Content tagged with "classic"

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Book
9

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Book
10

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Deane’s Library
Book Review
November 24, 2022
401

It’s tough to review this book. It was written 150 years ago, and I am clearly not the intended audience. It’s a children’s story, which came from a story that the author made up to tell to three young girls one afternoon. To be clear: there’s no real narrative here. The story is basically a fever…

Anna Karenina
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Arabian Nights
Deane’s Library
Book
9

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Brave New World
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 6, 2014
145

Wonderful book about the advancement of science to the point where the human race is absorbed and amused by non-stop pleasure and triviality. Into this comes an outsider, and the examination of how he fits in is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The book is a rallying cry to those who believe in…

Candide
Deane’s Library
Book
6

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Cannery Row
Deane’s Library
Book Review
May 23, 2018
89

Nice, short novel by Steinbeck. He creates a great sense of place, and a great cast of characters, through little side anecdotes that have nothing to do with the main action of the plot. It’s a good look at community during the Great Depression. I think I enjoyed it in part because it was so short….

The Canterbury Tales
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Crime and Punishment
Deane’s Library
Book Review
August 10, 2023
456

I know this is a classic, but I didn’t really enjoy it. It’s the story of an idiot who commits a murder. And when I say “idiot,” that’s not flippant – he’s written that way. The character is a failed student living in Saint Petersburg in the 19th century . He’s broke, he has some weird theories…

David Copperfield
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Death of a Salesman
Deane’s Library
Book Review
July 7, 2018
71

Clearly a great play, but hard to read. You know what’s coming all along, and you sort of dread it the entire time. I got a feeling of impending doom throughout the entire thing. It was hard to pick back up – I just didn’t want to confront it. I’m frankly glad it’s over.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Deane’s Library
Book Review
May 16, 2021
329

This is “philosophical science fiction.” It describes a modified reality which raises all sorts of interesting questions. The setting is a post-apocalyptic Earth where most living things have died. The government wants humanity to emigrate to Mars. Life-like androids have been developed, and if you…

Don Quixote
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Dracula
Deane’s Library
Book Review
July 10, 2018
92

Great novel. Does not read like it was written 121 years ago. Genuinely terrifying in parts. Suffers a bit in the middle as the characters run around London, and I got a little confused as to what they were doing. It turns into a bit of a detective story. I got the main gist of what was going on,…

East of Eden
Deane’s Library
Book
8
Fahrenheit 451
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 14, 2014
122

I wasn’t a huge fan of Bradbury’s writing, but the story is quite good. The message of the book is similar to “Brave New World” – in the future, humans are so artificially satisfied that thinking deeply about anything is discouraged, even considered sinister. Thus, books are outlawed, lest they…

The Federalist Papers
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Great Expectations
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Gulliver’s Travels
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Iliad
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Ivanhoe
Deane’s Library
Book
6

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Jane Eyre
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Jungle Book
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Last of the Mohicans
Deane’s Library
Book
9

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Little Women
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Madame Bovary
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Moby Dick
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Deane’s Library
Book Review
September 16, 2023
562

This was the first of the Fu Manchu novels. It’s over 100 years old, and I’m trying to take that into account when I discuss it. The book is written from the first person perspective of the British Dr. Petrie. On the first page, his friend Nayland Smith shows up at his house and tells him that he’s…

The Odyssey
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Of Mice and Men
Deane’s Library
Book
32

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Here are some notes I took on the acquisition of this book:

Got this in a mail-order set when I was in college.

Paradise Lost
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Politics and Poetics
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Portrait of a Lady
Deane’s Library
Book Review
July 6, 2018
86

A “novel of manners,” much “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s a long story of the coming of age of an American girl in Europe. Large scope, and gets tedious in the middle – I felt like there were about 100 pages in there when the plot just wasn’t moving at all. There’s a Big Secret towards the end that you…

Pride and Prejudice
Deane’s Library
Book Review
July 18, 2016
407

I read this for a nascent classics book club I have become a part of. Sadly, I didn’t like it. It was a long haul, and I wouldn’t have finished it if not for the obligation. The book is fundamentally about a whole slew of terrible things we should probably leave in the past. There are terrible…

The Prince
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Red Badge of Courage
Deane’s Library
Book
10

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Republic
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Robinson Crusoe
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Scarlet Letter
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Sea-Wolf
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Deane’s Library
Book Review
November 19, 2022
217

So, here’s the thing – if you know the secret, there’s not much point reading the book. And everyone knows the secret by now – “Jekyll and Hyde” has become a common idiom. But back when this was published in Victorian England, no one knew the twist, and it was probably a hell of a surprise in the…

The Sun Also Rises
Deane’s Library
Book Review
October 25, 2016
17
A Tale of Two Cities
Deane’s Library
Book
10

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Deane’s Library
Book
12

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Deane’s Library
Book Review
April 13, 2015
110

One of those books which you know is Very Significant, but that which you wouldn’t read for any other reason. The dialect is hard to read, and the story moves slowly. It gets a little more compelling toward the end, when there’s a crisis plot point and you can see some definition of the plot line,…

The Three Musketeers
Deane’s Library
Book
8

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Tom Jones
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Treasure Island
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Deane’s Library
Book
11

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 20, 2022
883

This is a novel from 1851 designed to reveal the horrors of slavery. And it worked – it caused outrage across the United States and pushed the country toward the Civil War. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was prompted to write the novel by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which…

Vanity Fair
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Walden
Deane’s Library
Book
6

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

War and Peace
Deane’s Library
Book Review
November 28, 2014
337

So, what can you say about this book that has been said a million times? it’s many things in one: a novel, a history, a philosophy, etc. I enjoyed reading it. It took me 50 days of fairly consistent reading – 30-60 minutes per day. The chapters are quite short, taking maybe five minutes, so I always…

The War of the Worlds
Deane’s Library
Book Review
December 14, 2014
207

Simply a great read. A very fast-moving account of what a Martian invasion might look like at the turn of the 20th century . The author captures the subtle movement from confusion to outright terror and panic extremely well. When the first Martian cylinder lands, no one knows quite what to make of…

Wuthering Heights
Deane’s Library
Book
7

This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written