The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1940)

From the Gilded Age, of the previous post, to the Golden Age of Hollywood, The Last Tycoon is the final, unfinished novel by the author F Scott Fitzgerald. Published posthumously in 1941, we are told the story of Monroe Stahr, one of the great movie producers of the golden age of cinema, through the eyes …

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)

I imagine that when an author sets out to write something they do so to amuse themselves and hope that somewhere along the way someone else might enjoy it as well. Wharton's expectations were perhaps exceeded when this 1920 novel by her won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1921. A surprising and somewhat controversial decision, …

Art and Literature

The Doll Factory and Brideshead Revisted. On the surface there's not much to connect them. One is historical fiction, set in Victorian England and tells the story of a young woman on the fringes of a new art movement. The other is written just after the second war, set in the interwar years and weaves …

So much for that…and other stories

I've been on a bit of a reading spree in the past couple of weeks and so I needed to consult Goodreads to see what I've actually read. After Crime and Punishment I opted for some light reading - The Jane Austen Society (2020) by Natalie Jenner, The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler, The …

Redemption (I’ve finished Crime and Punishment!)

**THERE MAY BE SPOILERS** It's been a while! In the millennia I've been absent I've moved, walked a lot and not read very much. I've also successfully relocated my cat, Edward and unpacked most of the boxes that have filled my life for...well, several months now. Life is more settled now so, hopefully, I can …

Intermission: Does Crime Pay?

I'm always quite curious to know about movie adaptations of books I'm currently reading - often it can be quite a diversionary interlude from the story if it's a little slow at any point. However, not so with Crime and Punishment although I have taken a little peek, in this case, to see how far …

Translations

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Where to begin? Well, most people would pick up a copy and turn to the first page. Not so simple in the world of Dostoyevsky, Russian literature and translations. What it seems to boil down to is how to capture the very essence of the writing. So, it's not …

India

More by accident than design I have embarked on some books this year which are set in, or refer to, this great continent. Miss Marjoribanks makes reference to Tom, Lucilla's cousin, who travels there to make something of himself. Despite Oliphant's extensive travels I'm not sure she made it to those shores herself. The second …

Miss Marjoribanks (1866), Margaret Oliphant

We meet Miss Marjoribanks at two periods of her life with an intermission of 10 years. In the first part of the book we arrive at the point her mother dies and she sets about making it her aim in life to be a comfort to her dear papa. A time limit of 10 years …

Author: Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897)

I was musing in my previous post about Margaret Oliphant's lack of visibility on the Victorian Author's Stage. We are so well versed in the stories of those female authors who died young, unwed and childless (an intentional sweeping generalisation) that there seems to be little room left for those authors who have the temerity …

Miss Marjoribanks, by ME Oliphant (1866). Part I

You know that squidgy stuff you squirt into wall cavities and it grows and grows and grows, filling the hole? Yeah, you know what I mean? I know, let's call it expanding foam....well, I think I've found the book equivalent. As part of the Classic 50 challenge I scoured online shops, poached ideas from other …

Protected: ‘Secretly’ Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen (1814)

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Written in 1859 this work of historical fiction recounts events of the French Revolution in the last quarter of the 18th Century. However, it is also reflective of the great social change sweeping through Europe in the 19th Century and, in some ways, should have been a cautionary tale for those nations whose monarchs were …

Classic 50

So I have, more or less, chosen my Classic 50 titles that I'm going to read over the next 5 years. This is a challenge that is hosted over at The Classics Club. I may swap one or two of these out for something else. There's so much to chose from after all. It may …