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The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell. Books one and two in a story of King Alfred the Great and the invading Danes through the eyes of a young boy who, as he grows to manhood, fights on both sides of the fray. Lords of the North, the third book in the series is due out February 1. Can't wait!
I recently read "Cruising in Serafyn", by Lin and Larry Pardy, the true account of a couple sailing their home built 24 foot cutter down the California coast, through the canal and across to England. Very bohemian and humbly exciting. He built the boat, she wrote the book -- great reading.
hi all!
A few minutes ago,i read the short story "The Door" by Guy De maupassant,but i am lost at the end of the story.Really,i did get nothing if you read this story,will you let me know what is going on at the end of it???I am very curios...
I just read "The unbearable lightness of being" by Milan Kundera. It's a fantastic book. History and different view on a certain period of life are nicely combined. And the story makes you think.
G.K Chestertons: "The Man Who was Thursday"
The hero, Gabriel Syme, is brought into what he believes is the dark underworld of anarchy, led by the 7 officers, representing the days of the week, of course being led by Sunday.
I am a fan of Chestertons writing, but this was, by far, my favorite of his works, that I have read.
It is a quick read, if you do not want to unlock the hidden messages behind it.. I highly recommend it.
Please someone! I need your help! I have a questionaire due today in English. 10 pages. 88 questions. And 39 of them i cant answer. Please i dont need them all answered just i need help!!!
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Story of a bear. A story of sorrow. A story of love. In fact, it is a story of a family and how they go through different problems. Would they ever be able to overcome their fears? Would they ever be able to overcome their sorrows? A story of deaths. A story of revenge.
A very well written story - full of twists and turns. Humorous on some places, and on others, it looks as if there has never been such a complex and serious novel. Characters are very interesting. Plot is like a road having lots of turns in it that the traveller forgets where he is going. A very insightful novel which everyone should try. A story of full of pun too.
I would rate it 10/10 definitely.
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
It's about a country girl who goes off to a prestigious college and the usual problems of fitting in, it seems like the book is trying to make a point about how society views athletes and the "cool" kids but it trys to hard. Overall an interesting read.
7.8/10
I just read Sula, for class. It was amazing for the author's ability to use the dirt on the ground to symbolize the cosmic battles of good and evil. Fully supports the saying "a bird is never just a bird, in literature".
I just finished reading Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. What a long and complex book. The first part was pretty much straight forward, but the second one was perplex and confusing. But that is what makes this book so great. Now I really want to watch the movie.
So if someone has nothing to do and feels like reading twelve hundred pages of satire on knighthood, go for it :)
The Complete Wandering Ghosts by F Marion Crawford.
A decent collection of all this author's ghost and horror stories. Wonderful writer of the creepy and skin-crawling shivers. However, the stories are abit outdated by style and by construction. He does a fair job of developing characters yet there is a predictability usually via a twist ending or grisley denounement quite imaginable with the expectant accompanying music sting. But these were written mostly in the 1890s.
My favorites being "The Screaming Skull", "The Upper-Berth", and "The Doll's Ghost".
Certainly not on the level of some of his latter more sophisticated more popular posthumous contemporaries of M R James, Lovercaft, Machen, or Blackwood. These are simply short atmospheric delights. Chocolates in a tin.
I feel Crawford is best accentuated and represented bookended within the pages of an horror collection.
2.5 out of 5
Three men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
The title would be an adequate synopsis, but the beauty is in the writing, every paragraph being a comic gem. One of the funniest books I've read.
I recently completed The Golden Pot by ETA Hoffmann.
One of the most interpretated works of German Romanticism, it is subtitled "A Fairy Tale of Modern Times". And indeed it contains singing snakes, a salamander-magician antagonising a nasty witch, a heroic student in love, and a happy end.
Contrary to all other fairy tales I've read so far, The Golden Pot is not set once upon a time, and the setting is not a fictionary distant country, but the city of Dresden around 1800. These two levels of fiction (the magical characters and tokens and their anchorage in the historical Dresden) this is one of the point why I found the short tale so interesting.
It is not only a fairy tale, but also a medical treatise of melancholy, a portrait of the bourgeoisie in contrast to the bohème, and the study of a character developing from a law student into a poet.
The Golden Pot might be interesting for all those interested in the key texts and theory of European Romanticism, and for those enjoying a piece of fantastic literature by the scariest author of German literature :D.
I'd rate The Golden Pot 10/10.
To Walk The Night by William Sloane
Finished this one quickly at only 228 pages, and say, what a huge disappointment. Read like a overlong episode of Outer Limits or Twilight Zone where not much really happened and an equal amount of vague allusions centered mathmatical equations that open the portals of time and fourth dimensions.
The novel was made entirely of a series of switch-backs where the author successfully avoided creating any sense of mystery, suspense, and atmosphere. I can't count how many times the main character (and novel's narrator) thought or spoke descriptively of another whether it be her strange apparel, her quiet high intellect, or pale skin.
Or the protagonist's lifelong friend obsession of said woman.
In all practicality, read a sentence or two and one basically has read entire page.
The conclusion was an absolute letdown after reading 190 pages of build-up failed to provide any resolution or straight answers and the book raises dozens of them but rather a dull resignation of mild consequences.
This hill was a terrible near maddening climb with few "startling" revelations. I will read William Sloane's other more famous novel Edge of Running Water as it is more genuinely horror in nature dealing with the dead becoming unwelcome returnees.
1 out of 5
I recently read The Warden and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. I would recommend reading Barchester Towers right after The Warden as they contain many of the same characters, and the plot flows from The Warden right into Barchester Towers. I started Doctor Thorne (the next book in the series), but so far I haven't run into any of the same characters and I think there is a considerable jump in time between the first two novels and Doctor Thorne. Both novels were very enjoyable. A huge cast of hilarious characters, thrown into odd situations, always makes for a good novel.
Courtny