Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Rusalka is a kitten!
This little ball of tortitude is the newest addition to our family. We’re still getting to know her, but we do know that she’s very talkative and doesn’t like to be alone. She was adopted at ten weeks old in September 2020 and is the youngest cat in our household.
Rusalka is a tortoiseshell kitten, with beautifully brindled fur.
Both of these volumes are perfect for a night spent inside in the warmth of the fireside. Easy to get lost in, they are easily finished in a sitting and just begging to be turned over in your head or discussed with your favourite bookish friend.
Proust was a man who was very sensitive to noise, and Paris was (and is) a very cacophonous metropolis.
I read it for the first time when I was far too young for it, all of the way back in 1994. I loved it then, but I didn’t appreciate the nuances of what Berendt was trying to say.
The volumes are compact and beautiful, and look great on the shelf — plus the collections are both thorough and accessible for someone who doesn’t read as much poetry as literature.
The thing I love most about Jackson’s short stories is the way that she twists seemingly ordinary events into strange and unsettling directions. You won’t find ghouls and goblins here, but you will find human monsters and ominous atmospheres that leave the reader wondering how things went so wrong and why.
Cloudland Revisited is a hilarious ode to the movies, including all of those bad and cheesy ones that we watch and then wonder why hundreds of people came together to produce such a clunker.
He has been institutionalized and addicted to drugs for quite some time, and he feels that he is on the verge of losing his looks and his status as he continues to fail to meet expectations.
Though the subjects are varied, what remains is Akutagawa’s beautiful starkness and his precise use of prose. There is the feeling that cutting one word would be impossible, but adding one would be a shame.
Termush centres around a seaside resort that after an unnamed disaster (but all signs seem to point to a nuclear war followed by a plague or a plague followed by nuclear war), which now houses those individuals that could pay for shelter and medical care.
Even the whitest of picket fences can hide a twisting darkness. And that very pressure could itself serve as one of the most complex themes of noir — that of dreams deferred and decisions made with extreme regret.
