Atonement by Ian McEwan
Around 1986 or 1987, I went to a bookstore to find my next read. Now you know that I can’t go to scout out reading projects and leave without an hour, or at least not […]
Category Archives: English Literature
The Man Who was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
There are novels to understand, but there are novels to experience. After reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday twice—the second time to remind me of the plot—I concluded that it is securely […]
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
In James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, the spy was Harvey Birch, who reported to George Washington. His mission was to watch British troop movements and learn what he could of their intentions. In the novel, […]
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Kim by Rudyard Kipling isn’t a spy novel as much as a novel about the type of person who would be recruited as a spy. Kimball O’Hara is a street urchin living in Lahore. A […]
Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham
Deciding her future, Mary Panton spends the summer in a villa outside Florence, Italy. She’s in a contest between four men. One man, her husband, whom she deeply loved, has died. A gambler, he left […]
Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Though I wouldn’t call myself an expert in 19th Century English gothic literature, I had read the main works in that genre. Dracula? Check. Frankenstein? Check. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Check. The Picture of […]
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
Though I’ve never read J.G. Ballard before, I discovered as I researched his biography that he’s been in my life for a long time. At least since the 80s, when I saw Steven Spielberg’s Empire […]