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.
Essentials
Books of note and influence. These books have either influenced the genre they have created or the literary sphere as a whole.
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.
The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories
It’s That Time of Year Again! So finally it’s late April and that means the start of the playoff season! Hockey is something that I only truly appreciated in adulthood. I began by watching it every time the winter Olympics rolled around, and then I expanded into watching the IIHF and women’s hockey. Last year […]
Native Son
There are many reasons you should read this book, the primary one being that this novel became one of the first to successfully and comprehensively discuss systemic racism and how it affects Black youth and the Black population in general.
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone was not well-received when it was published and was compared unfavourably to Baldwin’s earlier work. Now there is a push to go back to it and appreciate it for the excellent book it is.
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
I intentionally saved Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales for Christmas Day because it has become my favourite Christmas story over the years (or, at the very least, it sits in a firm tie with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front is given from the perspective of the losing side, which is still rare when it comes to war literature, especially in translation and from this era.
Notes of a Native Son
Every essay is a painstakingly, achingly beautiful construction of argument. From word choice to phrasing, he has a way of driving to the point, but also doing so with a biting simplicity.