I had super-high expectations when it came to reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I was loving the creepy, Victorian/Gothic vibes as well as the idea that a painting was aging while the model remained ageless. (Hope I didn’t spoil anything, but at this point I feel like everyone knows at least…
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” -the first line of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, one of the more famous first lines.
It took me a year to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I started it last October and got really bored and then the season passed. This year, I finished it, but not without some pushing. Dracula is a classic of Gothic horror, an original in many senses and the bulwark of the vampire genre. I thought…
“…and now is the chance that we may live and learn.” -Bram Stoker, Dracula
Did you know that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (technically Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) is a short story? A novella, at best? The version I read (a trade paperback volume by Signet Classics containing an introduction by Stephen King and also Dracula and Frankenstein) runs to 75 pages. Which makes this…
It seems obvious that I would have read all of Jane Austen’s books. In reality, I’m not entirely sure I’ve read any of her books except Emma, at least until this week. (I am a fan of many of the movies, including the Sense and Sensibility from the 90s: one of my all-time favorites.) Now…
This review is for two books by Charlotte Bronte: The Professor and Villette. I read them in the Wordsworth Classic version (with a blue cover, not black) and the Bantam Classic version, respectively. The books were originally published in 1857 and 1853. Although The Professor was written before Charlotte Bronte’s other novels, it was repeatedly rejected and…
Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Available from Norton, and first published in 1966. I read Wide Sargasso Sea, not just because it is considered a great book, but because I read Jane Eyre earlier this year and am currently reading through all the Bronte sisters’ writing. If you are not familiar with Wide Sargasso…
the starving artist 