04/11
date added: 2015/04/29
shelves: 1900-1960, classics
review:
An Apprentice Work, With Flashes Of Genius



This Side Of Paradise was Fitzgerald’s first novel, the one that made him, at age 23, a literary star, the unofficial chronicler of the flapper era. It was such a success that his ex-girlfriend, Zelda Sayre, agreed to marry him. And we know how that turned out.

Autobiographical protagonist Amory Blaine is insufferably narcissistic and egotistical. Fitzgerald was clearly aware of this, and there’s more than a bit of satire to his portrait of the vain golden boy; he titled an earlier version The Romantic Egotist. Structurally, the book is all over the place, a collection of vignettes, impressions, poems� there’s even something resembling a one-act play near the end. WWI is oddly glossed over in an interlude.

It’s a coming of age novel with an experimental feel; at one point Fitzgerald refers to Joyce’s A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, and you can sense its influence, especially in the second half.

The book covers Amory’s comfortable midwest childhood, his Princeton years and the restless post-war Jazz Age generation. Throughout there’s the search for all those things you rhapsodize about when you’re very young: love, beauty, spirituality, fulfillment. The narrator occasionally drones on, telling us stuff, like some pedantic teaching assistant outlining a course.

But while the book is clearly, at times painfully, an apprentice work, it shows a ton of potential; you can see why legendary editor Maxwell Perkins agreed to publish it, despite the protests of his less enthusiastic colleagues at Scribner’s.

The book has an undeniable vitality, a spark of originality and the occasional flash of genius. You feel that Fitzgerald is attempting to capture his generation, one unshackling itself from pre-war mores. What it needs is a Nick Carraway figure, an outsider among the privileged to comment on the action. Amory is living in the eye of his own dramatic hurricane, and it’s hard to get a balanced point of view.

What’s eerie, though, is how many prescient passages there are. Like this one:

“Amory, you’re young. I’m young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people like Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you’ve got a lot of knocks coming to you.�


Indeed he does.

Also included is one post-breakup bender that foreshadows the author’s later alcoholism. An elegiac feeling suffuses the book, especially near the end. When Amory revisits Princeton after the war, full of early disillusion, Fitzgerald gives us this stunning passage.


Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light � and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a reverie of long days and nights, destined finally to go out into the dirty grey turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all God’s dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken�


Fitzgerald's obvious lyrical gift is on display, but there’s also a knowledge of the currents and rhythms of life that, even at so young an age, he intuitively grasped.

In short: there’s real artistry.

]]> Childhood, Boyhood, Youth 3136479
Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy,  Childhood; Boyhood; Youth , in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and color. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal  War and Peace  and  Anna Karenina , and in the other great works of Tolstoy's maturity. Prizewinning translator Judson Rosengrant has stunningly realized Tolstoy's voice in English prose to make this new Penguin Classics edition of  Childhood; Boyhood; Youth  the "definitive translation. . . in this generation" (Janet Fitch). 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 431 Leo Tolstoy 0140449922 Glenn 4 3.95 1886 Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1886
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/02/08
shelves: classics, not-usa-can-uk, before-1900
review:

]]> David Copperfield 58696 882 Charles Dickens Glenn 5 before-1900, classics 4.02 1850 David Copperfield
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1850
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/02/07
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:

]]> The Return of the Native 32650 426 Thomas Hardy 037575718X Glenn 4 before-1900, classics 3.87 1878 The Return of the Native
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/02/07
shelves: before-1900, classics
review:

]]> In Our Time 1240571 THIS COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES AND VIGNETTES MARKED ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S AMERICAN DEBUT AND MADE HIM FAMOUS When In Our Time was published in 1925, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," "The Three Day Blow," and "The Battler," and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway a lean, tough prose -- enlivened by an car for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart. Now recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides a key to Hemingway's later works.]]> 156 Ernest Hemingway 0684174707 Glenn 5 3.82 1924 In Our Time
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/02/07
shelves: 1900-1960, classics, nobel-winners, short-stories
review:

]]>