The Bostonians
I read The Bostonians coming fresh off of reading Cloud Cuckoo Land and I am a bit astonished at the contrast. The latter is a contemporary novel with an obvious underlying ethos which I am predominantly in line with, but...
19c
The Maine Woods
The Turn Of The Shrew
Sense And Sensibility
In an uncontroversial opinion, I think Jane Austen is quite good.
A Christmas Carol
A classic that stands the test of time! Tiny Tim did not die and Scrooge was a doofus but he bought a goose so it is all good.
Great Expectations
Dickens for me stands a bit a part as a master of the weave of a plot. Emblematic and mostly straightforward characters bounce around to surprising and delightful ends. I’m a bit concerned for the future of Dickens though -...
Treasure Island
For a boy named Hawkins growing up by the (fresh, decidedly not pirate-infested) water, Treasure Island was a formative and exciting read about a boy named Hawkins traveling the world, finding pirates and treasure and friends. Rereading it to get...
The Three Muskateers
I can’t really decide whether Dumas is great without being good, or instead good without being great - I suppose it depends on the point of view. He is unquestionably amazing, astonishing, a grandfather of Adventure as a genre. Sure...
Middlemarch
Florid prose and a large cast of well-rounded characters with an interplay of politics, politicking, ethics and romance that just doesn’t quite hit the spot for me, in the end. I mean I enjoyed it, it is by any account...
The Brothers Karamazov
I got into, started studying and eventually made a career out of computer programming because first I wanted to make clouds. The wispy vortices, plastic and mutable at a timescale just longer than that which is immediately perceptible, seemed the...