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)
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 …
I spent the past week with the ladies of Cranford. It was a delightful time listening to stories of their girlhood friendships and family life and the bittersweet present where many of their dreams were not realized. Still, I was captivated at this group of women trying to maintain their dignity through the aging process …
A devastating, but ultimately satisfying look at the sexual awakening of Maurice Hall. Written early in the 20th century at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offense, Forster chose to delay its publication until after he died. Published in 1971, a year after his death we follow Maurice to Cambridge with the assumption he …
…In a typical chronicle of the Israelites, it would be taken for granted that the girls did not count at all…if they give birth to a boy who will grow into a man, they have fulfilled their destiny in the only possible way. When you have heard more about the adventure of being a Rakonitz, …
“But now look up the river,” said Mordecai, “See the sky, how it is slowly fading. I have always loved this bridge: I stood on it when I was a little boy. It s a meeting-place for the spiritual messengers. It is true—what the Masters said—that each order of things has its angel…Here I have …
He had come late to the study of himself and now that he was old he was struck that he had thought so little through his life about his reason for living. He had been like a thrown ball, which while it rolls is satisfied, but when at the end of its movement it lay …
“You speak truly. That we never meet again is the wisest and only proper course. That I regret the past as much as you do yourself, it is hardly necessary for me to say.” After reading Jude the Obscure with a group on Instagram I decided to join their year-long Thomas Hardy Readalong—one book each …
He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heart grew sympathetic with the birds’ thwarted desires. They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them…They took upon them more and more the aspect of gentle friends and pensioners—the only friends he could claim as being …
Neatly folded on the top of the case was a thin scarlet silk kimono embroidered with dragons.“So,” he murmured. “It is like that. A defiance. Very well. I take it up.” This is my first Agatha Christie and my introduction to the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. As a novice Christie reader and one who …
Continue reading Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1934)
Classic Laurie 