You come and see me among flowers and pictures, and think me mysterious, romantic, and all the rest of it. Being yourself very inexperienced and very emotional, you go home and invent a story about me, and now you can’t separate me from the person you’ve imagined me to be. You call that, I suppose, …
Author: Laurie
Daisy Miller, Henry James (1878)
“What has she been doing?”“Everything that is not done here. Flirting with any man she could pick up; sitting in corners with mysterious Italians; dancing all the evening with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven o’clock at night.” Published in 1878, Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s early works. It foreshadows his reputation …
Therese Raquin, Emile Zola (1867)
This life of alternating excitement and calm went on for eight months. The lovers lived in perfect bliss. Thérèse was no longer bored, and had nothing left to wish for; Laurent sated, coddled, heavier than ever, had only one fear, that this delectable existence might come to an end. The premise of Émile Zola’s, Thérèse …
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (1950)
None of the children knew who Aslan was. At [his name] each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy …
Continue reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (1950)
The Grey King, Susan Cooper (1975)
“It is because you are not properly human, but one of the Old Ones of the Light put here to hold back the terrible power of the Dark. You are the last of that circle to be born on earth. And I have been waiting for you.” One of the bonuses of joining the book …
Madame de Treymes, Edith Wharton (1907)
And Madame de Treymes has left her husband? Ah, no, poor creature: they don’t leave their husbands—they can’t. Madame de Treymes, published in 1907, is Wharton’s first work after The House of Mirth. As one of the themes in most of her fiction, this novella is very much concerned with the male/female dynamic around marriage. …
Mary Oliver, September 10, 1935-January 17, 2019
When it’s over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, talking the world into my arms.When it’s over, I don’t want to wonderIf I have made of my life something particular, and real.I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,Or full of argument.I don’t want …
Continue reading Mary Oliver, September 10, 1935-January 17, 2019
Villette, Charlotte Bronte (1853)
I had nothing to lose. Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past forbade return. If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer? If I died far away from—home, I was going to say, but I had no home—from England, then, who would weep? Jane Eyre is one of …
The Magician’s Nephew, CS Lewis (1955)
“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.” Aslan And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring….And when the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: …
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1843)
“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” I have seen multiple film versions of A Christmas Carol, but have never read the book. I now …
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