It will be nigh on impossible to write anything new or insightful about Tolstoy's War and Peace that has not be said before, so this will be a collection of loose impressions and thoughts that occurred to me throughout 2020 as I read a chapter-a-day (or more accurately seven chapters a week) with Nick. The … Continue reading War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy #RUSclassic
The Wind Blows was first published in the Athenaeum on 27th August 1920 and then included in Bliss and Other Stories (1920), although I have also spotted on the Katherine Mansfield Society page that they claim it was published in 1915. So I dug a little deeper.I discovered a reference in J. McDonnell's Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Marketplace: … Continue reading The Wind Blows | Katherine Mansfield #1920Club
Image: James Tylor, Turralyendi Yerta (Womma) 2017 Photograph with ochre & charcoal.Place. Land. Country. Home. These words frame the settings of our stories. Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country focuses on Australia’s vast raft of environments to investigate how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at … Continue reading Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country edited by Julianne Schultz & Ashley Hay
So before I start on my chapters today, I want to check out the differences between Gnosticism and Agnosticism, as both terms have been used to described Melville in the various readings I've done so far.Some commentators challenge the Gnostic term, but all seem to agree that his struggle to believe was an agnostic one … Continue reading Moby-Dick Chapters 17 -20
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) wrote nearly 300 short stories during his life. They were uneven at times yet distinct in style. Full of irony, deception, narrative drama, arguments & quarrels. De Maupassant was also a naturalist with a tendency to lean towards the bleaker side of real life. The Guardian says that he considered life to be … Continue reading The Best Short Stories | Guy de Maupassant
I'm trying to stretch myself with poetry reading this year.The best way to attempt this is to use my current novel reading as a springboard into a poem. Whether it be an epigraph, a quote or a reference made within a book, I plan to no longer just read over these parts quickly. Instead I … Continue reading Aubade by Louise Gluck
The End!How on earth do I sum up in mere words such a magnificent, majestic, momentous story?! Les Miserables is a story full of pathos, compassion, extravagance and just a few flaws. Fortunately these flaws of logic and historical truth don't get in the way of Hugo's grander themes about love, redemption and sacrifice.I struggled … Continue reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER, physician (1849–1919) How does one do justice to a small book about snails and illness? I … Continue reading The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating | Elisabeth Tova Bailey
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