Content tagged with "classic"

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…

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

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

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…

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

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….

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

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…

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

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.

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…

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

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,…

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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.

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

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

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…

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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,…

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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…

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…

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