About stories of all kinds
136 years ago this week, author Louisa May Alcott died. Born November 29, 1832, Alcott wrote the beloved Little Women, sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys, as well as numerous other novels and short stories. Among these, a dramatic Faustian tale titled A Modern Mephistopheles, which was her inspiration for another book with similar themes,… Continue reading “being what he was”
A well-known novel of the American south, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a challenging look at the history of race-relations and the process of a child coming to terms with another side of her familiar, safe community of Maycomb. Scout, her older brother Jem, and their friend Dill play around at constructing a… Continue reading One-Shot Finch: To Kill a Mockingbird
...a mysterious history is put forth by the lawyer Lightwood about the Harmon family and its fortune... No sooner has the tale been told than Lightwood is called upon to attend a body... identified as the long lost heir to that very same family's fortune.
Donna Tartt [has an] incredibly beautiful, smooth, flowing writing style that simply sings to your senses as you read along. So much so, it disguises the fact that there is actually very little happening in the plot, character beats, or anything else besides.
In my absence from the blog for the better part of three months, I missed the last Classics Club Spin (#35) and don't want to let another one go by without participating. I have worked through a few titles on my list in the meantime and their reviews are on the docket... if I can… Continue reading Classics Club Spin #36
I find myself checked constantly by thoughts of "but what about so-and-so? wouldn't they have something to say about it? what about my responsibilities?" These considerations are my "fetters of duty" and and "regulations of honour."
It is... a perfect candidate for the label of "dark academia" with its artist main characters, themes of guilt, crime, and decay threaded with beauty and tainted love.
It impressed me at times as a dark mirror to some of P.G. Wodehouse's writings, for its comedy and caricature, though Wodehouse tends to be more forgiving in outlook, whereas Waugh does not shy away from brutal consequences.
As much as I’m treating this as a title “trend,” having found a clustering of similarly titled works throughout the last couple decades or so, it is by no means an exclusively modern phenomenon. The titling of classic works frequently followed a similar formula—for instance, the full title of the Dickens novel commonly called Nicholas… Continue reading Titles on Trend: Another Seven or Eight (or Nine) Books of Lives and Deaths and Full Names
The House of Mirth is a multi-faceted, in-depth novelization of the difficulty of unmarried young women without a fortune who are nevertheless members of a certain upper-class social circle, and the lengths they must go to maintain their position...
Fictitiously Yours 