Showing posts with label Classic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classic. Show all posts

Saturday, December 18, 2010

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper



The Last of the Mohicans 
by
James Fenimore Cooper

The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests. 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving



The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 
by 
Washington Irving

The San Souci brothers (The Legend of Scarface have retold the story of Ichabod Crane's last days alive, admiring the lovely Katrina and attending, at her father's home, a party where he hears of the Headless Horseman. Like A Christmas Carol, this story has been routinely reworked in strange and terrible ways. Here the artist has provided full-color paintings that show an awkward, frightfully thin Ichabod and the sweetly petite Katrina, set in 18th century surroundings. The pursuit at the end is shown in sweeping, eerie scenes. For those who find Washington Irving's original version hard going, this one is a fine alternative, especially for reading aloud. 

The Phantom of the Opera: The Original Novel by Gaston Leroux


The Phantom of the Opera: The Original Novel 
by
Gaston Leroux

Before the Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, there was Gaston Leroux's original novel "The Phantom of the Opera". I have never seen the production stage, and I knew only a few things of the story, so when I reached the middle of the narrative I was surprised because it is totally different from what I expected. And it was a great surprise.

More than a love story, "The Phantom of the Opera" is a gothic tale of obsession --leading to madness. The Paris Opera House and its hidden rooms, and underground are perfect place to develop a horror story. Leroux noticed this potential. His descriptions of the place are creepy and in the end we start wondering if it is not a true story indeed.

Leroux was very smart, writing a novel like he was only reporting something --and not creating a work of fiction. Therefore there are police reports, newspapers' scraps, witness interviews. More than a narrator, the person who is telling the story is only gathering useful information for the reader.

His characters are real human beings --even the `ghost', than throughout the narrative we realize that he is the one with most human characteristics. Sometimes, Christine is a little stereotypical, mostly when she says she wants to be `the mistress of her faith' or something like it. And so is Raoul --but that doesn't diminish the qualities of this engaging novel.

All in all, this is a French classic that I highly recommend --however one must be patient because the narrative is a little confusing and slow sometimes, but never boring. 

Friday, December 10, 2010

Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes



Don Quixote
by
Miquel de Cervantes

There would seem to be little reason for yet another translation of Don Quixote. Translated into English some 20 times since the novel appeared in two parts in 1605 and 1615, and at least five times in the last half-century, it is currently available in multiple editions (the most recent is the 1999 Norton Critical Edition translated by Burton Raffel). Yet Grossman bravely attempts a fresh rendition of the adventures of the intrepid knight Don Quixote and his humble squire Sancho Panza. As the respected translator of many of Latin America's finest writers (among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa), she is well suited to the task, and her translation is admirably readable and consistent while managing to retain the vigor, sly humor and colloquial playfulness of the Spanish. Erring on the side of the literal, she isn't afraid to turn out clunky sentences; what she loses in smoothness and elegance she gains in vitality. The text is free of archaisms the contemporary reader will rarely stumble over a word and the footnotes (though rather erratically supplied) are generally helpful. Her version easily bests Raffel's ambitious but eccentric and uneven effort, and though it may not immediately supplant standard translations by J.M. Cohen, Samuel Putnam and Walter Starkie, it should give them a run for their money. Against the odds, Grossman has given us an honest, robust and freshly revelatory Quixote for our times.

LECTURES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Acton

LECTURES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION  by Acton

LECTURES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
by
Acton

Delivered at Cambridge University between 1895 and 1899, Lectures on the French Revolution is a distinguished account of the entire epochal chapter in French experience by one of the most remarkable English historians of the nineteenth century. In contrast to Burke a century before, Acton leaves condemnation of the French Revolution to others. He provides a disciplined, thorough, and elegant history of the actual events of the bloody episode -- in sum, as thorough a record as could be constructed in his time of the actual actions of the government of France during the Revolution. There are twenty-two essays, commencing with 'The Heralds of the Revolution', in which Acton presents a taxonomy of the intellectual ferment that preceded -- and prepared -- the Revolution. An important appendix explores 'The Literature of the Revolution'. Here Acton offers assessments of the accounts of the Revolution written during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries by, among others, Burke, Guizot, and Taine.

Read

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger



THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
by
J.D. Salinger

Novel by J.D. Salinger, published in 1951. The influential and widely acclaimed story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss


Swiss Family Robinson
by
Johann David Wyss



"Swiss Family Robinson" is the classic tale of a Swiss pastor, his wife and their four sons who find themselves shipwrecked on an isolated tropical island. Along with a couple of dogs, some livestock, pigeons and geese, "Swiss Family Robinson," is the story of a family's struggle to survive in a foreign land isolated from society. Everyday brings a new adventure and a new obstacle to overcome. Above all, "Swiss Family Robinson" is a classic tale of adventure that can be enjoyed by readers both young and old.
Read 

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas



The Count of Monte Cristo 
by
Alexandre Dumas


Edmond Dantes is on the verge of adult life. He has just been made captain of a ship and is about to marry his
beautiful fiancée, Mercedes. But he has enemies who envy him. And he has been foolish. At the dying request of the previous captain of his ship, the Pharaoh, he has carried a letter to the exiled Napoleon who has in turn given him a letter addressed to someone in Paris.
Edmond’s enemies denounce him to the local judge, Villefort, who recognises the name on the letter as his
father’s and is terrified that he will be linked with plots against the monarch. He sends Edmond to the Chateau
d’lf, a prison where men go and never return. 
After some time he makes contact with another prisoner, Faria, who has made a secret pathway under the prison. They meet regularly. Faria teaches Edmond about many things, and tells him about the Spada treasure on the island of Monte Cristo.
Faria dies and Edmond sees his chance. He changes places with the dead Faria, is thrown into the sea and rescued by a smuggling ship. He finally makes it to Monte Cristo and finds the treasure.
He returns to Marseilles a rich man, to find Mercedes at the home of his dying father. The novel ends happily, with Edmond and Mercedes sailing out of the harbour on his new boat.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov.




Lolita
by
Vladimir Nabokov
Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover - D. H. Lawrence



Lady Chatterly’s Lover
by
D. H. Lawrence
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters


Friday, September 10, 2010

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET By William Shakespeare
THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
By
William Shakespeare


Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young "star-cross'd lovers" whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet and Macbeth, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.


War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy


War and Peace
by
Leo Tolstoy

Epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The heroine, Natasha Rostova, for example, reaches her greatest fulfillment through her marriage to Pierre Bezukhov and her motherhood. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism.

Read

Download audio book

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH




A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
By
Jules Verne

Novel by Jules Verne, published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre. It is the second book in his popular science-fiction series Voyages extraordinaires (1863-1910). Otto Lidenbrock, an impetuous German professor of geology, discovers an encoded manuscript in which a 16th-century explorer claims to have found a passageway to the center of the Earth. Otto impulsively prepares a subterranean expedition, enlisting his young nephew Axel and a stoic Icelandic guide, Hans Bjelke. After descending into an extinct volcano in Iceland, the men spend several months in a underground world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic sea creatures until they ride a volcanic eruption out of Stromboli Island, off the coast of Italy


The Odyssey by Homer


The Odyssey - Homer
Translated by
Samuel Butler

The "Odyssey" is a magnificient piece of literature that we find absolutely spectacular in the fact of its potential for helping us understand pre-history of many ancient cultures, and because of the fact that it is so well written and perhaps one of the first "books" (epics) ever written down.

Read


Download Audio book

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Virgin and the Gipsy by D.H. Lawrence (Audio Book)



The Virgin and the Gipsy
by
D.H. Lawrence

The Virgin and the Gipsy was discovered in France after D. H. Lawrence's death in 1930. Immediately recognized as a masterpiece in which Lawrence had distilled and purified his ideas about sexuality and morality, The Virgin and the Gipsy has become a classic and is one of Lawrence's most electrifying short novels.
Set in a small village in the English countryside, this is the story of a secluded, sensitive rector's daughter who yearns for meaning beyond the life to which she seems doomed. When she meets a handsome young gipsy whose life appears different from hers in every way, she is immediately smitten and yet still paralyzed by her own fear and social convention. Not until a natural catastrophe suddenly, miraculously sweeps away the world as she knew it does a new world of passion open for her. Lawrence's spirit is infused by all his tenderness, passion, and knowledge of the human soul.

Credits
www.easymediabroadcast.com
Loads of other Audio Books available at the above mentioned website

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Audio Book)


The Great Gatsby
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald



In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Credits
www.easymediabroadcast.com

Loads of other Audio Books available at the above mentioned website


The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde (Audio Book)

The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde
The Selfish Giant
by
Oscar Wilde

This classic story by Oscar Wilde is set in a garden that is not unlike paradise. Children play freely among the trees and flowers. And then the owner, The Selfish Giant, returns from a long holiday and drives out the children. But all is not lost, for the giant finds redemption through a child.

Download

Credits
www.easymediabroadcast.com

Loads of other Audio Books available at the above mentioned website


Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Audio Book)



Frankenstein
by
Mary Shelley

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the is an 1818 novel written by Mary Shelley at the age of 19, first published anonymously in London, but more often known by the revised third edition of 1831 under her own name. It is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the RomanticIndustrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus and spawned a complete genre of . The story has had an influence across literature and popular culturehorror stories and films. Many distinguished authors, such as Brian Aldiss, consider this the very first science fiction novel.

Read


Download
audio book

Credits
www.easymediabroadcast.com

Loads of other Audio Books available at the above mentioned website

Friday, August 27, 2010

Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne


Around the World
in 80 Days
by
Jules Verne


A journey around the Earth.... in eighty days? Surely such a thing is not possible. Yet this is the bet taken up by Phileas Fogg in Around The World In Eighty Days. Jules Verne was a great admirer of the British Empire. The wealth, the splendour and the engineering, products of the greatest empire in the world fascinated him in his writing.
This novel is primarily about a race. For Fogg and a bet that could double his fortune or leave him penniless and for his servant Paspartout who faces a similar crisis over a gas burner he left on before leaving on the journey. Together the two men travel the many cultures of the British Empire with the police on their tales over a misunderstanding but threatening to stop their endeavor in it's tracks. The presence of the two men in different cultures exposes the English regard to foreigners and the detachment of such men to foreign cultures.

Read

Download audio book



Monday, August 23, 2010

AREOPAGITICA - John Milton

AREOPAGITICA by John Milton
AREOPAGITICA
by
John Milton

Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England) Pamphlet by John Milton, published in 1644 to protest an order issued by Parliament the previous year requiring government approval and licensing of all published books. Four earlier pamphlets by the author concerning divorce had met with official disfavor and suppressive measures. The title of the work derives from "Areopagus" ("Hill of Ares"), the name of the site from which the high court of Athens administered its jurisdiction and imposed a general censorship. In a prose style that draws heavily on Greek models, Milton argues that to mandate licensing is to follow the example of the detested Papacy. He defends the free circulation of ideas as essential to moral and intellectual development. Furthermore, he asserts, to attempt to preclude falsehood is to underestimate the power of truth.

Read

Download audio book