English Literature Club: books, essays,reviews.

2022-05-30 13:41:35 Mystery under the Sea
by Lester Dent
The dread riddle of Taz. There was only one clue to the bloody enigma of TAZ-the illegible, dying scrawl of a horribly mutilated sailor. What was the message he had so desperately tried to deliver? Why had sizzling acid been forced into his mouth? What secret had the dead man unraveled about the flamboyant and brutal Captain Flamingo? Held captive aboard a tramp steamer, The Man of Bronze and his bold allies wrestle with the dread riddle of Taz. Open / Comment

2022-04-09 00:16:31 Green Hills of Africa
by Ernest Hemingway
His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway’s lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway’s well-known interest in - and fascination with - big game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. In examining the poetic grace of the chase, and the ferocity of the kill, Hemingway also looks inward, seeking to explain the lure of the hunt and the primal undercurrent that comes alive on the plains of Africa. Yet Green Hills of Africa is also an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape, and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man. Open / Comment

2022-03-21 22:58:22 Mainly on the Air
by Max Beerbohm

Collected radio talks by the celebrated English essayist and humorist Sir Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm returned to England from his home in Rapallo in Italy in about 1935 when his wife, Florence Kahn was cast in a revival of Peer Gynt on the London stage. At this time he resumed writing essays when the BBC invited him to give regular radio broadcasts. Open / Comment

2022-01-03 21:38:54 The Old Man in the Corner
by Emma Orczy

A nameless old man sits in the corner of a cozy London tea shop, and without leaving his seat, solves baffling crimes reported to him by an admiring lady journalist. Using only methods of pure deduction, the eccentric, self-assured sleuth unravels the mysteries behind a wide range of criminal acts — from gruesome murders (The Lisson Grove Mystery) and daring thefts (The Affair at the Novelty Theatre) to brilliant deceptions (The Liverpool Mystery) and deadly blackmail schemes (The Murder of Miss Pebmarsh). Set in the fog-shrouded streets of London, where gas lamps flicker in the gloom and details of lurid crimes splash across the pages of the daily papers, these ingenious, well-crafted stories by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel are among the first and great collections of detective fiction. They will delight devotees of Sherlock Holmes and other mystery-loving fans. Open / Comment

2021-11-04 23:26:26 Jane Eyre
An Autobiography
by Charlotte Brontë

Romantic melodrama or feminist classic, Jane Eyre is one of the most enduringly popular and compelling novels in the literary canon. Overlooked or dismissed by critics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it first began to attract serious critical attention in the 1970s as New Critical, formalist and feminist critics began to re-evaluate Charlotte Bronte’s achievement. Open / Comment