Content tagged with “classic”

“The Day of the Jackal from 1973 is the original film version of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel. It shouldn’t be confused with a couple of remakes — one in 1997 with Bruce Willis (just called The Jackal ) and a TV version in 2024 with Eddie Redmayne. It’s quite good, in an unique kind of way….”

“It was about 9:00 p.m. and I wasn’t tired, so I asked Claude for a spy movie less than 100 minutes long. It suggested a few, including Pickup on South Street from 1953. Turns out, the entire film is on YouTube , and has a running time of just 77 minutes. (Pete would be so happy …) It was… okay. The…”

“I read somewhere that 1955’s To Catch a Thief was fairly spy-adjacent. I watched it this morning. It’s got about everything you need: a very debonair hero in Cary Grant (he was 51 at the time), a beautiful girl in Grace Kelly (she was just 26), amazing locations on the French Rivera, elegant galas,…”

“I watched The 39 Steps , which is a Hitchcock movie from 1935. It’s considered one of the classic spy thrillers. A man in London runs into a woman who claims to be a spy who has uncovered an intelligence network in Scotland. She’s on the run from assassins. Before long, the man is accused of her…”

“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…”

“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 (I think it was called ‘Petrograd’ back…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 is the book that was the inspiration for the 1982 movie Blade Runner . The association is very loose, through. The movie and the book have little in common.) This is ‘philosophical science fiction.’ It describes a modified reality which raises all sorts of interesting questions. The setting…”

“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,…”

“ 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. ”

“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…”

“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….”

“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…”

“One of those books which you know is Very Significant, but that which you wouldn’t read for any other reason. The dialect (emancipated slaves in Florida at the turn of the century) is hard to read, and the story moves slowly. It gets a little more compelling toward the end, when there’s a crisis…”

“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…”

“Simply a great read. A very fast-moving account of what a Martian invasion might look like at the turn of the 20th century (it was written in 1898). The author captures the subtle movement from confusion to outright terror and panic extremely well. When the first Martian cylinder lands, no one…”

“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 (and doesn’t) is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The book is a rallying cry to those who…”

“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…”