One of my favorite discoveries from last year's Victober is this short story of the witch hunts that plagued early America. It's chilling and realistic in the way it treats all the parties concerned. I was impressed that Gaskell knew so much and created such a sad and compelling story. ....there was much to tell …
Alexander’s Bridge (1912), Willa Cather
"Remembering Hilda as she used to be, was doubtless more satisfactory than seeing her as she must be now—and, after all, Alexander asked himself, what was it but his own young years that he was remembering?" Willa Cather's first novel is a sobering view on the inability to let go of the old and live …
A Walk With Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love and Faith, Lori Smith (2007)
I hope that somehow this proximity to Jane’s life will help me understand my own. This was the perfect nonfiction book to cap the 250th celebration of Jane Austen's birth and my re-reading of her various books, short stories and juvenilia. The Premise Lori Smith is at a painful and difficult time in her life. …
The Christmas Banquet, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
Who is this impassive man? We seem to know him well, here in our city, and know nothing of him but what is credible and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton–perhaps that may solve the riddle! This …
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Happy 250th, Jane!
I posted a story on Instagram today about Sense and Sensibility being my comfort book. I didn't realize this is the date of Jane Austen's 250th birthday. Then I saw all the tributes and want to share mine. If Jane Austen knew when she started writing as a young girl that not only would she …
Welcome to my Blog!
Hello and welcome to my book blog! I am an eclectic reader of the classics in literature, religion, and natural history. Old books are like a time machine and I love the feeling of being dropped into the past as words fill me with sights and sounds, of thoughts and sensibility, of interiors, food, clothing, …
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne (1873)
I thoroughly enjoyed the escapades of Phileas Fogg and his trip around the world as he tried to settle a wager of completing his trip in 80 days. With his loyal manservant, Passepartout we are treated to an exciting, armchair-traveling journey that spans the globe, cultures, modes of transportation, class and race from the perspective …
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The Touchstone, Edith Wharton (1900)
The Touchstone sets up a moral dilemma for Stephen Glennard, whose career is floundering making it impossible to marry the woman he loves. He is resentful of his contemporaries who always find a place at someone’s dinner table or invitation to the opera, while he has to calculate cab fares, clothing and food to make …
My Antonia, Willa Cather (1918)
More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one’s brain. Willa Cather is an incredible nature writer. She loses …
The Maracot Deep, Arthur Conan Doyle (1929)
This is a surprising novel by an author I never realized had Jules Verne aspirations. The Maracot Deep by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a fateful ocean adventure of the discovery of the lost civilization of Atlantis by three modern men whose research vessel has detached from their ship. The story is mostly told in …
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Classic Laurie 