Category Archives: Classics

Penguin Great Loves series; book 1 – Doomed Love by Virgil

Posted on January 26, 2023 by bookbii

I was watering my plants recently, I have a bunch of cascading plants on the top of my bookshelves, when my eye happened upon this set of books which I’d somehow managed to ignore before. Perhaps I had considered them … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Love, Penguin Great Loves | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

The Ideal Reader Book 12: Germinal by Emile Zola (translated by Leonard Tancock)

Posted on November 18, 2018 by bookbii

“While Etienne lingered by the fire warming his poor raw hands, Le Voreux began to emerge as from a dream. He could now pick out each part of the works: the tarpaulin-covered screening shed, the headgear, the huge winding-house, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, The Ideal Reader | 9 Comments

The Ideal Reader book 9: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xuequin volumes IV and V (translated by John Minford)

Posted on September 30, 2018 by bookbii

“When grief for fiction’s idle words More real than human life appears, Reflect that life itself’s a dream And do not mock the reader’s tears.” One of the difficulties of reading the same book for 6 weeks is how it … Continue reading →

Posted in Chinese, Classics, The Ideal Reader | 5 Comments

The Ideal Reader book 9: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xuequin volumes 2 & 3 (translated by David Hawkes)

Posted on September 12, 2018 by bookbii

Yes, I’m still working my way through The Story of the Stone, though I’m beginning to feel like I’m on the home strait. I’ve been reading for nearly 5 weeks now, which is an age, and I’ve got through about … Continue reading →

Posted in Chinese, Classics, The Ideal Reader | 4 Comments

The Ideal Reader book 9: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xuequin volume 1 (translated by David Hawkes)

Posted on August 22, 2018 by bookbii

The Story of the Stone, perhaps more recognisably known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, is an epic work of Chinese fiction, my copy in five volumes weighing in at a massive 2480 pages long. I bought it ages ago … Continue reading →

Posted in Chinese, Classics, Epic, fiction, The Ideal Reader, translation | 3 Comments

The Makioka Sisters by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker)

Posted on January 4, 2018 by bookbii

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is a writer I associate very strongly with a kind of claustrophobic, highly charged, erotic, chaotic, madcap kind of fiction. I’ve read both Diary of a Mad Old Man and The Key and both novels are quite similar … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, fiction, Japanese | 4 Comments

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Posted on November 29, 2017 by bookbii

For those of you who have seen the movie Gladiator, you may recognise the name Marcus Aurelius as being the old emperor who offers Maximus the stewardship of Rome, only to be assassinated by his own son, inadvertently condemning Maximus … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, comfort books, non-fiction, philosophy | 8 Comments

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Posted on November 5, 2017 by bookbii

I first hear of Sylvia Townsend Warner when David Mitchell (who I adore) named her book The Corner That Held Them as one of his favourite books of all time. This was some time ago and I never got around … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, fiction, gender | 9 Comments

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Posted on September 24, 2017 by bookbii

My challenge towards the end of the year is to read some of those books I bought with lofty ideals in mind only to place them on my shelf like so much high-brow decoration. When I first conceived of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Books I Ought to Read, Classics | 9 Comments

Books I Ought to Read No.5: Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Posted on August 25, 2017 by bookbii

I have, for the longest time, been intending to get around to reading Old Goriot, but as usual never quite got around to it. It seems I am not alone. When I took my secondhand copy, an old Caxton Edition … Continue reading →

Posted in Books I Ought to Read, Classics, fiction | 6 Comments