The Red Badge of Courage, serialised in 1894 and first published as a single edition in 1895, is a novel about the American Civil War. Though it’s taken me two attempts to finish, it’s soon read in a week or so and truly engaging as a war story as much as it is a…
In which we meander along the Thames with Montmorency and his three companions. Three Men in a Boat is one of the few novels I own with the dubious honour of having been attempted twice and completed once. That’s not to say the tale isn’t an enjoyable and light read, more that it requires…
In which we find Extreme Makeover: Post-War Britain Edition. Whether it’s the title of Cold Comfort Farm that lingers on the edges of our consciousness or a clever ploy by author Stella Gibbons, the term cold comfort seems (like “cellar door”) to evoke a sense of both its literal meaning and something far more intangible. Cold…
Once again, it’s time to delve into my complete Sherlock Holmes collection for another mystery with the world’s most famous detective. This time, it’s The Sign of Four, sometimes called The Sign of the Four but who really cares, there are four people and they make a sign. Unlike the more celebrated Holmes novels, A Study…
After a short break from reading, I’m thrilled to return to my Library series today and to one of the most compelling novels of all time. A perfect way to start reading again, thanks to its short yet intense burst of genius, A Clockwork Orange is an unparalleled masterpiece. A Clockwork Orange was the…
My first introduction to The Thirty-Nine Steps was through the 1935 Hitchcock thriller, The 39 Steps, starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. It’s one of my Dad’s favourite films and I remember the excitement of Richard Hannay escaping north from London, evading capture at the Forth Bridge and trekking across the Scottish landscape to…
It seems strange that I have never read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland before, in fact I had always thought the title to be Alice in Wonderland as most films based on the novel are. The short book feels like a childhood memory, yet to my knowledge I have never read it before, or had…
Alongside The Big Sleep and Wuthering Heights, I was introduced to The Great Gatsby in high school. I wrote an essay about the themes of illusion and reality in both Gatsby and a novel called The Last Resort, which I thoroughly detested. Part of that may have been the incredibly disparity in my instant…
Much like my introduction to Tintin, I was first passed a copy of The Big Sleep by a favourite teacher. This time is was well into Secondary School, either GCSE or A Level years and it was my English teacher, Mr Dawson. Beyond my family, he was most responsible for both my love of…
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a novel so well-known that its name is often enough to evoke a sense of gothic nostalgia in readers. It’s a book that carries a certain weight, a sense of heaviness and density even before it’s read for the first time. So it was when I read the novel…