Snow White by Donald Auchincloss
“She is a tall dark beauty containing a great many beauty spots” I wasn’t sure what a reread of this book was going to bring me. But I did it. The reread did go better than the initial one, but I am not sure I liked it any better when it comes down to it. This book is a retelling of Snow White, but with a lot of artifice and structure stripped out of it. So this postmodern rendering of it is often told in […]
The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
“Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of standing where a lane ended and cultivation began: a different landscape but also in the alluvial plain between the mountains of the north and the plateau of the south.” The beginning of A Passage to India begins with an […]
The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam
“Ted was dying, and the idea for the final trip, driving down to Florida to see him one last time, was Dominic’s.” This book is a follow up to David Halberstam’s book Summer of 49, which follows the American league pennant race in 1949, which primarily involved a showdown between Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Joe DiMaggio was a very consistent hitter, not expressly a power hitter, and an excellent fielder. Ted Williams was a little more consistent and definitely more of a power hitter, […]
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
“Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.” If a lot of literature in the early 1800s, especially Jane Austen, is concerned with people finding themselves in the right kind of marriage, by the end, with Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Edith Wharton leading the way, it’s about seeing what happens when you end up in the wrong kind of marriage. Here we have Lily Bart, a woman […]
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
“A city’s blank white concrete slabs, the giant ones ringed by the less giant, gave space in their midst to a broad pink-floored plaza, a playground in which two hundred young children played and exercised under the care of a dozen supervisors in white coveralls.” On the one hand, I feel like this novel basically got plagiarized by the early 2000s movie “The Island” which has an almost identical dystopian vision about the world, and a similar plotline. But on the other hand, I swear […]
The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
“The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air, and then the sharp green color of the land.” This novel is kind of like Kindred, but where not much happens. Or rather, the focus is very different. Dick is visiting his friend Magnus’s country house, and he’s asked to sample a potion that Magnus has concocted. They’ve been friends since college and I guess this doesn’t seem too crazy, so he does. Soon he’s transported back to the middle ages where he witnesses […]
