Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
In ‘8 Ball Bunny’, Bugs Bunny is trying to get a cute little Penguin back to the South Pole. At several points along the journey, a man I now recognize as Humphrey Bogart approaches Bugs and asks, “Can you help a fellow American who’s down on his luck?” As an adult who has seen the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre several times, I laugh uproariously as this parody of the movie’s opening sequence.
Rumpole of the Bailey contains a critique not just of the British legal system, but also of society in the late 1970s, and the collision of the legal and political systems. Sometimes this commentary is insightful, yet sometimes it is cringe-worthy.
What constitutes an easy death? Or a difficult one? Though her mother’s death was considered ‘easy’ by doctors, it still involved pain, suffering, and turmoil.
Richard III is not meant to be history; it’s meant to be thought-provoking entertainment that is indeed tailored to the audience that Shakespeare wrote for.
As the book continues, the narrator becomes less and less reliable and also less sure of himself and what he is capable of. Desires, thoughts, and feelings pull Kochan apart with a slow intensity.
He details stories that float around the county, amongst the men working the fields, and also the stories that women trade while they sew around the dining room table and children play around their feet. Those stories mark time. They are shared county history.
Hiroshima follows the stories of six individuals who lived through the bomb — a clerk, a seamstress, a doctor, a minister, a surgeon, and a Catholic priest initially from Germany. There are five chapters each with six sections — one for each person.
Dyar is not a character you sympathize with, but he is a character that you can’t look away from. His questions about existence are common ones, it is where and how he seeks answers that compose his dissolution and downfall.
he plot of Kokoro centers around two characters that are never named. The first two parts of the novel consist of a young student getting to know an older man whom he refers to only as ‘Sensei’.
Quin uses vagaries, the mists of the seaside Brighton, and a circularity of language to construct a perfect circular narrative. So perfect, that it’s a magical experience to get to the ending and read how everything comes together.
