Though I know there are several wonderful stories with animal protagonists, I tend not to read them. I guess I suffer from a homo sapiens prejudice when it comes to literature. I want the stories I read to be about people. I confess this is a narrow, distorted view of the world, one that...
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, he had an unofficial mission: to help Henry Wharton, a British officer, visit his family and return safely to...
Since I had read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) before reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), I first met Tom Sawyer in that novel. It wasn’t a welcome meeting. Towards the end of the story, Tom played a game that almost cost Jim, the runaway slave, his life. Tom considered it great...
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 well-known and liked orphan—the locals call him “Friend to all the World”—he’s the offspring between a British soldier, with...
We all love a good spy novel. At least, I know I love espionage thrillers. I have already reviewed several on this blog, including Red Sparrow, The Rhythm Section, and Leaving Berlin. The spy has always been part of Western literature. In Homer’s Iliad, there is a book dedicated to Odysseus and Diomedes as...
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse tells the story about the titular character and his spiritual quest. Siddhartha is the son of a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, who realizes he wasn’t suited for the traditional path towards enlightenment. Along with his friend, Govinda, he joins the Samanas, a sect of ascetics, but even the life of...
According to Wikipedia, when The Sorrows of Young Werther was published in 1774, it became the world’s first best seller. Since book publishing was, at best, only a toddler, since copyright laws were nonexistent, and since it is doubtful anyone was tracking book sells statistics, I find this claim–at least in the literal meaning...
I know the mountain. I lived there for two years. We called it Onion Creek, and it’s not much of a mountain, as mountain goes—more of a foothill—but it was an isolated, rural land populated by outlaws. Everyone carried a firearm, often in Western-styled holsters, and several people were engaged in the then-illegal trade...
Spoiler alert! In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixth Sherlock Holmes book, Sherlock Holmes, the famed detective, returns. “The Final Problem,” the last story of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, was set in 1891. “The Adventure of the Empty House,” the first story of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, is set...
A woman dies. After her death, her family—her husband, four sons, and one daughter—must transport her body forty miles to Jefferson to bury her. In this day of high-speed automobiles and paved highways, this tragic but mundane duty sounds easy and quick. It could be done in an hour. But As I Lay Dying...
