Wordsworth and Watercolors

  A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh Published 1934 Classics Club Review #3/50 Me? Oh, I liked it. I suppose I can manage a bit more than that! I really don't know what to say, though, except that if this book surprised me I wasn't surprised. This is Waugh. At the risk of revealing just how late I am with my review (the answer is 'very'), this book took me three days , which is to its credit as it is quite certainly equal to my preceding spin read in terms of fullness and quality, and while The Portrait of a Lady is not without its pleasures, in terms of enjoyment this novel exceeds it. The adeptness with which Waugh writes captures conversation, personality, setting, and atmosphere so well it is a beauty to observe. It is also perfect for slipping from a fairly normal comedic tragedy to a completely insane comedic tragedy. And the characters are all so perfectly awful, each in their own way, except for the rather sad figure of Tony. That may sound a strange thing to lik...

  Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster published 1905 Classics Club Review # 2/50 This was my second Forster, the first being the exquisitely beautiful  A Room With a View . This is a rather different sort of book. It deals with impetuous passion and its consequences rather than with true love and the trials of decision regarding its attainment. Both have a battling of the old and new, the traditional and the freeing (There is more to both books, but I only aim to remark upon so much). Within the novel, class and the societies of the two countries (England and Italy) are compared, contrasted, and moved in in differing degrees of enjoyment and repulsion. Italy is beautiful and raw, England limited and quiet. Under the surface we see that some of the characters hold much larger opinions and feelings than their environment might allude to, and some have more stifling ideas than seem even congruous with theirs and their country's perceived identity. While in A Room With a V...

  the ADVENTURE of  the FIRST COLLECTION (To be read in the voice of David Burke) I can safely say that I have never cared for an anthology of stories more than I have this which I here consider. Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for The Strand Magazine  and finally published out of serial form in 1892, these stories are some of the greatest and most fascinating that I have ever had the pleasure to lay my hands on. I began quite out of order, reading "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" when I was rather a young child for a tale of such horror and villainy, and more lately have enjoyed  The Sign of Four, which I read with a group of people from all parts of the country (we connected ourselves through a mutual benefactor who was kind enough to invite us all to join together in casting our eyes over the work. We engaged the services of Zoom for this endeavor). During those weeks we also read together the first five of Holmes' Adventures. This was in the summer of '23,...