by P. G. Wodehouse Carry On, Jeeves was my first foray into the comedy of P. G. Wodehouse, and, I must say, I had no idea it could be this wonderful. The book is made up of a series of vignettes in which Bertram Wooster and his butler, Jeeves, work to help Bertie’s friends get…
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by John Milton I will have to make mention of my unfamiliarity with the style of language and literature, when approaching an epic poem the likes of Paradise Lost. This isn’t to say I had an impossible time understanding the Renaissance English; it just took me much longer to get through. (And, you know, the…
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by Philip K. Dick It’s been a while since I read something that felt a bit dated. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came across that way, but for a very different reason; you could easily date Cuckoo’s Nest based on its writing style. A more fitting comparison to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?…
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by Robert A. Heinlein A smarter man than I once said that, while it is perfectly reasonable to dismiss a book due to its terrible beginning, a strong start doesn’t preclude a terrible transformation. (The original quote actually dealt with videogames, but it fits Starship Troopers so well that I couldn’t help myself here.) The…
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by Ken Kesey Am I a terrible person? To like a piece of literature so criticized for its racism and misogyny seems to suggest as much. And I see the truth in the arguments, though I would suggest that it should be regarded less as racist and misogynist literature, and more as real literature, literature…
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by Evelyn Waugh Some stories feel almost untouchable to me, which isn’t to say nothing exists that can be considered better, and it isn’t to say nothing exists that is similar, but, even with similarities and even with stories that resonate on deeper, more visceral levels, nothing feels truly comparable. In the case of Brideshead…
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by Graham Greene Our Man in Havana has the unique distinction of its place in history more-or-less matching up with its subject matter. The story is about Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman from Cuba, being recruited by British intelligence to gather information. Not knowing the first thing about espionage, but still wanting to draw a…
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by Roger Zelazny When reading, you can sometimes smell the pungent odour of a cliffhanger coming a mile away. With Lord of Light, I caught a tinge of this as I progressed without approaching anything that resembled where we were in the introduction. The more I read, the more nervous I grew, probably coming to…
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It’s very interesting what good writing can evoke in the mind of the reader. (This probably stands out in my mind right now, as I’m preparing to speak on this topic very soon.) While reading the works of Gogol, this does bring about images of the Ukrainian countryside and various powerful emotions, as you may…
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by Oscar Wilde I don’t know if it says something of my nature that I seem to enjoy such wicked men in classic literature, so long as they possess a sharp, eloquent wit. This has been true in the past with Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Hermann of Lolita and Despair fame, respectively, and it is…
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