Goodbye to Berlin
Reading Isherwood brings you into a moment in history, and there’s something really powerful and rare about that.
Essentials
Books of note and influence. These books have either influenced the genre they have created or the literary sphere as a whole.
Airless Spaces
Sometimes books constructed out of vignettes seem to be built on a faulty foundation and have frames that are not enough to withstand the weight of a message or a book. Firestone here has used the flexibility of very short vignettes to construct just what her title implies — an airless space.
Victorian Murderesses
Hartman asks for serious scholars only, and for the reader to commit to thinking about more than how much blood the scene contained and which gory details are the most disgusting.
The Price of the Ticket
Don’t let the size of The Price of the Ticket discourage you. It was a collected volume that was worth the time and the effort and did not break my normally quick reading flow.
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time is the James Baldwin book to read if you decided that you will only read one of his works and no others — though I sincerely hope that no one does this.
Inherit the Wind
Lawrence and Lee make a powerful statement about what it means to stand up for what is right in the face of an overpowering multitude fixed on carrying on in the wrong.
Alice in Wonderland
As Alice evades her dour sister on the riverbank and slips into the realm of cats that talk and tea parties with rotating cups, she is finding the joy of being in one’s own world and one’s own mind.
Murder in the Age of Enlightenment
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.
Rope
Patrick Hamilton’s Rope is a subtle kind of spooky. It’s not a murder-mystery. The murder has happened and it is no mystery who did it.
Byron’s Travels
I won’t spoil it for those of you who don’t know Byron’s reputation or just what shocking and scandalous shenanigans he got up to, but it was enough that his literary contemporaries were all talking about it.