Category: Review

Well, surprise surprise, I mentioned somewhat earlier in this catalogue that I strove mightily to use only one representative novel for each author, so as to include more authors and more of a variety of authors, but that in two instances I just couldn’t limit their contributions to lovable English language novels and had to… Continue reading Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield”

Charles Dickens is the most prolific and popular novelist of Victorian England, and it would be impossible to conceive a list of the great English language novels without considering his contribution. But oh my, what a plethora of choices! One could simply yield to the temptation of picking a novel that everybody already loves—to pick,… Continue reading Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House”

Stephen Crane is in some ways the John Keats of American literature: He wrote a recognized classic that made his international reputation at the age of 24, only to die, like Keats, of tuberculosis at a young age (he was only 28), cheating the world of that promise of later literary milestones. But Crane was… Continue reading Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage”

Joseph Conrad is one of the most respected and acclaimed novelists in the English language, which has always been remarkable since, as most readers know, he was born to Polish parents in what is now part of Ukraine but at the time of his birth was a part of the Russian empire. Thus his native… Continue reading Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”

Wilkie Collins was a struggling young Victorian novelist and playwright until 1851, when he met Charles Dickens and his life changed. Dickens became his close friend and literary mentor, and began publishing some of Collins’ efforts in his own periodicals. Particularly in the period from 1859 to 1869, Collins put out his best work, including… Continue reading Wilkie Collins’ “The Woman in White”

J.M. Coetzee is probably less well known than he deserves to be because he deliberately avoids publicity and keeps a low profile.  But he is one of the most acclaimed living writers in the English language, having won the 2003 Nobel Prize in literature after previously winning the Booker Prize twice and the CNA Literary Award… Continue reading J.M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians”

Agatha Christie does not appear on most “100 Greatest Novels” list, which seems something of an oversight. Her plaudits are myriad: In 1955, the Mystery Writers of America awarded her its inaugural Grand Master Award. Her novel And Then There Were None, having sold more than 100 million copies, is the best-selling mystery novel of all… Continue reading Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express”

Dorothy Sayers, a crime novelist herself, famously wrote that the detective story “does not, and by hypothesis never can, attain the loftiest level of literary achievement.” Thus the “hard-boiled’ detective fiction of Raymond Chandler and his peers like Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain whose novels inspired the film noir of 1940s American cinema, was traditionally considered… Continue reading Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”

I must admit once again that it took me way too long—fifteen years, I reckon—to finally read Michael Chabon’s brilliant tour-de-force, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. But I freely admit that once I did I was so astonished by every aspect of the novel that I resolved there and then to become a Chabon completist,… Continue reading Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a book that captures your imagination when you first read it as a child of ten, and continues to stir your delight and your intellect when you read it for the last time as a senior citizen of 99. There are very few books in English that appeal to such a… Continue reading Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”