Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Lucinda was technically not a cat. She was a rabbit. Usually called ‘Lucy’, Lucinda was a blonde bunny with a white nose. She loved to dig, and run, and chew. Old books beware! She had a taste for rare paper.
She was rescued from the local animal shelter in 2018 at approximately one year old. Since she was a rescue bunny, she was a bit sensitive to stress. But most of the time you could find her sleeping under the work table, binkying across the living room floor, or trying to sneak up onto a sofa to dig at the cushions. Her favourite food was kale, and she got along very well with the cats.
Lucinda loved to groom knees and fingers, and loved to get pets on her head. She hated to be picked up, though. She also hated spinach. The shelter workers were almost frightened of her because she was so opinionated about these things. We didn’t witness it ourselves, but we heard she once threw a whole bowl of spinach back at the shelter worker that was feeding her.
Lucy passed away on August 1st, 2020.
Something to note about Ligotti: You have to expect to think. Sometimes, when I’m in the mood for a horror story, I’ll pick up a collection and know that I’m reading a good yarn that is just and only that. But Ligotti interweaves an existential dread into his stories and concepts that keep you thinking long after the story ends. This is a review of Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe.
A Story About A Real Man is about a man that actually existed — hence the title. Alexei Maresyev was a Soviet pilot that fought in the second world war and suffered a double amputation. This is a review of Boris Polevoy’s novel.
This book got mixed reviews when it was published, one going so far as to call it ‘obscene’. What was obscene about it was the discussion of themes and aspects of Victorian life that Victorians were in no way comfortable discussing — including the struggles of the lower classes and their exclusion from even the dream of higher education, the lack of class mobility, sex, sexism, animal cruelty, the destructive power of gossip, bad marriages, and horrible people. This is a review of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.
Due to how many adaptations it has had and how prominent it is in the canon of classic literature, I thought it would be a staple of used bookstores or the bigger new bookstores. Well, it isn’t. This is a review of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
I can go ahead and admit that I have a problem. I collect kitty-cat knickknacks. This is a review of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Judge and His Hangman.
One of the first things you should know about the wide world of antiquarian and rare books is that, though they may be used, they will not necessarily be cheap. This is a review of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.
