Posts Tagged "Classics"

#2016ClassicsChallenge: THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER by James Hogg

Posted by on Jul 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

#2016ClassicsChallenge: THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER by James Hogg

  Set in early eighteenth-century Scotland, the novel recounts the corruption of a boy of strict Calvinist parentage by a mysterious stranger under whose influence he commits a series of murders. The stranger assures the boy that no sin can affect the salvation of an elect person. The reader, while recognizing the stranger as Satan, is prevented by the subtlety of the novel’s structure from finally deciding whether, for all his vividness and wit, he is more than a figment of the boy’s imagination.   I’ve been taking part in the 2016 Classics Challenge, hosted by Stacey of The Pretty Books. So far this year I’ve read: Dracula The...

#2016ClassicsChallenge: UNCLE SILAS by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Posted by on Apr 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

#2016ClassicsChallenge: UNCLE SILAS by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  In Uncle Silas, Maud Ruthyn, the young, naïve heroine, is plagued by Madame de la Rougierre from the moment the enigmatic older woman is hired as her governess. A liar, bully, and spy, when Madame leaves the house, she takes her dark secret with her. But when Maud is orphaned, she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, her father’s mysterious brother and a man with a scandalous – even murderous – past. And, once again, she encounters Madame, whose sinister role in Maud’s destiny becomes all too clear. With its subversion of reality and illusion, and its exploration of fear through the use of mystery and the supernatural, Uncle Silas shuns...

#2016ClassicsChallenge: THE DEVIL’S ELIXIRS by E.T.A. Hoffman

Posted by on Mar 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

#2016ClassicsChallenge: THE DEVIL’S ELIXIRS by E.T.A. Hoffman

    The charismatic monk Medardus becomes implicated in a deadly mystery against his will. As he travels towards Rome he wrestles with the enigma of his own identity while pursued by his murderous doppelganger. The monk’s only hope for salvation lies with the beautiful Aurelie; but in order to escape the curse which lies over his family, he must evade the sinister powers of the living and the dead. In this lively and disturbing gothic tale, Hoffmann combines elements of the fantastic and the sublime to analyse the seductive ambiguities of art and the deeply divided nature of the human imagination.   For my second book of the #2016ClassicsChallenge...

#2016ClassicsChallenge Book One: DRACULA

Posted by on Jan 15, 2016 | 2 comments

#2016ClassicsChallenge Book One: DRACULA

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries in his client’s castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England: a ship runs aground on the shores of Whitby, its crew vanished; beautiful Lucy Westenra slowly succumbs to a mysterious, wasting illness, her blood drained away; and the lunatic Renfield raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘master’. In the ensuing battle of wills between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries – led by the intrepid vampire hunter Abraham van Helsing – Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre,...