by Joseph Conrad
“Sansho the Steward” by Mori Ogai This is a poignant short story about a brother and sister who are kidnapped and sold into slavery. There’s no way there could be a happy end for both of them. The Golden Slipper, and other problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katherine Green A fun detective nov...
Conrad is perhaps my favourite (English language) writer from the turn of the last century. I find "The Secret Sharer" to be one of the greatest English language short stories ever written. And Nostromo is a favourite of mine. And yet it took me forever to get into this, considered by some to be amo...
It has been over a week and a half since I last finished a book. This is so extremely unusual. I'm trying not to hold it agains the collection of books I've been reading that week in a half, but at times it's hard. I find myself eyeing Ulysses suspiciously, poke The Reality Dysfunction every once in...
Ponderous and difficult to follow, but still a beautiful piece of work. I say "difficult to follow" in the sense that Conrad did not always balance his action and exposition in Lord Jim. There were large sections of backstory or the minutia of character. Certainly character is the cornerstone of thi...
Read as audiobook. This relatively short novel was stretched to almost 14 hours.At its heart, this is a novel about attempting to overcome one's own haemartia, or tragic flaw. While the Greek audiences of Aristotle's time found the hero sympathetic because of his important error. Setting aside the c...
Log in with Facebook 
