Book Review: The False River.
Nick Holdstock predominantly writes nonfiction about China, a society that he has explored as an English teacher, though his debut …
Tag Archives: Books
Christmas with Washington Irving.
Today the Christmas material in Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20) encompasses a jovial and expansive midsection …
Putting a Value on Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris.
The central plot-line… is that of a mystery-of-kinship story whose basic literary shape derives from the mystery-romances of Gothic and …
Am I a Liberal? (or, a Book Review of Adam Gopnik’s A Thousand Small Sanities).
Am I a liberal? This might sound like a peculiar question because surely everybody is these days. Even most self-proclaimed …
One Great Man On Another.
“This is the dilemma that confronts partisans of resentment: either they must deny Shakespeare’s unique eminence (a painful and difficult …
Book Review: The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies.
[In taking all of the quotes in this review from an e-book facsimile of The Secret Commonwealth, I have switched …
The Place of Bitters (Pique-Vinaigre) in The Mysteries of Paris.
[Here are some notes on the names that are used in this article.] Almost a thousand pages into his serialised …
Book Review: Dracul.
[The following contains spoilers.] You cannot understand Count Dracula without first getting the lie of the land. One of the …
How Best to Read Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris.
Eugène Sue’s crime novel The Mysteries of Paris was originally published in ninety instalments in the newspaper Journal des débats …
Short Story Review: The Bram Stoker Bedside Companion.
Count Dracula was the brainchild of the Irish writer Bram Stoker, who might seem to us today to be more …
Notes, Critical and Contextual, on RL Stevenson’s The Dynamiter: The Character of Prince Florizel.
INTRODUCTION. THE INFLUENCE OF THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. THE INFLUENCE OF SCHEHERAZADE. THE INFLUENCE OF SAMUEL SMILES’ SELF-HELP. …
Ombhurbhuva on John Waters.
I have no new material today or probably for a while. Here, however, is a picture that deserves a second …
The Retrial of Meursault.
[Scene: A swelteringly hot courtroom in Algeria. Three judges, two in black and the third in scarlet, enter the courtroom …
What does Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina mean?
[The following contains spoilers.] I never read graphic novels – there is enough on my plate already! – but I …
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Dynamiter and The Puritan-Provincial Vision.
INTRODUCTION. THE INFLUENCE OF THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. THE INFLUENCE OF SCHEHERAZADE. THE INFLUENCE OF “SELF-HELP.“ “Robert Louis …
