The Tale of the 1002nd Night

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this novel, written in 1939 by Joseph Roth. Roth was a Jew caught up in Austria just before the second World War, and a heavy drinker (who can blame him?). I caught the fabulist streak in the title, but I was prepared for rather a [...]

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The 42nd Parallel

The first book in John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, The 42nd Parallel takes a widescreen approach to the early years of the 20th century. Instead of focusing on a single character or family or even town or city, Dos Passos writes of a variety of apparently disconnected Americans—what connections exist between them do not appear [...]

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Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say I’m weary, say I’m sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I’m growing old, but add – Jenny kissed me. Not long ago, I [...]

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Diana Wynne Jones

If you hadn’t heard, Diana Wynne Jones died March 26, at the age of 76. Far too young for someone who could, in the words of Dorothy Dunnett, make the whole world to hang in the air.  

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The White Road (Morland Dynasty #28)

It’s 1914, and the Morlands are off to war. The 28th of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Morland Dynasty novels traces the first several months of the war, ending right at the start of 1915.  Harrod-Eagles excels at battlefield narratives, and she makes great use of her talents here. Two of the Morland men are among the earliest [...]

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Sunday Salon: Literary Adaptations

The other night, I (finally) watched the film adaptation of one of my favorite novels, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. The 1996 film, directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet, was a fine adaptation—perfectly cast and just as shocking and uncomfortable as the book. And I was relieved to find [...]

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A Year Down Yonder

My first reaction when I received a copy of A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck in an envelope from my mother was to think, “Oh, Newbery people, how you love the Depression.” It seemed that I could remember an awful lot of Newbery award-winning books that mined that particular territory: suffering, poverty, bleakness. (In [...]

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Alone

As you may know if you’ve been following this blog for long, I am something of a fanatic of the literature of polar exploration. I’ve recently branched out to other kinds of exploration, and have found that almost equally delightful, but for me there’s something particular about the cold and the men who choose to [...]

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The Mill on the Floss

Several years ago, I read George Eliot’s Middlemarch and thought it was one of the best 19th-century novels I’d ever read. I loved it, and immediately put The Mill on the Floss onto my TBR list as the next Eliot I wanted to try. But you know how that goes: it never seemed to be [...]

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The Blue Castle

It wasn’t until I read Elaine’s enthusiastic posts over at Random Jottings that I realized that Lucy Maud Montgomery had written more than just Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon (both series I loved, by the way.) She wrote many other books, including several stand-alones and at least two books for adults, [...]

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