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. …
Author: Laurie
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 …
Continue reading The Christmas Banquet, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
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 …
Continue reading Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne (1873)
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 …
Continue reading The Maracot Deep, Arthur Conan Doyle (1929)
Persuasion, Jane Austen (1817)
I didn’t expect to go from Mansfield Park to Persuasion, but it turns out I wasn’t ready to leave the Austen universe. Persuasion was the only book I hadn’t read and it was a pleasure to get to know Anne Elliot and the characters that make up her world. I found the premise to be …
Life with Father, Clarence Day, Jr. (1935)
This is an intimate study of the dynamics of a New York City family in the late 19th century. Clarence Day, Jr., the eldest of three boys, writes descriptively and honestly about his parents, especially the control of his father-his word is law and that is it. However, his mother Vinnie is not a meek …
The Marne: A Tale of War, Edith Wharton (1918)
“Whither thou goest will I go, thy people shall be my people…” Yes, France was the Naomi-country that had but to beckon, and her children rose and came. Edith Wharton had been living in France for many years when WWI began. Like many in Europe, Wharton was frustrated and angry at America’s reluctance to enter …
Continue reading The Marne: A Tale of War, Edith Wharton (1918)
Classic Laurie 